Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

schooling for conjugal love. It is not natural to cultivate only erotic relationships to the other
gender. It is the circle of the family, where femininity appears in the form of sisterliness, it
presents itself in an intimate, constant, and pure manner.“ 74
c) The task of the grandparents
Even if living with the grandparents does not belong essentially to the form of the family, it
nevertheless means a unique enrichment of family life. According to the Christian understanding,
old age is not the collapse of life, but its peak and fulfillment. The elderly person is
rooted, as it were, in the history of the family, the community, and the people. He or she is
more composed and more reflective and probably inwardly closer to the religious and eternal
also than the youth or the one standing in his or her prime. Certainly there is also a sham wisdom
and a foolishness of age, and many face old age in a dishonest, cowardly, embittered,
isolated, and inwardly impoverished way. At times the danger also threatens that the grandparents
will spoil the grandchildren, especially if the mother is employed outside the home,
and will be 'too soft' in raising them contrary to the educational methods of the parents. The
acceptance of elderly parents into the household of grown and married children also has its
problems no doubt. But most of the time the elderly parents dissolve their own household and
move in with the children only when the young marriage, which needs to be in its own especially
in its first years, has already existed for a number of years and
firmly established itself. 75
§ 2 The Family as the Cell of Human Society
1. The Family as a Cell of Human Society in a Biological an Moral Respect
An ancient tradition sees in the family the origin of all socialization. That has frequently been
misunderstood in such a way that the larger and more comprehensive social structures are
„present in germ in the family, as the oak tree is hidden in the acorn,“ so that there would be a
gradation of social development beginning with the family and ascending rectilinearly over
clan and tribe up to the nation and state. 76 Christian social teaching rejects this view as erroneous.
The richly articulated social life is in no way contained in miniature in the family. Villages,
cities, business, associations, universities, states, and so on cannot be brought into a
single line and are neither developments of the family nor formations with a family-like structure.
According to the Christian understanding, the family is rather the 'cell' of society in a
biological and moral respect, where the expression 'cell' is, of course, meant only figuratively
in the sense of the organism analogy. „In the family,“ Pius XII explains, „the nation finds the
natural, fruitful root for its greatness and power“; for biologically it is the „primordial cell“
and the „mother cell“ of society. For this reason, a nation „in which marriage and family decay
is sooner or later doomed to perish,“ 77 The family is rightly called a cell of society in a
moral respect also. When the family is no longer „the foundation of society, the first place of
education and culture,“ depersonalization and loss of individuality is the result (Pius XII). 78
Man acquires those social virtues without which a society cannot exist in the family: love of
neighbor, consideration of others, compatibility, justice, solidarity, piety, and the ability to
obey and to command.
74
J Guitton, Die Familienbeziehungen, in J Viollet, Vom Wesen und Geheimnis der Familie (Salzburg [n d]),
188.
75
Cf Joseph Höffner, Die christliche Botschaft vom Sinn des Alters, 6th ed (Cologne: Presseamt des Erzbistums,
1975) (Sonderdrucke n 29).
76
W H Riehl, Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes, 9th ed. (Stuttgart, 1882), III: 121
77
Ansprachen Pius' XII, June 1, 1941; December 24, 1942; September 18, 1951; July 24, 1949.
78
Ansprache Pius' XII, March 19, 1953.
65