Love, Family, and Society
Western society is going pathological; in many respects it is already quite sick. It is not I who make this drastic diagnosis, but the Pope. In his "Letter to Families" of February 1994, he does not hesitate to say: "our society ... from various points of view, is a society which is sick, and is creating profound distortions in man" (no. 20). Is such a diagnosis exaggerated? I do not think so. Is it pessimistic? Again I would say No, for it is given by a doctor firmly convinced that the patient is made for good health and has the ability to recover, and who himself knows and possesses the right medicine to bring about the cure. It is a stringent and disturbing diagnosis, certainly, but it is also encouraging. It says that something is wrong, seriously wrong; but shows how it can be put right. The Pope's optimism comes from his conviction and repeated insistence that man is meant for a "civilization oflove" (13), while his diagnosis derives from the fact that our western civilization seems to be one not oflove but rather, as he puts it, "a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of , things' and not of 'persons', a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used".1 The consequences of a civilization of use, of a consumer-society, are clear. When everything (which includes everyone) becomes an object of use, once the object is no longer found to be useful, the practical thing is to discard it; and if it won't go away, to find ways of getting rid of it. A civilization of use can lead to a "civilization of dumping", of elimination of all that is considered unwanted (an unborn child, for instance). And when the unwanted thing or person cannot be easily eliminated, it can lead to a "civilization" of hatred.2 It is love in particular which is in a critical state of pathology today. Not God's love for it is never in crisis -, but our love, which has to be the very dynamism of our being, and yet which can be choked out of us and killed by self-seeking. In a real sense, the West is in danger of death through heart-failure: love-failure. This is the sickness which is gripping western societies, because true human health can only be present in the person who is able to love; and we are forgetting how to love. There is the only really important thing in life: to learn to love. "I have set before you good and evil . . . . life and death; therefore choose . . . "3 This is the marvel and the burden of our existence, which appears both exciting