The Real Attack on the Family

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The Attack on Marriage and Family

A friend suggested I encourage families to pray to St. Michael for defense against the devil’s attacks on marriage and the family. It made me wonder, where do we see those attacks? What form do his assaults take? I thought about the plague of pornography, the increase in divorce, abortion, and contraception. Many people have no interest in marriage in the first place and consistently prioritize comfort and careers over children. We’ve stripped men of both masculinity and responsibility.

Once we identify all these threats to marriage and the family, we begin to realize that they come from us! The devil doesn't have to do any work because we’re doing all the work for him. The real attack on marriage and the family is the three-fold disordered desire described in 1 John 2 that lives in each one of us, that is, the lust for money, sex and ego. With these desires, we’ve been single handedly destroying the family ourselves.

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Let’s work from least to greatest – first the love of money. Young people tell me every day that they won’t get married and have kids because it’s too expensive, they have too much debt and it will curtail their earning power. Besides, they say, children are too expensive! No they aren’t. There is a cost to children but it isn’t money – Oh Children will cost you, they will cost you your ego, your selfishness, your lust to do whatever you want, your desire for vanity and ease and comfort and many other vices. That is what children will cost you. Having a big family is the best way to die to self and let God live in you. In fact, marriage and family has been the dominant path to holiness ever since Jesus spent 30 of his 33 years in a family.

What is expensive, what is driving the housing market up, what makes manufacturers in China ecstatic, is that because more people are divorced or live alone or won't make commitments – then everyone needs their own home, or apartment and furniture and food and everything else that goes with it. Everything becomes more economical when you live as a family and more expensive when you live alone. Oh and if you want to save the planet – then get married and stay married. Sharing saves more wasted consumerism than everyone trying to save the world on their own.

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The second attack on marriage and family is contraception which comes from the lust of the flesh.

If you banish life from sex you end up banishing love from sex. The resulting plague of isolation and loneliness then kills the family.

The God given reality or truth of sexuality is this: Marriage sex and babies belong together and in that order. God has brought these three things together in a tight knot to reveal in the world His own eternal mystery of life-giving love, ensuring the flourishing of individuals, families, and societies. Contraception severs the ties between marriage, sex, and babies with devastating consequences. If you separate sex from babies you also separate sex from marriage in principle and in practice. Sex leads to babies and when you maintain that we intuit readily that the people having sex should be those and only those who are committed to embracing the consequence of sex which is children. Sex leads to babies. So who should be having sex? Only those who are committed to raising babies. That commitment has always been marriage. But as soon as you sever sex from babies you also sever sex from the commitment to marriage. That is why the divorce rate skyrocketed from 20% to over 50% once contraception was universally accepted while simultaneously marriages have declined by 2/3, 66%.

Marital infidelity is also a consequence of Contraception. Why is that? Throughout human history the fear of an unwanted pregnancy was a main deterrent to infidelity. With contraception and abortion, we remove that fear and the deterrent. That is why the rates of adultery have also skyrocketed.  The fear of an unwanted pregnancy used to be the main deterrent of premarital sex. Take away the deterrent with contraception and we have the sudden rise in premarital sex since 1968. It is well known that no method of contraception is 100% effective therefore, we need a safety net when contraception fails – therefore contraception necessitates the need for abortion because if the child was not wanted before conception, he will not be wanted after conception. We will never end abortion until we end contraception.

If sex is about pleasure and not about children, then why get married at all?

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The third attack on Marriage and Family comes from our ego.

Pride is visible in all the ways we try to validate our existence and prove our worth apart from God.

Compensation equals validation. We are trying to justify our personal worth by our career, achievements, paychecks and big homes.

We have fed young women the lie that if they don’t use their degree, then they have wasted their lives.

This is not to say that a woman’s place is only in the home. That is not what I am saying. But I am saying that no person, no man or woman’s God given value comes from their career or the amount of money they make or their size of home or the vacations they can take. Our worth comes from God, from sharing in his Image and sharing in his divine life and then living as an image of God in the world. And the best image of God in the world is marriage and family where a man and woman reflect the love of the Trinity in the world by making a permanent, total and life-giving gift to one another in marriage. The result being – family life.

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If you feel like you’ve already blown it, there’s still hope.

If the three-fold lust has driven you and caused you to miss opportunities do not despair, just reverse it by the means that Jesus offered, that is, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

If anytime in your past life you neglected prayer to pursue career and wealth, then use your material wealth and the time it affords you for prayer. Pray a Rosary in the morning and with someone else at night. Go to daily Mass or Eucharistic Adoration. Read the Bible and reflect upon it in silence. Talk to Jesus and Mary in silence. Most of all – listen!

Fast – Fasting is one of the greatest ways to get control of the three-fold disordered desire we’ve been speaking about. Fast from food, from alcohol and most of all – fast from your screens.

Above all – give alms, because money is your only worldly security left. If you have given into selfishness and ego, careerism, lust and consumerism instead of family then you can reverse all of that by using your wealth to give generously and anonymously to the Church and to the poor. Prayer and fasting is easy…giving away wealth in such a way that the ego is not gratified is hard. But it may be your last chance. Don’t give it to leave a legacy. Legacy is just an old person’s word for ego. Give for the love of God, to atone for sin and to help others.