Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/864

 FAMILY

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FAMILY

ing to the Council of Trent (Sess. XXIII, cap. ix, De Reformatione), "a bishop may not ordain one of his own household who is not his subject unless he has lived with liini for the space of three years, and he shall really and without fraud of any kind, straightway confer on him a benefice, notwithstanding any con- trary custom even immemorial".

Taunton, Law of the Church (London, 1906); Smith, Ele- ments of Ecclesiastical Law (New York, 1887); Bachofen, Compendium Juris RegulaHum (New York, 1903); Lombardi, Juris Canonici Privati Institutiones (Rome, 1901); Icard, Prwlectiones Juris Canonici (Paris, 1880); Bqdix, Tractates de Jure Regularium (Paris, 1886); Noldin, De SacramerUis (Inns- bruck, 1903); Lehmkuhl, Theolagia Moralis (Freiburg, 1898); MuLLER, Theologia Moralis (Vienna, 1902).

J. D. O'Neiil.

Family, a term derived from the Latin, famulus, servant, and familia, household servants, or the house- hold (of. Oscan janiel, servant). In the classical Ro- man periotl the jamilia rarely included the parents or the children. Its English derivative was frequently used in former times to describe all the persons of the domestic circle, parents, children, and servants. Present usage, however, commonly excludes servants, and restricts the word jamily to that fundamental social group formed by the more or less permanent union of one man with one woman, or of one or more men with one or more women, and their children. If the heads of the group comprise only one man and one woman we have the monogamous family, as distin- guished from those domestic societies which live in conditions of polygamy, polyandry, or promiscuity.

Certain anthropological writers of the last half of the nineteenth century, as Bachofen (Das Mutter- recht, Stuttgart, 1861), Morgan (Ancient Society, London, 1877), Mc'Lennan (The Patriarchal Theory, London, 1885), Lang (Custom and Myth, London, 1885), and Lubbock (The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man, London, 1889), created and developed the theory that the original form of the family was one in which all the women of a group, horde, or tribe, belonged promiscuously to all the men of the community. Following the lead of Engels (The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, tr. from the German, Chicago, 1902), many Socialist writers have adopted this theory as quite in harmony with their materialistic interpretation of history. The chief considerations advanced in its favour are : the assumption that in primit i ve times all property was common, and that this condition natur- ally led to community of women; certain historical statements by ancient writers like Strabo, Herodotus, and Pliny; the practice of promiscuity, at a compara- tively late date, by some uncivilized peoples, such as the Indians of California and a few aboriginal tribes of India; the system of tracing descent and kinship through the mother, which prevailed among some primitive peoples; and certain abnormal customs of ancient races, such as religious prostitution, the so- called jus prinuB noclis, the lending of wives to visitors, cohabitation of the sexes before marriage, etc.

At no time has this theory obtained general accept- ance, even among non-Christian writers, and it is ab- solutely rejected by some of the best authorities of to-day, e. g., Westermarck (The History of Human Marriage, London, 1901) and Letourneau (The Evolu- tion of Marriage, tr. from the French, New York, 1S88). In reply to the arguments just stated, Westermarck and others point out tliat the hypothesis of primitive communism has by no means been proved, at least in its extreme form; that common property in goods does not necessarily lead to community of wives, since family and marriage relations are subject to other motives as well as to those of a purely economic char- acter; that the testimonies of classical historians in the matter are inconclusive, vague, and frannicntary, and refer to only a few instances; that the inndcrn cases of promiscuity are isolated and exceptional, and

may be attributed to degeneracy rather than to primi- tive survivals; that the practice of tracing kinship through the mother finds ample explanation in other facts besides the assumed uncertainty of paternity, and that it was never universal; that the abnormal sexual relations cited above are more oljviously, as well as more satisfactorily, explained by other circum- stances, religious, political, and social, than by the hypothesis of primitive promiscuity; and, finally, that evolution, which, superficially viewed, seems to support this hypothesis, is in reality against it, inas- much as the unions between the male and the female of many of the higher species of animals exhibit a de- gree of stability and exclusiveness which bears some reseml^lance to that of the monogamous family.

The utmost concession which Letourneau will make to the theory under discussion is that " promiscuity may have been adopted by certain small groups, more probably by certain associations or brotherhoods" (op. cit., p. 44). Westermarck does not hesitate to say: "The hypothesis of promiscuity, instead of be- longing, as Professor Giraud-Teulon thinks, to the class of hypotheses which are scientifically permissi- ble, has no real foundation, and is essentially unscien- tific" (op. cit., p. 133). The theory that the original form of the family was either polygamy or polyandry is even less worthy of credence or consideration. In the main, the verdict of scientific writers is in harmony with the Scriptural doctrine concerning the origin and the normal form of the family: " Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh" (Gen., ii, 24). "Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder" (Matt., xix, 6). From the beginning, therefore, the family supposed the union of one man with one woman.

While monogamy was the prevailing form of the family before Christ, it was limited in various degrees among many peoples by the practice of polygamy. This practice was on the whole more common among the Semitic races than among the Aryans. It was more frequent among the Jews,the Egyptians, and the Medes, than among the people of India, the Greeks, or the Romans. It existed to a greater extent among the un- civilized races, although some of these were free from it. Moreover, even those nations which practised polygamy, whether civilized or uncivilized, usually restricted it to a small minority of the population, as the kings, the chiefs, the nobles, and the rich. Poly- andry was likewise practised, but with considerably less frequency. According to Westermarck, monog- amy was by far the most common form of marriage " among the ancient peoples of whom we have any di- rect knowledge" (op. cit., p. 459). On the other hand, divorce was in vogue among practically all peoples, and to a much greater extent than polygamy.

The ease with which husband and wife could dis- solve their union constitutes one of the greatest blots upon the civilization of classic Rome. Generally speaking, the position of woman was very low among all the nations, civilized and uncivilized, before the coming of Christ. Among the barbarians she very frequently became a wife through capture or pur- chase; among even the most advanced peoples the wife was generally her husband's property, his chat- tel, his labourer. Nowhere was the husband bound by the same law of marital fidelity as the wife, and in very few places was he compelled to concede to her equal rights in the matter of divorce. Infanticide was practically universal, and the patria potestas of the Roman father gave him the right of life and death over even his grown-up children. In a word, the weaker members of the family were everywhere inade- quately protected against the stronger.

Thf; ('hrlstian Family. — Christ not only restored the family to its original type as something holy, per-