Wojciech Świątkiewicz
The Value-Oriented Meaning of the Family and Its Contemporary Transformations
- Values as a theme of sociological reflections
There is no social life, understood both in its individual and collective dimensions, beyond the sphere of axiology. We always remain entangled within the world of values. Values belong to the order of culture. Culture is a cult of values
- The axiological crisis and directions of axiological transformations
Studies concerning axiological systems and their transformations may be considered to constitute a comfortable vantage point for investigating the courses of changes affecting societies and cultures. In this context, one may postulate that the condition of Polish society can be characterized as facing a period of important cultural transformations, an age marked by a specific “turning point” in history. The condition of contemporary, inherently globalized society may be defined in terms of axiological warpedness.
- Family as a value, and family-related values
When the situation of axiological warpedness is observed, the traditional family is shedding its privileged status in structures of social world. It is observed as the de-legitimization of its meaningfulness as a primary group, social institution, and an environment in which one’s social personality matures. Moreover, a belief is being disseminated according to which the traditionally conceived family is no longer viewed as a salient social institution. On the contrary, it is frequently seen as something dispensable.
When approached from an axiological perspective, the directions of family-related transformations can be summarized by enumerating two main tendencies:
- The transformation leading from the family conceived as an institution, through the family as a community (communio personarum), to alternative forms of family and marriage.
- The transformation from the great family, through the nuclear family, to the culture of single persons.
Regardless of a polity, families face a task of protecting their status in established forms of culture and social structure, as well as safeguarding their rights with reference to obligations held by state or self-government institutions towards it. The future of every society depends upon the condition of family. The aforementioned demographic data clearly prove the thesis. State-wide, region-wide or district-wide social relationships and their role in reinforcing families are not indifferent to this matter. A debate on the condition of family is, at the same time, a dispute concerning the fate of a polity, nation or society.
_______________________________________
Marian Machinek
The Charter of the Rights of the Family and the Yogyakarta Principles. Two Worlds
In the current hot debate of the Polish feminist community they further the opinion that the word gender is a notion that describes the domain of scientific research on the cultural dimension of sex and similarly conditioned masculine and feminine role, and therefore has nothing to do with an ideology. The Yogyakara Principles analysis, however, completely contradicts this viewpoint. While in this 35-page-long document, passed in 2006, the word gender is omnipresent and appears a dozen or so times on every page, striking seems the lack of such words as “man” and “woman.” This document contains a re-readingof the fundamental human rights within the context of sexual identity and orientation, while the two notions are so strongly emphasised that they can be perceived as a reference point and interpretation key, or even a criterion for the existence of other fundamental human rights. Utilizing e.g. the right to the freedom of conscience and religion or the right to raise children in harmony with ones conscience is dependent on the approval of the gender outlook on sex. The document expresses clear claims for making equal the rights of relationships based on various sexual orientations with those of a married couple based on a relationship of a man and a woman, with emphasis on the right to have children through adoption or assisted reproductive technology. The juxtaposition of these claims, in the article, with the Charter of the Rights of the Family, published in 1983, showed a diametric discrepancy between the Christian and gender vision of matrimony and family, not only in the issues of secondary importance but also with reference to those fundamental ones.
_______________________________________
Pavol Dancák
Reflection on the Family at the Beginning of the 21st Century
When thinking about family it is important toconsider the situation inwhich man is the observing subject, that is a member of a family and a community. In this contribution, on the basis of available analyses, we focus our attention on changes in family and on its future in relation to its role and meaning. Contemplation of the future of family is connected to the upbringing in its most basic sense, to which man´s experience refers and from which man cannot step back without destroying himself.
_______________________________________
Józef Budniak
Pastoral Counselling of Multi-Religious Families Based on Examples from Bielsko-Żywiec Diocese
The area of Bielsko-Żywiec diocese is inhabited by about 50,000 members of the Evangelical Church of Augsburg Confession. This fact has indisputable merits in the ecumenical movement, especially in pastoral counselling of marriages of different Christian denominations. In Cieszyn Silesia, the beginnings of the movement go many centuries back. Nevertheless, history shows that the religious relationships were totally different from the present ones, which are full of respect, tolerance, brotherhood, and engagement in the common faith testimony. The Catholic and Protestant Churches have a shared ecumenical activity, where the first place is reserved for the pastoral counselling of multidenominational.
There is still a long way to go for the ecumenical ministry of the multidenominational families before it becomes a fully-fledged unit in the pastoral work of the Churches. There is a constant need for ecumenical education, for learning the Church’s teachings, for information about the achievements in the ecumenical dialogue. Tolerance, respect, acceptance, humbleness and love, and common testimony are values which are indispensable in the pastoral counselling of religiously mixed families. These values should continually be developed in multi-denominational families.
_______________________________________
Marcin Składanowski:
The Cultural, National and Religious Identity of the Inhabitants of the Polish-Belarusian Borderland: Historical Experiences as a Factor in Shaping the Contemporary Podlasie Region
This article is aimed to present the specific character of religious and ethnic relations in areas along the border between Poland and Belarus based on the example of Podlasie region. The article outlines the history of ethnic and religious relations in the Podlasie region in the context of changing historical circumstances and it presents the contemporary state of these relations as well as prospects related to identity changes taking place in Polish society.
_______________________________________
Wojciech Góralski
Family as a Sovereign Institution
Family, being the basic social unit and having its own identity, sovereignty, as well
as its own fundamental rights, is a community conducive to life and the mission of the
Church that, at the same time, constitutes the environment in which the Church actualizes
herself. As John Paul II claims, “the Church thus finds in the family, born from the
sacrament, the cradle and the setting in which she can enter the human generations, and
where these in their turn can enter the Church. (Familiaris consortio, 15).
The properly understood value of the family was heralded for example by Vatican II
which emphasized that “the well-being of the individual person and of human and
Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community
produced by marriage and family” (Gaudium et spes, 47). It also seems telling that a few
significant post-Vatican II documents have been published by the papal Magisterium
dealing with the topics of family and marriage. As another meaningful phenomenon
there can be quoted the development of post-conciliar priesthood of families, as well as
the establishment of manifold pro-family organizations. There can be no doubt as to the
fact that family remains the contemporary Church’s centre of interest.
In this age of various usurpations directed at identity and sovereignty of the family,
the Chuch faces an extremely challenging task to decisively defend the revealed teaching
on marriage and family.
_______________________________________
Tomasz Gałkowski
The Charter of the Rights of the Family in the Context of Theology of Law
The author in his article analyses the content of the Charter of the Rights of the Family in theological perspective. First, he emphasises the specificity of theology of law, whose reference point are the persons creating a relation in the obligation aspect (proper relation). This relation is subject of the new understanding in the light of the details of Revelation. They constitute hermeneutical categories for theology of law in the Charter of the Rights of the Family. Next, the author analyses its particular points from the angle of these categories. In his conclusions he emhasises that opening oneself to faith gives the possibility of fuller understanding of the things created by the human being (including law) and for the human being.
_______________________________________
Nicolae Dură, Teodosie Petrescu
The Family Institution according to the Teaching of the Orthodox Church
The teaching of faith of the Orthodox Church about family – both based on Revelation as well as on its expression and its formulationby its competent authorities, collegial-synodal or individual (Church hierarchy), over the centuries – does not differ in its essence from the teachings of the Catholic Church, because both of them have as their source the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition. Therefore, we could say that, within our theological dialogue, the authentic teaching of faith of our Churches concerning family can serve as a common platform for our theological debates, which must be certainly guided by the desire for the restoration of our ecclesial unity – that existed before the regrettable Schism of 1054 – animated by the ecumenical spirit of our times.
_______________________________________
Piotr Kroczek
The Rights of the Family in the Vision of the Evangelical Church
The paper deals with the topic of rights of the family in teaching and law of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland. The Church in question, above the doctrinal statements, issued two documents, titled: Zasadnicze Prawo Wewnętrzne, which contains the essential norms for the Church, and Pragmatyka służbowa, which is a collection of regulations and rules of church service and pastoral care. In the paper, the two documents are analysed in perspective of the rights of family. The main conclusion is that the vision of the Evangelical Church regarding the rights of family is not extensive and deals only with basic matters not taking into consideration modern issues concerning family.
_______________________________________
Damián Němec
Pastoral Vision of the Rights of the Family in the Catholic Church
Starting from a short summary of the doctrinal basis and of the direction of the canon law, the author shows main lines of the pastoral vision of the rights of the family in the Catholic Church. Further he presents a concrete realisation of the mentioned vision in the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic.
_______________________________________
Lucjan Świto
Legal Protection of the Institutional Value of Marriage. Whether, and to What Extent, the Law Protects the Institution of Marriage
The Charter of the Rights of the Family states that the right to marriage and family is one of the fundamental human rights, which should be protected by legislation within legal systems. This paper attempts to assess how the institution of marriage is protected by the public authorities under European and Polish law. An analysis of the Polish and European legal systems shows that although each of them declares protection of the marriage and family, neither actually provides such protection.
Although the Polish law appears to be a quite strong anchor of the “traditional” family concept (especially as compared to regulations of other European countries), it clearly reveals echoes of intellectual trends requesting an extension of the sphere of marital and parental rights of homosexual partners. Given the lack of legal regulations concerning such a significant domain as in vitro fertilization, as well as the lack of any norms governing the social status of transsexual persons after sex-change surgery, the question of whether the status quo of the family will remain in the Polish legislation in an unchanged form raises serious doubts.
Nevertheless, a high degree of relativism concerning the protection of the institution of marriage is observed in the European law, which not only has explicitly extended the notion of “family life” to include any forms of relationship, but also sees the guarantee of the concept of equality in the pluralism of the concepts and models of the family. The redefinition of marriage and the family in the European law has already become a fact and its acquisition into legal orders of other Member States (even those as conservative as Poland) may only be a question of time.
_______________________________________
Andrzej Pastwa
The Right to Found a Family and the Right to Parenthood. Remarks on Articles 2 and 3 of the Charter of the Rights of the Family
A family is a basic social unit, a subject of rights and duties. This enunciation, included in no. 46 of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio – never ageing and still the most important post-conciliar document of the papal de matrimonio ac familia Magisterium – precedes a well-known announcement: The Holy See will undertake the work of deepening the issues in question and will prepare the Charter of the Rights of the Family (CRF). Analyses of this study, assuming a very broad doctrinal range, refer not only to the “title” of articles 2 and 3 of the CRF, but also to points B, C, D of the document’s preamble, which harmonize with their normative overtone. Therefore, the structure of the study is as follows: 1. The origins of a family: “the free and full [matrimonial] consent”; 2. Exclusiveness of the “the mission of transmitting life”: the responsible parenthood; 3. Sovereignty of a family: protection/promotion of its “inherent rights which are inalienable.”
_______________________________________
Urszula Nowicka
The Right to Freedom of Spouse Choice and Religious Upbringing of Children (CRF, articles no. 2 and no. 7)
Among the catalogue of elementary rights contained in the Charter of the Rights of the Family, we can find the right to freedom of spouse choice and religious upbringing of children. These are neither new rights nor new freedoms given or established in the Charter, but an ecclesiastical opinion towards their contents that expresses the natural rights of an individual. The freedom from coercion in choosing the spouse expresses the foundation assertion of the entire marriage law system that the marriage mustbe contracted by mutual consent. And closely related to it is the freedom to practice one’s own religion and the religious upbringing of children. The above rights and freedoms are the subject of analysis in this study.
_______________________________________
Elżbieta Szczot
The Right to Work and Family Wage. Some Reflections on Article 10 of the Charter of the Rights of the Family from the Polish Perspective
The article analyses Article 10 of the Charter of the Rights of the Family, proclaimed by the Holy See in 1983, which states that remuneration for work should be sufficient for establishing and maintaining a family. The article presents different terms used to define “remuneration” as included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the European Social Charter of 1961 and the Revised European Social Charter of 1996, the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997, John Paul II’s encyclicals Laborem exercens of 1981 and Centessimus annus of 1991. It presents labour law and the dilemma whether remuneration should be a family wage or a fair remuneration. In Poland the term “family wage” is not used.
_______________________________________
Małgorzata Tomkiewicz
Protection of the Family in the Family Policy of the State – Legal, Social and Economic Aspects
The article concerns the subject matter of contemporary family policy in Poland, analysed in the context of Art. 9 of the Charter of the Rights of the Family. It contains a synthetic analysis of legal regulations, the subject of which is the broadly understood protection of the family, as well as indicates other measures through which the state will achieve the assumed objectives of this policy.
It demonstrates that although prima facie it would appear that the family policy in Poland accomplishes standards specified in the quoted standard of the Charter of the Rights of the Family, there are significant differences between these matters. According to the Charter of the Rights of the Family, the subject of the family policy should be the family as a whole. However, it is not treated in this way by the Polish state. The family is not a subject on a legal plane, and subjectivity of the family can hardly be found either in the assumptions or in specific normative regulations of the Polish family policy. The existing state of affairs leads to certain “blurring” of the traditional, culturally and historically conditioned concept of the family, introducing, implicitly, its “mental redefinition.” Behind the facade of providing support for the family, various forms of common coexistence have started to enjoy increasingly more open protection, including – pursuant to the gender perspective of LGBT movement – same-sex relationships.
This publication advances the thesis that the current family policy is not a policy that perceives the family in a comprehensive perspective or could be used for full protection of the entire family life. Consequently, one must explicitly opt for treating a family as an autonomous community, stressing at the same time its unique nature, based on a marriage between a woman and a man, which cannot be replaced by any other interpersonal relationships.
The central point of the contemporary axiology of law – and consequently, family policy – should be the protection of individual goods: the protection of individual goods of any given person, accompanied by the protection of a family as a subject with its own, autonomous rights, which are not only a sum of rights of individual persons making up a family.
_______________________________________
Cătălina Mititelu, Bogdan Chiriluţă
The Christian Family in the Light of the Nomocanonical Legislation Printed in Romanian Language in the 17th Century
In the Nomocanons of Govora (1640), Iassy (1646) Târgovişte (1652), that is in the three Nomocanons written and printed in the Romanian language in the 17th century – which are, in fact, also, representative for the apogee of the juridical-canonical medieval culture from the Romanian Countries – the juridical-canonical institution of the Family and, consequently, the Marriage – the one which gives life to it – have received from their authors a special attention.
A close examination of the three Byzantine nomocanons texts – even a succinct one –made obvious the fact that for the Romanian society of the respective epoch (the fifth and sixth decades of the 17th century) the Family was one of its juridical-canonical institution, wherefrom we can also notice the evident preoccupation of the then theologians, canonists, and jurists to put in hand of their contemporaries not only a canonical or nomocanonical guide concerning the rights and the obligations of their members, but a theological exposition with regard to the teaching of the Eastern Church on the Family and its constituent element, the matrimony, with all the conditions and impediments which have been provided by both the canonical Legislation of the Eastern Church from the first millennium and by the norms of the Roman and the Byzantine law.
_______________________________________
František Čitbaj
Civil Effects of Entering Into Canonical Marriage according to Laws of Slovak Republic
Beginning of democracy after 1989 and consequently beginning of independent Slovak Republic brought new atmosphere into the life of whole society. It was reflected in the relationship between Church and the state. While communistic regime during four decades fought against all religious, new democratic society is looking for new ways of cooperation between Church and state. It reflected in many areas. The first concrete result of this cooperation is recognition of those marriages that were enclosed in front of Church and also according to system of law in Slovak Republic. This legislation is in law 36/2005 Z.z. It is the result of mutual negotiations between the Government of the Slovak Republic and the Holy See and its result is interstate agreement about development of cooperation between state and Catholic Church in the Slovak Republic. It was enclosed 24. november 2000. This agreement in that time included valid legislation, under which, was with civil legislation recognized as valid those marriages that were enclosed according to canonic law. It began new circumstances and legal structures that are theme of this academic discourse.
_______________________________________
Leszek Adamowicz
Law and Pastoral Care: Reflections of Three Popes
The theme of the article is to present the relationship between canon law and the pastoral activity of the Catholic Church. The author cites a number of statements made by popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, on the subject, contained in doctrinal documents, speeches to employees of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, and other bodies, as well as on other occasions. Quoted statements lead to a clear conclusion: the law in the Church only makes sense in the pastoral context, that is, both of these aspects of the activity of the Church have a common goal: the salvation of souls, which must always be the supreme law.
