What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
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by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
The Truth about Families
As we observe the 20th anniversary of John Paul II’s "Exhortation on the Christian Family" it would be useful to see how families are faring in our land. Our nation has conducted a decades long experiment in alternatives to marriage. Pundits have minimized its importance and speak of an intact marriage as only one possible arrangement for family life. The results have not been good. Consider the following statistics:
- Average Income : Intact families: $48,000; Stepfamilies: $45,900; Cohabiting Families: $25,000; Divorced/Separated Families; $18,500; Never Married Single Parent Families: $15,000.
- Wealth Accumulation : Median wealth of married couples: $132,000; of Widowed Parents: $42,275; of Single, Never-Married Parents: $35,000; of Single Divorced Parents: $33,670.
- Juvenile Delinquency : In two-parent families (both intact and stepfamilies): the incidence of juvenile delinquency is the lowest; in married but separated parents: 5 times as prevalent; in divorced families: 12 times higher; in always single parents: 22 times higher.
- Child Abuse
- Fatal Child Abuse : Fatal child abuse rates correspond with child abuse in general. Most fatalities occur in homes where the mother cohabits with a boyfriend. The rate is 73 times higher than in intact families. This pattern produces the most gruesome sorts of child abuse that make headlines.
- Education and School Performance : In a Grade Point Average (GPA) system where 4.0 is the top grade teenagers who have intact married parents receive GPA’s of 2.98; those who live with cohabiting adults: 2.79; with stepparents: 2.71; with always-single parents: 2.68; with divorced single parents: 2.64.
- Expulsion from School : Of teenagers living in intact families 2% are expelled; of those living with cohabiting parents, 7%; of those living with stepparents, 7%; of those living with divorced parents, 7%; and of those living with an always-single parent, 9%.
- Effects of out of wedlock births : Increased welfare dependency (Some 92% of children on welfare are from broken families.); lowered health expectations for newborns and higher risk of early infant death; retarded cognitive, especially verbal, development; lowered educational achievement; lowered job attainment; increased behavior problems; lowered impulse control especially in dealing with anger and sexuality; warped social development; increased crime in the local community; increased risk of being physically and sexually abused; higher suicide rates.
And so it goes. Every measure of personal and social traits establishes that the best possible arrangement for children and the good of society is for a child to live in an intact family with two parents who love them. In spite of that we continue to abandon marriage and even accelerate its decline. In 1950, for every 100 children born, 12 entered a broken home. By the mid-1990s 58 out of every 100 children entered a broken home.
Why do we choose the worse course instead of the one that has proven to be the best? Because we are addicted to sins that undermine marriage.
In the question of the value of human life the natural law states that whatever promotes human life is good and whatever is a direct attack on human life is evil. Thus earning a living, medical care, proper diet, and exercise are good because they prolong and enhance human life. Homicide, suicide, and abuse of alcohol and narcotics are evil because they harm human life. Some try to justify abortion as morally acceptable but it cannot be because it endorses the principle that it is permissible to kill innocent human beings to solve a problem. The principle becomes a social menace because it can then be applied to other innocent human beings including ourselves if we become problems for others.
In an exactly parallel manner the natural law tells us that whatever promotes the human good of procreation and education of children, the source of human life, is good and whatever is an attack on these things is evil. Thus marriage is good because it provides an ideal situation for begetting children and educating them. That is not just an ideological position but one proven by the extensive research cited above. Similarly whatever is an attack on marriage is evil.
Divorce is obviously a direct attack on marriage and therefore an evil. Adultery is an attack against marriage and is evil because it undermines families and breaks up marriages. Fornication or premarital sex is an attack on marriage and is evil because, although it is very efficient in producing children, it leaves them without two parents who assume responsibility for their upbringing. Homosexuality is an attack on marriage because it reinforces the principle that sex for recreation alone is morally acceptable and not something confined to marriage. Cohabitation without marriage is subversive of marriage because there is by definition no permanent commitment to either spouse or children.
Contraception is an attack on marriage because it is a direct attack on the procreational good, a basic purpose of marriage. It is often touted as useful if not essential for marriage. That is a strange claim because divorces have grown in number in proportion to the growth in popularity of contraception. It may be too much to claim, as I suspect, that it contributes to marital breakups, but at a minimum it is safe to state that it does not contribute to marital preservation as proponents have claimed. Besides it strengthens the principle that sex for recreation alone is morally permissible and that principle certainly subverts marriage. When parents adopt that principle they have unilaterally disarmed themselves in promoting chastity among their teenagers. If parents endorse the principle that purely recreational sex is morally permissible why should not teenagers live by it?
Our nation’s continuing experiment with alternatives to marriage should teach us that the biblical discipline on sexual activity is not just an arbitrary whim of a God who cannot stand for us to enjoy ourselves. It is an agenda that is calculated to enhance both social and personal happiness. If we had not been given these directives through revelation experience would have forced us to discover them for ourselves. Certainly the adverse effects of setting aside sexual morality are apparent in the deleterious consequences it has for society and individual fulfillment.
Recently the Holy Father has urged (1) a rediscovery of marriage as a sacrament in which men and women cooperate with God in creation and (2) the Church to commit itself to a "solid preparation of those who prepare for marriage and the follow-up of Christian homes, which will make it possible to offer convincing examples of how a family should be and its irreplaceable role in society and in the Church."
Sound morality is not only the road to eternal happiness but to happiness in this world as well. When will we learn this lesson? God created the world order and when we violate it we kick against the goad and only hurt ourselves. Unfortunately we also harm society and our children.
