In the last fifty years, questions of family life have been a frequent topic of conversation in the Roman Catholic Church.  From a chapter in Gaudium et Spes through three synods and a Church-instituted “World Meeting of Families,” the question of family ethics has never faded far into the background.  Throughout this history, though, there is a thread of discontent.  Despite all the time and energy devoted to the family, many would argue that we are no closer to a real understanding of the signs of the times when it comes to family life.  Despite all the international gatherings and national conference documents, the exhortations and the theological treatises, there remains a lingering fear that Catholic moral theology and Catholic family ethics are still worlds apart.  Ultimately, this assumption overstates the situation, but the perception is understandable given three trends from the last fifty years.

First, Catholic theology has found it surprisingly difficult to study the family in its own right, preferring instead to examine the family in light of marriage.  As a result, the Church has too easily conflated the two.   Unfortunately, this conflation has aligned the Church’s discussion of the family with issues of sexual morality and shifted it away from social concerns.  This reinforces a perceived split since some of the most spirited work in moral theology after Vatican II has centered on social ethics.  Additionally, a focus on marriage seems to put family ethics at odds with the post-conciliar efforts to unite moral theology more closely with the signs of the times, particularly in a country like the U.S., where more than half of all childbirths for women under 30 occur outside of marriage.  When the Church equates marriage with family, these women and their children appear to be far outside the purview of family ethics, which is hardly what Catholic moral theology wants to say.

Second, Catholic theological reflections on the family, especially at the magisterial level, have tended to idealize family life.  Anyone who doubts this ought to think about their own family upbringing while they read Gaudium et Spes 47-52.  No matter how enriching one’s own experience has been, this will surely be an exercise in cognitive dissonance.  Of course, idealization is not inherently problematic.  As John O’Malley pointed out in What Happened at Vatican II (2008), the idealistic vision of Vatican II is one of the reasons the Council has been so significant.  In the spirit of a “panegyric,” the Council used ideals to call the Church to a better version of itself, and family life should not be excluded from that call.  The panegyric genre thus makes sense for a pastoral council, but it is hardly the genre of choice for the majority of today’s moral theologians, who tend to start their moral reflections with “lived experience.”  Thus, one is not surprised to hear of a perceived disconnect between family ethics and moral theology.

Third, there is an assumption that family ethics as a field lacks a solid grounding in moral theology.  At its core, this seems to be a methodological matter, with people questioning which ethical methods are used when Catholic theology turns to family ethics.  Such a critique is really reflective of an ossified tendency to assume that moral theology proper is only “fundamental moral theology,” thereby excluding practical subfields like family ethics.  If we do not address this presumption, it will be hard to combat a perceived split between moral theology and all explicitly practical questions, let alone family life.

For these three reasons, belief in a split between moral theology and family ethics is understandable, but the problem is not as dire as these trends might suggest.  Yes, marriage sometimes dominates the family conversation, but there are already efforts underway to envision the family more broadly so that more people can identify with the term.  Similarly, ethnography is becoming a more important part of moral theology, meaning that the panegyrical nature of the Magisterium’s vision of family life will increasingly come into contact with the lived reality of Catholic families.  This, in turn, minimizes the problems of an idealized vision.  Finally, contemporary moral theologians like Julie Hanlon Rubio are repeatedly demonstrating that family ethics can be a robust subfield of moral theology.  Therefore, while a perceived disconnect between moral theology and family ethics may still remain, there is every reason to hope that the real disconnect will disappear.  In fact, it has already begun to vanish.