Knights of Columbus

An emotional Pope John Paul II prays at the graves of his mother and father in a cemetery in Krokow, Poland.

Not long since, most people took the concept of family for granted even when they did not necessarily take it to signify the same set of human relations. Today, however, the family ranks as one of the most hotly contested of concepts, and debates about its nature and function evoke heated passions in all quarters. The very existence of the debates points to far-reaching and portentous changes in the most fundamental understandings of the human condition, notably the relations between the individual and the community; the claims of sexuality and desire; the proper understanding of women's nature and vocation; the relationship between men and women, and the mutual relations and responsibilities of parents and children.

No one has been more conscious of and attentive to the possible implications of these changes than Pope John Paul II. From the early days of his pastorate in Poland until his most recent reflections upon the challenges of the new millennium, he has urged Catholics to understand the family as the necessary grounding and context for the human person.

This concern for the family as the fundamental custodian of life amid an encroaching Culture of Death has always figured at the center of Pope John Paul II's theology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology and social teaching. Commit-ment to the strengthening of families in a world that tends to tear them apart has always ranked high among his sense of pastoral responsibilities. As papal biographers have noted, the conditions in the Poland of Karol Wojtyla's youth, young manhood and early clerical career continuously reminded him of the importance of family both as protection against the onslaughts of Nazism and communism, and as the core building block of any decent and humane — any truly Christian — society. In this respect, the pope's dedication to the ideal and the practical reality of family constitutes a foundational element of his understanding of the meaning and mission of Catholicism during the closing decades of the second millennium and the beginning of the third.

As an archbishop and an active participant in the Second Vatican Council, he played a major role in the drafting of Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). Gaudium et Spes emphasizes the ways in which the modern world offers man unprecedented opportunities and unprecedented dangers — new forms of freedom and new forms of slavery. With the dramatic triumph of industrial life over rural life, "the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one," and this transition has confronted us with a daunting array of new problems — problems that must ultimately be understood as a crisis of humanism (GS, 5).

Emphasizing the importance of marriage and family as the bedrock for people who attempt to respond to this crisis, the document also acknowledges that the "excellence" of marriage as an institution "is not everywhere reflected with equal brilliance, since polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love, and other disfigurements all have an obscuring effect" (GS, 47). Marriage and the family have suffered innumerable pressures and have often — some would claim more often than not — failed to realize their highest mission.

Nothing in John Paul II's writings, before or after his ascension to the papacy, suggests that he is naive about the multiple variations in marriage and family throughout the history of the world. He nonetheless insists, with Gaudium et Spes, that the "intimate partnership of married life and love has been established by the Creator and qualified by his laws and is rooted in the conjugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent." Thus, he leaves no excuse for misunderstanding: "God himself is the author of matrimony, endowed as it is with various benefits and purposes" (GS, 48).

From Wojtyla's early years as a priest, he had an immediate grasp of the social and political forces that threatened the solidity of marriages and family life. Initially, he recognized the threat in the Communist intervention into family life, and especially the Communists' hostility to the sacramental character of marriage. Subsequently, however, he has become increasingly sensitive to the ways in which the wealth some nations have and the globalization of the economy are threatening the integrity of marriage and family life.

In different ways and at different rates, both secularism and fundamentalism have contributed to what Pope John Paul II has designated the Culture of Death — a culture that holds human life cheaper and cheaper until it drains it of all intrinsic value, a culture that transforms people into objects or even obstacles. This is not a self-portrait that appeals to the affluent denizens of the developed world, who reject the very notion of the Culture of Death, and even more the view of themselves as its purveyors. Caught up in a world overflowing with commodities and armed with a science that promises to extend and create every human life, they find it easy to take their unprecedented material prosperity as the standard for human fulfillment. Nor do the prophets of traditional religion view themselves as reactionary and ignorant.

Throughout the globe, multinational corporations are drawing people out of traditional families and communities, binding some individuals to the prospects of new possibilities, while condemning their kin to the dustbins of the cities or the dust bowls of the villages. The greatest — and most awesome — power of the global economy lies in its ability to touch everything. In this respect, it acts as the ultimate solvent of the bonds that shape and guarantee our humanity — our intrinsic worth and dignity as persons. The formidable challenge of our times, as John Paul II demonstrably understands, lies in the defense, reconstitution and adaptation of these bonds to conform to the valuable aspects of globalization, without succumbing to its destructive tendencies.

The 20th century included significant changes in the status and opportunities of women, and most of them were long overdue. Nowhere is it written that men and women's specific natures entitle men to beat, enslave, exploit or otherwise abuse women. Our understanding of women's talents and capabilities changed radically during the past century, as has our understanding of the employments for which women are suited. Today, however, we confront a dangerous polarization that pits traditionalists, who condemn all change in women's situation, against radicals, who insist that the very notion of a distinct female nature is a repressive fiction. The worst consequence of this confrontation is that it has drowned out the voices of those who regard most of the changes in women's situation as beneficial, while continuing to accept the significance of women's embodied being with the unique capacity to bear and nurture new life.

Feminists rage at the pope's claims that "women's singular relationship with human life derives from her vocation to motherhood"; that "the maternal mission is also the basis of particular responsibility"; or that "the woman is called to offer the best of herself to the baby growing within her," since "it is precisely by making herself ‘gift' that she comes to know herself better and is fulfilled in her femininity" (1995 Angelus address).

Many deplore his insistence that women's employment must always respect the "fundamental duty" of the "most delicate tasks of motherhood" (Dignity of Women, 27). Most do not like the notion that women's rights include any binding duties at all. Rejecting the pope's vision of the responsibilities that accompany women's rights, feminists promote an unrestricted freedom that disconcertingly resembles equal membership in the Culture of Death.

The crux of the difference between the feminists and the pope lies in their respective understandings of women's nature and mission. Feminists dismiss injunctions to service, binding obligations and loving self-sacrifice as so many hypocritical pieties designed to perpetuate women's subordination to men. The pope, in contrast, views them as fundamental Christian precepts that require the compliance of men as well as women.

The experience of recent years has blindingly exposed the agonizing difficulty of attempts to combine responsibility to a family, especially children, with a professional fast track, or even with full-time employment. The pope is effectively arguing that wives and mothers have a moral obligation to put their families first. Feminists argue that women have no greater obligation to do so than men. Unfortunately, when parents struggle over who should be freer to do less, the children get less and less — with ominous consequences for the human and moral fabric of society as a whole.

Normally, few would fault the pope's quiet insistence that the abundance of love and peace in the world ultimately depends upon the personal education each child receives in the family. Such education, however, depends upon service — the service of parents, frequently mothers to children — and upon willingness to forgo or postpone acquisition of the signs of status most valued by the world.

The pope's recurring demand that the world accommodate women's needs as wives, mothers and workers, like his insistence upon women's rights to equal dignity and opportunity, testifies to his understanding of the difficulties and the pain. But he insists that, to surmount these conflicts, women must cultivate the peace of heart that frees them to be teachers of peace: "Inner peace comes from knowing that one is loved by God and from the desire to respond to his love," he said in his message for the 1995 World Day of Peace.

For Christians this injunction applies as much to men as to women, but Christian teaching has traditionally held that it applies to them differently. John Paul II seeks to reaffirm the difference while he combats the oppressive and exploitative uses to which it has been put. In a corrupt world, his admirable vision remains elusive and formidably difficult to realize. Women will understandably continue to wonder how much they can afford to sacrifice without the assurance of support for themselves and their children. These legitimate worries admit of no easy answers, but, in facing the risks, we might profitably reflect upon the pope's essential message: namely, that the rising tide of the Culture of Death will not be stayed until individuals, one by one, begin to repudiate its claims upon their souls.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is the Eleanor Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University in Atlanta, where she has been a member of the history faculty since 1986. A noted historian, she has done significant research and writing in the area of women's studies. This essay is adapted from a paper delivered at the 2000 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars convention and printed in the book, John Paul II — Witness to the Truth, Kenneth D. Whitehead, ed. (St. Augustine's Press, South Bend, Ind., 2001).