Generational Knowledge, Part Two: the Family as School of Humanity

Over the course of three articles, I will discuss the role of the family in handing on knowledge from generation to generation, and the role of the family as a school for humanity.  This is part two.  For continuity, I have included the last paragraph of the preceding section as the first paragraph in this section.

We can say that man knows himself ever more completely only by acknowledging that his heart’s desire is true communion with God: that man is in a constant quest to become more himself by pursuing God in the specific unique ways which he most recognizes Him through his own life.  Because man and wife join together, accepting and completing that original solitude of the other I and thereby becoming truly “one flesh” in mutual knowledge and love of the other, a new identity is formed wherein there is no longer simply an I-thou but an us, one complete unit indissoluble which itself in the natural course of things brings forth children as a reflection and testimony of the original union between the parents.  There is truly creation of something new, “a complex of interpersonal relationships is set up - married life, fatherhood and motherhood, filiation and fraternity ” (Familiaris Consortio).   This is again not to say that man and woman are fractional persons: they simply create a new identity for each other because through fidelity and the fulfillment of their vows to each other they are now the way in which each other recognizes God.  New identity comes from a new way of recognizing God (the true source of happiness) as developed through vocation, and family members as part of this new identity find themselves with a calling and identity as unique as their own love for each other: an identity, summons, and inclination found, “within itself… that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility” (Familiaris Consortio).  The creation of a new unit, a new oneness encapsulating multiple I’s creates within itself an entire new inclination towards God within itself, distinct from the individual inclinations of the spouses as individuals, and yet not intelligible without them.  This new Anamnesis (which is simply the recognition of God through conscience) calls the family towards the same end of self discovery that individuals have within themselves: to, as a, “family, become what you are”, requiring each individual family member to no longer seek God by oneself but to rather become “a community of life and love, in an effort to find fulfillment… in the Kingdom of God”, that Chief Good (happiness) towards which every natural inclination leads.  A new identity, based on a new specific way to encounter God, requires new education and lifestyle within the members in order to prepare and inform them in the proper search for God according to this newness of life they are now a part of.  Thus, the family itself has rights and freedoms proper to itself, in order to search for its own happiness and remain a functioning member of society.

The nuclear family then can be seen to be the essential foundation and smallest unit of society, within which the family members are first “introduced into the ‘human family’ and into the ‘family of God’, which is the Church” (Familiaris Consortio).  One of the reasons that marriage is the foundational unit of society is the reality that the physical world matters to our formation and lives: that our environments and our own actions help shape the realization of personhood as defined by the conscience within the soul which beckons to the individual at his core to seek God in the unique unrepeatable way God wants to be known by that individual.  The family’s main role is education of the members of that primal community - especially the children - a role aimed not at filling so many buckets with facts but at true formation of the person, encompassing the whole of reality: of “knowing the complete truth concerning the value of human life” (Familiaris Consortio), of freedom, and of individual identity.  It is held to be self evident in classical philosophy that man seeks companionship and friendship, and that without love “he remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately with it” (Evangelium Vitae).  Individual identity is lost when it is left to the exposures of the world: we lose ourselves when we lose sight of our true happiness, God.  Since we only have an identity such that we are able to form and is formed through our environment, the environment should be one aimed at the Chief Good, and a recognition of the individual person on a fundamental level.  There is no sense of personal identity without some sense of family.

Since our environments help shape the person, we can say that every experience is a form of education, in one sense or another.  In the context of the family, this constant education and formation of the person takes shape not only from formal education but also in that immediate experience of mutual love and acceptance interpersonally experienced by the family members.  Family members are constantly exposed to each other’s persons and radical uniqueness, and are called to simultaneously find God and reveal God to each other “each according to his or her own gift… day by day [in the continual building of] the communion of persons” (Redemptor Hominis).  This formation of persons takes on a much more personal and responsibility driven aspect within the family than merely passive exposure to each other’s unique personalities: unlike the experience of the larger society, which is simply received by the senses and interpreted by the person, the environment of the family must be intentionally formed and constantly renewed in a perpetual communication and response to the subjectivity of those persons who make up the Communio.  Parents have the ultimate responsibility to continually renew their love and unity to each other and bear witness to that original community between themselves by continuing their openness to life in every aspect, including the intentional formation of their children.  Though the new Anamnesis created by the family and the loving environment therein belongs, educates, and is experienced by all the members of the family and not exclusively children, these youngest members of society are especially at the mercy of that intentional environment created first by the parents, since this community is all they have ever known and in the natural course of events is that community in which they are most fully themselves, most fully appreciated first as humans and then by the choices they make to become more fully themselves.  To this end, it is an especial responsibility of the parents to continually renew their marriage vows to each other and accept constantly their gift to each other now physically present in their children by ensuring that their children experience a world which embodies the “correct attitude of freedom with regard to material goods, by adapting a simple and austere lifestyle and being fully convinced that ‘man is more precious for what he is than for what he has’” (Familiaris Consortio).  This responsibility of the parents to their children can be described most accurately by what it is: truly a ministry to those most youngest members of the human family.