Filial Piety

 

Yesterday’s mass reading:

“But you are not to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. – Matthew 23:1-12

“Do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.”

So much for “family values.”

This does not mean we must not use the word “father”; that would be trivial. It means we are all brothers and sisters. If any one of us finds themselves in the role of parent or teacher, we must understand this as a temporary contract between equals. And it brings with it an obligation to act in the best interests of the one temporarily in our charge.

Today's Mass Reading

 

Jesus said to his apostles:
"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

"Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet's reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man's reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—

amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward."

I was curious to see how the priest would handle today’s mass reading. Going as it does against the common idolatry of “family values.” 

His response was predictable.

“Of course this does not mean we are not supposed to love our parents. Indeed, the greater our love for God, the greater our love for others.”

Which is true, but does not explain the reading. If it is not meant to say what it says, why is it in the Bible? Did God or the Church make some mistake by including it?

It is a warning against loving your parents, or children, or indeed yourself, too much. One is supposed, instead, to love God, and after that, righteous men.

One loves one’s parents, or one’s children, if they are righteous men. Not because they are your parents, or children, but because they are righteous men.

Anything else is immoral, in just the same way racism is immoral.

Jesus the Wino

 

A jotting of Cana from Giotto

1 There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

2 Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.

3 When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”

4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”

5 His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.

7 Jesus told the them, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, “Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.” So they took it.

9 And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from although the servers who had drawn the water knew, the headwaiter called the bridegroom

10 and said to him, “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”

11 Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

-- John 2: 1-11

Last Sunday’s gospel reading is a familiar story, but some of the details are often ignored.

First of all, it puts definite limits on the commandment to “honour your father and your mother.” Asked by his own mother to do something, Jesus refuses, and says she has no authority over him.

So much for supposing this commandment implies some duty of adult obedience.

It has to do rather with social welfare: one has a duty to provide for one’s parents, respectfully and not grudgingly, in their old age, when they cannot look after themselves. Assuming, of course, they had looked after you in youth. Before modern social security, this was a moral imperative.

But the story also kicks the slats out from under those Christians who suppose that drinking alcohol is a sin. Not only does Jesus make wine as his first miracle: according to the story, he expressly makes enough for those at the wedding to get blind drunk. At the point at which the attendees had drunk all the wine available, and, according to the headwaiter, enough that they would not be able to tell the difference between good and bad wine, Jesus makes 120-180 gallons more. He as much as assures that everyone present gets drunk, with the approval as well of his sinless mother.

A point is being made ad sharpened here: that at a time for legitimate celebration, at a festival time, drunken abandon is proper. 

This does not endorse alcoholism or habitual drunkenness—that is condemned elsewhere. It matters a great deal when and why you get drunk. For everything, there is a season.

But Christians may celebrate. 

JMJ

 

Yesterday was Holy Family Sunday, and the second reading was one of the most controversial in the Bible. So controversial, I suspect, as to explain the fact that a second, alternate reading was offered.

Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them.

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord.

Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged.

That sounds like endorsing male supremacy. It also seems to require children to submit to an abusive parent without recourse.

I disagree. This is framed as a contract or covenant, with responsibilities on both sides. Compare God’s covenants with Abraham, Noah, Moses, or mankind. If the Jews or mankind do not keep their side of the bargain, God is not bound by his side.

Compare again the Lockean social contract, expressed in the American Declaration of Independence. One is morally obliged to be subordinate to the government so long as the government is doing its proper job of protecting one’s rights to life, liberty, and property against criminals and outsiders. If government itself infringes on those rights, one has the right and even the duty to oppose the government.

If a husband does not show love to his wife, and acts in bitterness towards her, she is under no obligation to subordinate herself. If she will not subordinate herself, conversely, he is under no obligation to show love to her. If parents provoke their children, their children need not obey. If they will not obey, the parents may provoke.

Not incidentally, “so that they may not become discouraged” is an astute description of the result of abusive parenting. “Discouragement” is the essence of what we call “depression.”

The feminists will no doubt still object, since the suggested norm remains that the wife should subordinate herself to the husband.

But not to have a clear chain of command, in any social group, is a recipe for conflict and chaos. Someone must make the final decision. In deference to the fact that the man must provide for the family through his labour, it ought in justice to be him. Otherwise, he is a slave.

All in the Family

An illustration for The Classic of Filial Piety.

Family values are a scam.

Here’s my evolving take on it. We are all brothers and sisters, and we all have one king, one teacher, one father: God. To elevate any human in this way is idolatry: “name no man father but our father who is in heaven,” and so forth.

“Filial piety” is not a virtue; it is an instinct. Evolution has given us this instinct. When we are small, our entire existence depends on our parents, and we will be inclined to take them as the measure of all things.

Since this is the natural instinct, we get no moral points for it. In general, morality comes from suppressing instinct. So too here; we need to resist the natural idolatry of parent, teacher, or king. We must, that is, for it is the same thing, avoid idolizing family, or nationality, or race. We must judge all men not on their relationship to us, but on their own morality.

What, after all, if your parent, or teacher, or king, is depraved? Is it moral to obey Hitler if you are a German in Nazi Germany?

Surely it is not moral to follow an immoral order simply because it is given by your government, your society, your parents. The Nuremberg Trials assumed as much.

Let’s take it down now to the level of the family. Necessarily, on average, parents will be average in terms of their morality. Some will be better than average, and some, the same proportion as in the general population, will be very bad people. The children will necessarily know; you cannot conceal that much within a family.

Where is the morality in supporting and aiding an immoral parent in their immorality? Or in obeying them in general?

So where is the morality of “filial piety”? One supports a good parent in the same way one does a good person otherwise encountered.



I ran this by friend Darius. Friend Darius has some ties to the Unification Church (the “Moonies”), a group that especially stresses family values. He responded, in part:

I don't buy any idea that it's immoral to support sinful parents. God didn't tell us to honor father and mother unless they are wrong; more, parents even through their shortcomings tend strongly to loathe that their children copy a bad aspect of their character. They will rarely give their children an order to do something immoral unless they be ignorant of what that means. Even a bad father will hope his son turns out better than he was. Of course, at the extreme there will be exceptions.

To which I respond:

You are referring to the fourth/fifth commandment. But it is important to know what the word translated here as “honour” means. It does not mean “obey.” Greek “tima,” used here in the Septuagint, means “repay” (a debt). The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, an influential 19th century Jewish catechism, defines the original Hebrew sense:

What constitutes “honour?” One must provide them with food and drink and clothing. One should bring them home and take them out, and provide them with all their needs cheerfully.

The point is that you are obliged to look after your parents in their old age, just as they looked after you when you were very young. It was a social security system, as is confirmed by the second part of the commandment: “that your days may be long in the land.”

So it has nothing to do with obedience or assuming that they are wiser or better morally than anyone else. That is the idolatry. 

You write:

“parents even through their shortcomings tend strongly to loathe that their children copy a bad aspect of their character.”

This, I fear, is exactly wrong. This is true only if all parents are good people—an obviously false assumption.

All of us have flaws, and good people sin; we all sin. Even St. Peter sinned. Good people will regret this, and indeed not want their children to sin.

Bad people sin too, the difference is that they do not repent. There are goats as well as sheep. Bad people will want their children to sin as they did, and will tempt and encourage them to sin. This is human nature: it justifies their own behaviour. A lecher will want his children to be lecherous; a drunkard will want his son to drink with him. It is surely this sort of parent Jesus was speaking of when he said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”



Darius:

If I thought the NT told me it is wrong to call my father "father" and my teacher "teacher" or, if I were subject in a monarchy, to call the king, "king," then I'd question my interpretation. I think backtracking a few verses to the beginning of Matthew 23 will give an idea of what Jesus meant. I don't take everything in the Bible literally word for word.

Also, the "very bad people" to whom you refer, the sociopaths, tend less to be parents than ordinary folk. Many of them are in prison, any children they might have had likely to be with the other spouse or, often, in foster care with a potentially far more loving family.

Me:

I think it is faulty to assume that the New Testament cannot be saying anything radical, counterintuitive, or surprising. It is radical and shocking to say that God walked the Earth performing miracles, and that Jesus rose from the dead. In his day what Jesus said was shocking enough to have him put to death. Accordingly, the radical interpretation should be favoured. Had the message all along been just “go about your lives as seems most convenient and natural, as you always have done” there would have been no need for the incarnation, the passion, or the Bible.

This is not an issue of taking the Bible literally or not literally. Of course one should not take the Bible literally at all times; nobody ever did, until about the early 20th century. But the alternative is not reading it to say whatever you like. If and when a Bible passage is not meant literally, there must be clear textual warrant for this, and for what you assert it to mean. If, for example, a historical character or date is named, you are not reading a parable but history. If an animal starts talking, you are not reading history, but a fable.

When the meaning is not literal, it is also not arbitrary. Metaphors and parables are more precise in their significance than literal statements; you cannot make them just mean anything. What point are they meant to convey, and why is the point not being stated more plainly? This must be justified from the text.

The rest of the chapter in Matthew seems to me to confirm the literal reading of this passage. Yes, Jesus is saying you should not refer to anyone but God as father, and anyone but God as teacher.

Moreover, Jesus seems in the gospel to follow this rule himself. He refers to no one as teacher. The Pharisees were the professional teachers, and he does not speak of them with any great respect, does he? When his mother appears and asks him to do something, he answers, “woman, what have I to do with thee?”

When brought before Pilate, Jesus could probably have saved his life by making some simple act of obeisance to Caesar, saying, as the crowd did, “Caesar is my King.” He remained silent, although it exposed him to the capital charge of treason.

The meaning is clear. We just don’t want to read it as saying what it is saying. Because it goes against our instinct, which is to say, against what we want to do.

I grant that the important thing is to follow the command in spirit, not by the letter. It does no harm to call your biological father father, or your teacher professor. The harm is in thinking this means anything special, or that they are anything special because of this social position. They are just brothers playing a role.

“Also, the ‘very bad people’ to whom you refer, the sociopaths, tend less to be parents than ordinary folk. Many of them are in prison”

Psychologists say that this is a common misconception. Most bad people, that is, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, and borderlines, to use the psychiatric terminology, are not in prison, but in responsible positions in society. In fact, psychopaths and such are especially likely to occupy high positions in government and management. They want power; they seek it ruthlessly; they are more likely to get it.

Only stupid psychopaths end up in prison. Along with lots of other people who are not psychopaths. We all sin; we all make mistakes. Some are even prisoners of conscience.

I do not have stats, but it also seems to me common sense that psychopaths and narcissists are more likely to have children, and more children, than the general population. Having a child gives you someone to control and own—control and own more totally than you can control another human being in almost any other social situation. It’s a no-brainer that anyone who is power-hungry, or who enjoys bullying and abusing others, is going to want children. Lots of children.

Besides, making children feels good, and a bad person may not care so much that a child results, or what might become of it.



Unificationism is often seen as a blending of Christian with Confucian ideals. Darius defended the Confucian system, which sees filial piety as paramount, and the government as equivalent to the parent.

He summarizes the Confucian virtue of “filial piety” as a refusal to rebel against authority.

“Of course, when authority is clearly wrong,” he adds, “then we are obliged to go our own way…”



I think that puts it too mildly, and a bit askew. As a general principle, we are obliged to respect whatever authority is present, for the sake of social order. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Prudence is a virtue.

However, if a government reveals itself as habitually immoral—if it, like an individual, succumbs to settled vice— “it is [our] right, it is [our] duty, to throw off such Government.” As some wise men once said. Not just a right to go our own way, but a duty to resist such government for the sake of our fellow citizens, our posterity, and mankind.

You may recognize where I am getting those quotes. It is a certain famous political document; but based on universal principles enunciated long before by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, established Christian principles. It is selfish to continue to support and obey an immoral government. It is almost always in one’s own best interests to do so: to grow wealthy, receive its patronage, and not get either imprisoned or hanged. It is the more selfless act to rebel; it might, if you are lucky, also benefit you, but the odds are against this. More likely, it is a sacrifice, for your neighbours, your descendants, or the others one’s government is oppressing.

Even if a government is completely moral, it is in not really to your moral credit to obey it; to do so is simply in your interests. Otherwise they fine you or put you in prison.

This is all most easily illustrated at the level of government, because one can refer to historical parallels; but all logically applies to the family as well.



Darius:

“Confucian mores did, in the lack of the Judeo-Christian value system I fear we often take for granted, keep Far Eastern society together for 2,000 years or more.”

This is true, and speaks well of Confucianism as a tool; but says nothing about it as a moral system. If a system succeeded in keeping a bad government and society together for 2,000 years, that would make it immoral.

I think it speaks poorly of surviving Confucian traditions that the people of North Korea have not yet rebelled; that Mao, the greatest mass murderer in history, is still revered in China; that Japan, unlike Germany, has never really come to terms with its pre-war racism and war guilt.

I admire Confucius and Confucianism in general; but this reveals a fatal flaw.

Family Values and Original Sin

We often talk about maternal instinct. But there is a far more powerful instinct that we never talk about. Filial instinct. When have you ever even heard the term?

A mother, or a father, are naturally attached to their children. But the natural instinct of attachment is far stronger in a child to their parents.

We often marvel at some animal nursing young of another species. We never think to marvel at the young accepting succor from another species. That we rightly take as spontaneous.

We honour and make much of maternal instinct, therefore, precisely because it is sometimes absent. That makes it noticeable, and worthy of celebration when seen. By contrast, we can simply assume filial instinct in all cases. So it goes unnoticed and unremarked.

Think about it. In the early, vulnerable infancy of any higher species, the parent is everything. Evolution and the imperatives of survival will imprint a deep need for closeness to the parent. Closeness, trust, obedience.

So baby ducks line up spontaneously to follow their mother wherever she goes. If the mother is absent, they will line up to follow whatever else is available. So with the young of almost any species, up to and including the higher primates. A motherless baby chimpanzee can be consoled with a hot water bottle. A baby human is soothed by a plastic nipple.

This is instinct; it has no moral dimension. Yet it is so powerful we want to hold it sacred: we talk of “family values” and “filial piety” as though these were religious duties. Indeed, much of Chinese folk religion can be summed up in the phrase “ancestor worship.”

This simply makes us feel good about ourselves, because we are going to do it anyway. There is a moral debt owed to parents for their material and emotional support in our childhood; we have a duty to similarly support them in their age. But that is all.

In fact, the vital moral issue cuts the other way. To idolize a parent, a mere human, is just that: an idolatry. The average parent is necessarily only average, not better or worse. Some parents will be very good people; some parents will be very bad people.

To adhere too closely to “family values” is just like adhering too closely to tribal values: to believing that your nation, or your race, is inherently superior to all others. We know where that leads, and we call it racism. The worst evils in history, we commonly hold, are done because of racism. “Familyism” is in principle the same thing.

Morality, therefore, requires cutting through the instinctive tie to viewing our parents objectively. Doing so is almost the essential act of morality: not doing so is leaving yourself in the state of original sin—the sin one inherits from one’s ancestors. 

Family Values

St. Joseph

The Fourth or Fifth Commandment (there are two numbering systems) reads:

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.” (Exodus 20:12).

This commandment raises a special problem for the abused child. What if your father or mother seeks your harm?

Worse, a narcissistic parent will use the accusation with abandon. It is a perfect cudgel for them. Narcissists are entirely likely to be superficially religious, as well, when it suits their purpose. And it usually does. The tendency to hypocrisy a core issue in the New Testament. The obvious ruse for a bad person, so as not to be discovered and punished, is to put on the airs, the external and social appearances, of a good person. It is more or less automatic that they will.

This cudgel can, tragically, then alienate too many abused children from religion itself, which should be their main help. God comes to be seen as on the side of the abuser.

We need to look more closely at this commandment. What exactly does “honouring” your parents mean?

The Greek word “tima,” as it appears in the Septuagint, translated “honour” here, does not mean “obey” and does not imply subservience (https://blog.obitel-minsk.com/2017/02/honor-thy-father-and-mother.html). As for the original Hebrew, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, a respected 19th century Jewish catechism, defines it:

What constitutes “honour?” One must provide them with food and drink and clothing. One should bring them home and take them out, and provide them with all their needs cheerfully. (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 143:7).

In sum, then, one owes one's parents material and emotional support in their age and infirmity.

This makes sense. You owe them your physical existence, and, if you are still here, their material support while growing up. Notice that this commandment comes with an explanatory quid pro quo, a promise. No other commandment does. You do this “that your days may be long.” It is a matter of social order. If the entire society does this, everyone gets to live longer. The alternative would be, as in many hunter-gathere societies, leaving older people to starve to death.

Jesus specifically endorses the commandment to honour your parents; it remains in force. However, what he means by the commandment must be judged against some interesting Gospel passages.

For example, Luke 2: 42-49:

When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast, and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. Joseph and his mother didn’t know it, but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day’s journey, and they looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances. When they didn’t find him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When they saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you.” 

He said to them,“Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

It is not clear that Jesus disobeyed an explicit instruction from his parents here, but he certainly disobeyed them in spirit, ignoring their wishes and their right to decide for him. He must, at twelve, have been fully aware of this. And note, as a matter of doctrine, Jesus never sinned.

It follows that one is not obliged, even at the age of twelve, to obey one's parents.

And certainly not as an adult. John 2: 2-4 records,

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:

And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”

Jesus does then do as she says, but he expressly reserves his right not to. Some translations soften this rebuff, but the American Standard, Revised Standard, and King James all have almost identical wording here.

And Jesus is making an even stronger point: not just that he is under no moral obligation to obey a parent, but even that he is under no moral obligation to recognize them as anyone special to him. In the story of his visit to the temple, he is implicitly saying that Joseph is not his father, and Mary not his mother. At Cana; he is saying he has nothing in particular to do with “this woman” who bore and raised him.

Nor is this the only time that he says something like this:

His mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him, calling him. A multitude was sitting around him, and they told him, “Behold, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are outside looking for you.” He answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Looking around at those who sat around him, he said, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, and mother” (Matthew 12: 31-5; Luke 8: 20-1).

Here again, Jesus denies that his physical family is his true family. His physical mother is not his mother; his physical father is not his father.

That sets a pretty low bar for honouring your father and your mother. You honour them as much as you would any stranger.

This lack of obligations to the earthly parents seems consistent throughout and across the gospels. So much so that it seems a core message of the New Testament.

Mark 1: 16-20, for example, describes the calling of the first four disciples:

Passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you into fishers for men.”

Immediately they left their nets, and followed him.

Going on a little further from there, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them, and they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired servants, and went after him.

The scene of the calling of James and John seems almost comical: one pictures the puzzled old man, Zebedee, abandoned in the boat. That's honour.

And Simon apparently similarly abandoned a wife; for Matthew records:

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her. So she got up and served him. (Matthew 8: 14-5).

So as he was wandering about with empty pockets, across the empire to ultimately be crucified in Rome, there was apparently a family at home who just stopped hearing from him.

Not only was this abandonment of family morally proper; it was demanded. Consider Matthew 8: 21-22:

Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

Mark 10:30:

“Jesus said, `I tell you the truth. If any man has left his house, or his brothers, or his sisters, his mother, or his father, or his children, or farms, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, he will receive his pay in this life.”

Luke 14: 25-6 is even stronger:

Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple.”

Literally, Jesus says here that you must hate your father and mother if you are going to be a good Christian. It's required.

This is a bit awkward: the Bible says that we must both honour and hate our parents.

This particular passage is always taken as hyperbole; but that is the literal meaning. You must hate your parents to be a good Christian. And there are theological problems with dismissing it as pure hyperbole. It paints Jesus, God, as deliberately misleading at least some of the faithful.

The two commands can be reconciled, however, if we understand “honour” as meeting our parents' physical needs, in return for their physical contribution to our being, while “hate” implies not giving them any higher moral status than this because they are our parents.

Which makes sense; giving priority to one's parents is a violation of universal love, which should not discriminate. You judge all in accordance with their moral worth, not by birth or race. Family is an idolatry, only selfishness writ large, just as nationalism or racism is an idolatry, a form of extended self-love.

Mark 6: 4 and Matthew 13: 57 even expect any good person to face trouble from their family. Mark:

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his own house.”

In his original commission to the apostles, reasonably understood as the charter of Christianity, Jesus warns them:

“Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. ...

For I came to set a man at odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me. (Matthew 10: 21-7).

If, then, you are being opposed by a parent, this is not a sign of sinfulness. It is a sign of your moral worth. Blessed are you. Moreover, Christianity even positively encourages such strife. Jesus says it is what he came for.

At Matthew 23: 9, Jesus requires of his disciples:

Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven.

Again, this is usually just dismissed as hyperbole; but this is not satisfactory for theological reasons. It has to mean something reasonably close to what it actually says.

This is actually a key teaching, surely, of Jesus: whatever special place the family might have had in the old covenant, that place is taken by a new conception of God as Father, “Abba,” in the new; the same covenant by which we are now all brothers, whereas before race, Jewishness, held a special place.

Seems pretty clear now on the face of it. You owe your parents material support as needed, but nothing more--except as towards anyone else, based on their merits.

If we are Catholics, we must turn now to Catholic teaching. Catholics are not free to read the Bible as they like. What does Church tradition say?

To begin with, it says that the state of celibacy, being without a family, is preferable to family life. So much for the primacy of family values.

The Catechism sees the obligation to honour parents as the obligation to honour those in social authority in general: “We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with his authority” (CCC, para 2197). “It extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it” (CCC, para 2199).

So much is required to maintain social order; we cannot all be going off on our own, or life becomes a war of all against all. Yet this obligation to obey secular authority has limits, and known limits. We render unto Caesar only what is Caesar's. In general, secular authority, the powers of this world, are understood by the New Testament as a necessary evil. They're the guys who crucified Christ. The same would then apply to the family.

Our obligations to government, or family, are strictly dependent on the behaviour of that government, or family. As the framers of the American Declaration of Independence explained, if a government or a family oversteps its bounds, it loses legitimacy, and it becomes both our right and our duty to oppose it. This comes from long Christian tradition. Contrary to much popular nonsense, Christianity has never recognized a “divine right of kings.” Aquinas recognized a right and obligation to civil disobedience.

Just so, the Catechism notes:

“This commandment includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons.” (CCC, para 2199).

Accordingly, Clement of Alexandria, among the Church Fathers, writes, “if one's father, or son, or brother, be godless ... let him not be friends or agree with him, but on account of the spiritual enmity, let him dissolve the fleshly relationship.” (“Who is the Rich Man Who Shall be Saved?”, v. 22)

In the early days of the Church, it would have more or less gone without saying that family relations would have been godless: the other family members would be pagans. One hopes matters have improved since. But one sadly cannot assume it.