At the recent annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics, I had the opportunity to be the author at a Breakfast with an Author table with seven other SCE members who foolishly committed to join me for food and conversation at 7:15AM on the last day of the conference.
The topic of our discussion was my recent book, Family Ethics: Practices for Christians. In the book, I present arguments for five practices (sex, eating, tithing, service, and prayer) that could allow families to live out the social mission given to them in Catholic Social Teaching, particularly John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio. Families, I contend, can contribute to the social justice mission of the church, not by sacrificing everything like the heroes and saints of our tradition, but by embracing practices of resistance in the home that have the power to transform society from the ground up. For instance, by living more simply and giving a percentage of their income away to the very poor or eating more simply in order to avoid unnecessary environmental damage, families can make a difference.
The questions that arose in our conversation were both pastoral and academic.
On the pastoral side, those working in parishes reported that in adult study groups, the theology of the body was the most popular topic. How, we wondered, can we bring into parishes a broader theological vision of a Christian family? Could a vision like mine really appeal across the liberal-conservative divide? Would “liberals” read the chapters on sex and prayer? Would “conservatives” find the emphasis on giving money to the poor and eating ethically tangential to family life?
On the academic side, Charlie Camosy asked why this book had not been written sooner. It’s a great question, especially since I try to show that Catholic Social Teaching has always emphasized the role of families in upholding and transforming the social order. But historically, ethical writing on marriage and family has concentrated on sexual morality, which was then very separate from social ethics. The few social ethicists who did focus attention on the potential of parishes and families were considered naive. Most ethicists put their energy into analyzing laws and social structures. Families were excused from responsibility for social justice and their everyday moral dilemmas received little sustained attention.
Today, however, there are more married theologians than ever before, and they see both the promise and the peril of family life. Younger generations of theologians are not convinced that working for political change is always realistic. In the face of intractable problems, it can sometimes seem more practical to change what you can, beginning in your own community. Younger theologians, like many on this blog, are also less likely to divide up along liberal-conservative lines, or to separate sexual ethics and social ethics. A broad family ethic seems more necessary to many, especially in the face of so much family dysfunction.
I came away grateful to be in conversation with so many people, both at this breakfast and throughout the conference, who care deeply about practicing their faith.
Julie– Glad the breakfast was so fruitful. I look forward to teaching your book this coming semester and seeing what students make of it.
I was curious about the comments from pastoral folks about the desire to study TOB. I have always struggled with the fact that there are not easy avenues whereby our academic work can find its way into ordinary parish discourse. So I wondered where the interest in TOB is coming from. Is it a top-down problem? Is it that the only people who want to show up for adult education sessions are more “conservative”? Is TOB kind of “flashy” (e.g. because of educational materials and videos developed around it)? Or is it that what people want is a kind of theology of marriage that confirms and sanctifies the dominant “soul mate” mythology? (That is, it is an ecclesial version of going to the movies and watching romantic comedies! Just to be clear, TOB is far more sophisticated than that. But the “take-away” at a pastoral level can be similar.)
My slightly-cynical side thinks about Freitas’ observations in Sex and the Soul, about how absolutely compartmentalized young Catholics are in keeping sex and religion separate… largely because of the presumption that the Church only has negative things to say. If this is the general presumption, then TOB does try to counter that (surely the Pope is saying really positive things). The question is how to get into the more practical and less individual orientation. At my families and consumerism session, you will remember the very honest question raised (by Jerry) about how all this consumerism stuff relates to the actual challenges of his own kids, with divorce and negotiating the travails of early-20’s relationships. His stories made me think about how “practical advice on marriage and family” often means the kind of advice manuals one finds in the self-help section, that offer people narratives and techniques for negotiating “the drama of intimacy.” This drama – the drama of intimacy – tends to swamp the social drama. Your chapter on sexual fidelity is great on this, because it tries to integrate the two. But it’s almost as if people need to have developed a general “social consciousness” in order to proceed to the next step of integrating that social consciousness with marriage & family. Your book would go over fantastically at my model parish in St. Paul, but that’s because practically everyone there already has a sense of the importance of social commitment in their lives. Unfortunately (or am I biased by my students?), a lot of people are really just not thinking about “social problems” much at all – much less in their relationships.