By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Family and Civilization by Carle Zimmerman. (Edited and abridged by James Kurth, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008, 425 pages). Available at isibooks.org
The Synod of Bishops is meeting in Rome from October 4-25 to discuss the “vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world.” In the light of this extremely important gathering, it is worth noting Family and Civilization, a work by Carle Zimmerman, a sociologist who taught at Harvard University. Although he was not writing from a Catholic perspective, he was respectful of the Church and his findings are in line with Catholic thinking.
This book was originally published in 1947, and it is fascinating to see how the author, on the basis of his studies of the family in past civilizations, foresaw the way Western society would evolve in cultural terms, particularly as regards increased levels of violence and sex perversions, and the introduction of “easy” divorce, abortion, and the acceptance of homosexuality. He also foresaw how Europe in particular, and the West more generally, would face demographic collapse, as people would increasingly refuse to want to have children.
This edition of Family and Civilization comprises 16 chapters which look at different types of family structure, and the history of the family, over the last two thousand years or so, but with a particular focus on the last few centuries. It also has two critical essays by more modern writers on the crisis currently facing the family, and the more general demographic crisis facing the West.
The essence of this book concerns the way in which family structure is very closely related to the way civilizations rise and fall, and Zimmerman focuses particularly on the Greek and Roman civilizations, and on the West from medieval times onward. He demonstrates how family structures have changed over time from those based on tribes and clans — which he describes as “Trustee” families — to more extended nuclear families, and then to the type of nuclear family we are more familiar with, i.e., father, mother and children in one family unit.
What generally follows after this is the sort of “broken” family which is now so prevalent in Western society, and which is a clear indicator of a civilization facing serious decline if not collapse. Thus, this is not just an academic thesis, and the author clearly shows that changes in family structure have very profound consequences for the civilization in question.
Zimmerman traces the process by which, as the early Church gained more influence in the later Roman Empire, the looser types of family life which were common at the time, and in which divorce was permitted, etc., gradually gave way to an idea of the family based on Christian morality.
But when the Empire collapsed, there was a struggle between the old type of Roman family, the new barbarian family structure, which was a wider, more tribal entity, and Catholic marriage. It was this last ideal which gradually became more or less the norm within Christendom and this situation lasted till the breakdown of medieval society at the Reformation, when the secular state began its rise to power.
From this point on, in opposition to the Catholic view of marriage, the idea of marriage as a private contract which could be dissolved, rather than a solemn vow made before God, gradually gained ground in intellectual circles, before being put into practice during the French Revolution, and more particularly following the Russian Revolution, when in the 1920s, either party could gain a divorce at will. This approach has now been extended to the Western World in general.
Thus, based on the way past civilizations have risen and declined in tandem with their different family structures, Zimmerman foresaw a change from the domestic type of family, that is what we would usually regard as the family, which was common in the West in the first half of the 20th century, to what he calls the “Atomistic Family,” a structure in which the individual is freed from many previous family bonds, and the state has increased power over the family. This type of family flourished after the fifth century B.C. in Greece, and in the Roman Empire during the early Christian period.
Zimmerman argues that an Atomistic family structure is characterized by a decay in general morality, an acceptance of adultery and divorce, and of artificial birth control, and what he describes as the “rise of sexual abnormalities.”
The important point to note, though, is that these consequences are not just limited to those involved, but ultimately have a much wider impact on society as a whole; for example, if contraception becomes widespread then it is necessary to replace the native population of a particular area or country with immigrants, and there are also consequences related to increasing antagonism in that society toward the previous moral norms and the domestic family system.
This is essentially what we are seeing today in Europe in particular, and we can only expect this trend to continue.
This book covers a huge amount of ground and goes into a great deal of historical detail. And as might be expected given the time period covered and the large population groups involved, unraveling the various types of family found over the last couple of thousand years and beyond is a complicated business.
But what Zimmerman does make clear is that what we are seeing today is a replication of what happened in ancient Greece and Rome, that is the decay of normal family life as the state gains more power.
As he said, writing in 1947, “the Western world has entered a period of demoralization comparable to the periods when both Greece and Rome turned from growth to decay,” and, this “change in the faith and belief in family systems was associated with rapid adoption of negative reproductive rates, increased acceptance of perverted forms of sex behavior, and with enormous crises in the very civilizations themselves.”
Zimmerman particularly focuses on the way that the normal family is the “greatest single factor in cultural integration” in any society, and that childbearing is an essential part of the role of the family in maintaining a healthy society. He also associates the domestic family with belief in a divinity and a moral code, whereas “periods of atomism of the family are always periods of disbelief in that one god.”
There are some very interesting concluding chapters, including one on the Trustee family system, which highlights how this developed in parts of the United States and was played out in clan warfare, such as that between the Hatfields and the McCoys in the 19th century.
Regarding the domestic family, he concludes that: “in all stages and levels of civilization, the domestic family institution is basic to society. No civilization can proceed without it. No great civilization has endured for any length of time without paying considerable attention to the organization, promulgation, and protection of the domestic family.”
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding why the domestic family is so important, and who looks to maintain the status and indeed existence of such families.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also a written a time-travel/adventure book for young people — details can be found at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk/.)
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