The Family as a Defeatist Decoy

El artículo original en español puede leerse aquí. 

It is clear that we find ourselves in a confrontation between the Christian social order, or rather its remnants, and the rampant revolution. In this context, there is a dangerous thesis that grounds the entire social struggle in the family sphere, making the family the bastion we cling to in the face of the onslaught of the modern world.

This conception is both a decoy and a symptom of defeatism. It is a decoy insofar as it is a conceptual disorder to assign to a basic cellular body the competencies that belong to the political order. A restoration of the Christian social order is not possible by solely defending the family. First, because the offensive will not extend beyond the social sphere of the family, leaving aside arenas like corporations or political power itself. Furthermore, in a «society» contrary to natural law, the family ends up being dismembered by unjust legal corruptions. Divorce, homosexual marriage, promiscuity, single-parent «families» all inflict severe damage, making its general preservation difficult, not to mention its capacity for social offense.

The other aspect, relating to the symptom of defeatism, is rooted in the fact that «Catholic» thought has surrendered in the political fight. The Church’s surrender to modernity, combined with the distortions linked to extreme incarnationalism and extreme eschatology—both hallmarks of theological modernism—ended up either viewing nature as infallible and the mother of grace or as insignificant. In both cases, the ecclesial world ultimately baptized circumstantial ideological systems, denying in practice their anti-Christian dimension. With the political terrain occupied by ideologies, they eagerly set about dismantling the Christian social order, with disastrous consequences at all levels of society, including the family.

The family alternative is a symptom of defeat, a pseudo-fight that has already lost the battle at the walls and now tries to fight the enemy within the fortress itself. If the battle does not aim for the political order, it will inevitably be doomed to failure; to think otherwise is to deny the gradual social order and the competencies of the various social strata. The family is important insofar as it is the basic unit of society, but not on the basis that the political order will be shaped according to its desires.

Miguel Quesada, Círculo Hispalense

Translated by the Gremio San Jerónimo