The Beginning of the Assault on the Family

Thus was the state of the family until the Protestant Revolution.
In this revolution, which was characterised by rejection of the Catholic Church’s moral and teaching authority, the ideal of consecrated virginity in priestly and conventual life was abandoned, monasticism was destroyed and the Calvinist ethic of atomism was established.
The Church’s authority having been rejected, religious authority now resided only in the family and was centered upon the father of the family - the wife being subservient - and upon the personal, intra-family interpretation of the Scriptures.

The greater social community also was dissolved into it’s individual family parts - the Calvinist, Puritan, patriarchal family became the atomistic ‘community’.
The two most important elements in personal and social life - religious and community authority - were now withdrawn into the interior of the family and domesticised.

Thus, the Protestant division of Western civilization lost it’s communal and social character and became private and domestic while their religion also became private and domestic with little or no influence upon social or business life.
This became a secular culture where religion was kept out of the public sphere and personal values were not expected to affect man’s public dealings and behaviour.

During the 18th century the so-called Industrial Revolution began in England, with the universal acceptance of usury, the invention of the steam engine leading to steam-driven ships and trains and with machines to an increasing extent, supplementing manual labour and greatly augmenting industrial productivity.

The cottage industries, which together with agriculture, had been the mainstay of economic life, gave way to the factory system and industries in large numbers moved from the rural areas to the cities in search of the greater supply of cheap labour.
This new industrial society was totally lacking in the communal spirit and the civic traditions which had marked the ancient and medieval village and city.
It existed merely for the production of wealth and it left all other aspects of life to private initiative.

During all of these radical changes, the strict ethos of the Calvinist, Puritan family continued to rule men’s private and domestic lives but not, to any great extent, their public lives.

We now had this amoral social pursuit of wealth existing side-by side with very strict Puritan personal and family morality which emphasised sexual discipline and hard work for the family’s sake.

As the Calvinist family had cut itself off from the authority of the Catholic Church, it could not be influenced by the Church’s views and Her many pronouncements and encyclicals on the excesses and abuses of the new economic system and so it preferred to remain aloof from public, socio-economic life.

The incompatibilities and contradictions persisted and eventually, under the influence of a pervasive secularism, the natural tendency had to be the gradual abandonment of the Puritan religious and family traditions, the erosion of the old traditions of faithful family life and the loss of the beneficial moral effects on society of this traditional healthy family life.

Divorce was introduced and spread from the affluent to all sections of society and eventually into many Catholic families.
Later no-fault divorce on demand took over.
Next, artificial contraception was introduced and widely accepted.
Next came legalization of abortion.
More recently we see attempts at legalizing homosexuality and even allowing so-called homo-sexual ‘marriage’.

With the decline of the family and the steady reduction of it’s social significance, the State has moved more and more into the vacuum.
Functions which were always regarded as the responsibility and right of the family, are now often taken over by the State, such as one-parent family care, education and health.
One-parent families are subsidized by government and thereby perpetuated.
Income tax systems favour the single and work against the married.
There is no favourable tax treatment of families with more than the socially-acceptable number of children.

Objections to and defiance of the restrictions of family life, which were confined to the males of the citizen class in the ancient and medieval world, are now common to both sexes and all classes.
Many modern women looks upon marriage and especially motherhood as involving the sacrifice of their independence, as an interference with their career ambitions and as a limitation on the realization of their ‘true potential’.
Marriage is still popular because of it’s persistent social prestige and some lingering respect for moral and religious tradition.

The secular forces inimical to the family which introduced divorce, artificial contraception, support for single-parent families, abortion and acceptance of homosexuality, are now advocating spurious forms of ‘homosexual marriage’, in-vitro fertilization, artificial conception, embryo experimentation, euthanasia and other abominations.

We are now at the point where marriage is being regarded as an unnecessary restraint on the hedonistic desires of people who have lost all unselfish love for others and who think primarily of the satisfaction of their own desires.

Males are now able to indulge in unrestrained sexual activity in which procreation is prevented by socially-approved methods, in which any accidental ‘product of intercourse’ can be destroyed - again by socially-approved methods - allowing the male of the species to walk away with nary a thought for any consequences or responsibilities.

These processes must inevitably, if left unchecked, lead to a social decadence far more rapid and more universal than those which brought about the end of ancient civilizations.

We have lost much of the spiritual component of the civilization tripod.

The barbarians are not at the gates but are within the City and are tearing civilization up by it’s roots and are doing so deliberately and maliciously while we, by our apathy and complacency, are helping them.

They are using as battering rams, spurious rights and ‘victim’ status of different kinds - Aids, poverty, racial discrimination and ‘patriarchal oppression’ - to achieve their objectives.

The Christian family must survive and flourish if our civilization is to survive.

It’s as simple - and as difficult - as that.