Jesus against the family?

Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family, but you pointed out that this has only been so since 1969. The feast of Joseph, Mary and Jesus only began to be celebrated on different dates after 1893. Do you question the validity of the Church's current exaltation of the family and its holiness as such?

I do not go as far as Terry Eagleton, who has written that "Jesus's attitude to the family is one of implacable hostility". Eagleton has supported this judgement (that surely sounds surprising to many devout Christian ears) with many scriptural quotations.

One set is made up of the occasions when Jesus says His coming into the world as a human being was destined to bring about hostility between family members.

Eagleton paraphrases this statement as follows: "He has come to break up these cosy little conservative settlements so beloved of American advertisers in the name of His mission, setting their members at each other's throat."

A second set consists of the statements in which Jesus does not show any particular favour towards his relatives, who indeed on at least one occasion declare him to be crazy. Some readers of the Gospels have even derived the impression that Jesus did not have all that much time even for His mother, although more careful readings of the paradoxical utterances in question show that in every case Jesus was suggesting that the real reason for honouring Mary was not her flesh-and-blood relationship to Him, but rather Her loving fulfillment of God's will.

Eagleton's allegation of a "cold-eyed" attitude on the part of Jesus to the family in general and to his own family in particular is concurred with by the famous scientist and propagandist for atheism, Richard Dawkins.

In his The God Delusion, he pictures the Christian attitude to the family as manifested in such practices of early admission to monastic both male and female communities as more or less equivalent to the kidnapping of young people by some contemporary religious cults of Far Eastern origins.

Since Dawkins himself seems to subscribe to the 19th century (or Hegelian) concept of the family, he regards what he takes to be the attitude of Jesus to the family as one of the stronger arguments against Christianity.

Eagleton, on the other hand, insists that the idea of justice that Jesus propagated leads Him to demand that it should cut across not only ethnic, social and national divisions, but also even the closest family relationships. "Justice is thicker than blood".

How far do you actually go along with Eagleton in his denigration of the family?

His ire is aroused by the Hegelian concept of the family, in which dignity is recognised not to the human person as such, but to his role as father, mother, son or daughter. Both Hegel and Eagleton are actually thinking of what the family became after the Industrial Revolution.

Previously, the concept of the family was that of the household. In Greek or Latin, the word from which 'family' is derived referred not just to the extended family but also to slaves and other members of a productive unit.

The partnership between husband and wife and their kin covered all aspects of life, including their economic employment.

Afterwards, it became just a matter of emotional support, especially in terms of sexual need. Experience has shown that it is difficult for such a family to survive at all for more than short periods.

I wholeheartedly agree with Eagleton in his poor opinion of the holiness, in the sense of the word which implies wholeness, of such a social unit. But I do not think that is the 'family' as we may deduce it was intended to be in God's plan.

The ideal family structure was not modelled for us in the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, as Hegel, followed by many Catholics, pictured it.

I also agree with Eagleton that even if the family is organised not in its modern ramshackle fashion but in the so-called primitive tribal mode, it is important that considerations of justice be paramount. That implies giving to each individual his due, independently of gender or specified role in the family group.

Jesus initiated a movement that was to lead to the establishment of children's rights against the near absolutism of parental (and masculine) control.

The process was slow even when societies became nominally Christian, but with the 'imperial' mindset far from being radically exorcised. It is still prevalent in some cultures not influenced by any such advocacy of women's and children's status as that sustained by Jesus.

In what spirit then are you celebrating today's feast?

I fervently hope and pray that the electronic revolution will end up enabling humankind to establish significantly modified modes of family life related to new systems of work organisation.

Clearly, the new style partnerships, transgender and trans-generational, cannot hark back to tribalism. The lost solidarity extending well beyond the very restricted circle of today's nuclear pseudo-family needs to be recovered without losing the freedom for individual members of the household, that is recognised today as essential for true human flourishing.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.