Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

a) In primitive social relations, for instance, cattle-breeding nomads, the extended family (to
which, under the patriarchal direction of the father, married sons with their wives and children
as well as their male and female servants belonged) possessed many functions that are foreign
in the modem family. The paterfamilias administered justice, celebrated the religious cultus,
and waged war. A state federation, courts, schools, or organized religious communities did
not yet exist. The picture changed as soon as state, law, economy, religion, science, and art
became specialized as particular cultural domains and achieved their autonomy. This process
did not represent any real loss of familial function, since the family had to give up tasks that it
had thus far fulfilled in a substitutional capacity. In the pre-industrial age, the family remained
as richly functional as ever. It was economically self-sufficient to a large extent, since it produced
what it used and consumed what it produced. Instruction and professional training essentially
took place in the family also. It is unmistakable that industrial development has limited
many of these functions or transferred them to extrafamilial institutions. The family
ceased long ago to be a production site, since the modem economy has taken over this function
almost entirely in the complete division of labor. Most repairs are also made today by
specialized craftsmen. Schooling and professional training set such high demands that only
extrafamilial institutions can do justice to them. Whereas it was considered natural in the preindustrial
age that the sick, the disabled, and the elderly would find support and attention
(even if in a very deficient way in the case of pestilence, hunger, and war, for example) in the
caring and providing community of the family and from the family's means, today the largescale
organizations of social security have taken over these tasks. But even the results of this
loss of function should not be exaggerated. It is not essential for the family that it spin and
weave, that a domestic slaughtering take place, or that a flickering hearth fire bum instead of a
gas or electric stove. Freedom from having to assist in the work of production as well as timesaving
devices give the mother, on the contrary, the opportunity to dedicate herself more intensively
to the education of the children and to the care of the home and of the table. b) Loss
of function in the true sense is only present when the nuclear functions of the family are encroached
upon, such as providing for the home, the table, the household, and caring for spiritual,
moral, and religious values. In many families, the table fellowship has in fact been almost
resolved, since the father and the working mother eat in the company cafeteria and the
children in the kindergarten or in the day nursery. In many cases the final remains of the worship
community have also disappeared, since the family no longer prays together and the
Christian feasts no longer count for much in the family. Many families have ceased to enjoy
any social life at home, since parents and children have shifted the focal point of their lives
towards the outside and consider the family home only as sleeping accommodation. The educational
function is, of course, almost paralyzed in this process.
2. The Change of function.
The conditions of industrialized society have indeed caused a loss of the family's functions to
a large extent, but in other realms, however, have only brought about a change of function.
There is indeed no longer any production in the family, but all the more care is given, even in
the families of workers, to the equipping of the home, to the preparation of meals, and to the
education and instruction of the children, particularly in the form of collaboration with the
school. What W.F. Ogburn writes of the United States holds also for Germany: despite the
incursions technology has succeeded in making in the household, the modem family spends a
considerable part of its time in cooking meals, taking care of the house, washing, sowing, and
mending. 80 Family members plan, save, and purchase together as partners and companions.
The change of function of the modem family shows itself in an especially clear way in the
leisure functions that are continually gaining importance and that in many cases are the ex-
80 Cf W F Ogburn, The Family and its Functions (New York, 1934),671.
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