The Sala Pio XI was packed on Wednesday, April 17th, for the first conference in the series “Dialogues for Family,” promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Family, on the theme “The Family: the first enterprise,” with the collaboration of the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists; this shows just how crucial the issues related to family life in relation to society, especially in legal and political, are today. In fact −
Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, the President of our Dicastery, said in the introduction to the work − «
we live in a time when, for the first time in history, the family is attacked at its roots and suffers direct attacks». Therefore, «
we can’t merely to stay on defense; we have a duty to enter into the field of the family’s problems in order to find solutions together. The family must return to the center of the pastoral ministry, of politics, of the economy and of culture». The family is society’s base, even economically and financially, added the President. It’s «
the friend of enterprises, and it is itself an enterprise that produces goods and services, organizes work, redistributes wealth according to the needs, and the principle of solidarity and subsidiarity». Cicero already said that «
the family is the primary basis of society, in some way the seed of the republic». It’s not only the place of consumption, but also a model of good economic and political organization.
In the opening greeting, Card. Francesco Coccopalmerio, the President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, praised the work of Msgr. Paglia and the collaboration with the Union of Catholic Jurists, for a pro-active role in the social debate on relevant issues, on the subject of marriage and the family, for «affirming and defending with determination the original ontology of the family, despite the attacks and the criticism».
«We defend the family as such», Prof. Francesco D'Agostino said. «It’s incorrect to talk about the traditional family: tradition concerns something that is born in history; the family is, however, a natural structure, like language. Without a family that has a father and a mother, there is no human identity, be it for the better or for the worse».
We must therefore overcome an obsolete economic conception, which reduces the family to the place of consumption and savings, Sister Alessandra Smerilli clarified. «The family produces goods of different nature and value, for example relations, educational cooperation, trust and the sense of civic duty, or the transformation of values within the home, and these are ethical and economic virtues». Sister Smerilli recalled that, for the Abbot Antonio Genovesi, a contemporary of Adam Smith in the eighteenth century, «trust and civic virtues are the soul of trade».
Legislative, fiscal and economic interventions in favor of families, especially micro-credit, «are not preferential treatment, but equitable sharing, not concessions, but rights», Vincenzo Bassi explained. «The GDP, as it is calculated today, is a delusion, because it doesn’t evaluate the many benefits of gratuity, which also constitute a nation’s wealth».
The value, in the coming decades, according to Johnny Dotti, will be calculated in different ways, and this can only be of an “associative-collaborative” kind. «Up to now the theory of consumption that dominates Western culture has been based only on the theory of needs, and rights were built with respect to these needs. This triad ‘need-right-consumption’ has failed and generates unhappiness. We need to change radically this individualistic setup and rethink the welfare state in terms of relational and mutualistic needs».
«The family isn’t financed, it’s supported,” said Mariella Enoc. «The person is the capital to be saved. We need to invest in families, especially on mainstays: work and the home.”
Yet, «what an enterprise it is to build a family, today!» and the alarm is raised by Francesco Belletti. «The family is ostracized, exiled from the public realm, and culturally as well as socially it suffers from gradual weakening that becomes economic poverty and dehumanization». The families live in solitude, separated. Therefore, «a call needs to be made to strengthen the ties between families and with society, in a time when “the family is the zenith, the final place where all the social problems converge, the last frontier of care for fragility».
In order to be a good enterprise, the family needs: «economic independence, strong relationships, mutual care, and a home, conceived as a place in which to live stably and as a community».
A long way to walk together has been opened with a view on common good.
The Introduction of Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia
