MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
As the Parish Goes,
so Goes the Family
The family is in crisis. Is it time to look to parishes for greater support?
Dr. Michael McCallion
R
eligion and family are strongly
intertwined. Indeed, some social
scientists argue that as the family goes, so
goes religion (Wilcox, 2005; Eberstadt,
2013). In other words, the family
factor is the independent variable most
responsible for the decline in religious
participation.
Why is this so? Because, as the above argument suggests, as
the institution of the family has deteriorated over the past fifty
years, religion has declined respectively—at least in terms of
regular participation in mainline churches. (Not all churches
have declined, but many have, including the Archdiocese of
Detroit’s fourteen percent decline between 2000 and 2014.)
Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium
(2013), expresses a similar concern when he states, “The family is experiencing a profound cultural crisis, as are all communities and social bonds” (no. 66).
Given this situation of the family in crisis, I suggest the parish
needs to live out its life in God even more intensely. In other
words, the local parish needs to take the lead in rejuvenating the
family and so reverse the variables above, so that the Church can
begin to say: As local religion goes, so goes the family.
Privatization of Family
The “as local religion goes, so goes the family” thesis argues
that local parishes must ratchet up their parish offerings for
all age groups within the parish, rather than cut back offerings
(easier said than done, I realize). Sociologists have argued that
since the processes of suburbanization started in the 1940s
and 1950s, the family has become more privatized and nuclear, which has led to greater disconnectedness from extended
kin and community.
In addition, research shows suburban families spend less
time in civil and religious activities than do rural and urban
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Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Fall 2015
families (Putnam, 2000).
Indeed, for the most part, when nuclear families move to
the suburbs, they become more isolated, especially those families moving to what sociologists now call “edge cities”—cities
beyond the suburbs. This demographic shift deepens the familial privatization pattern and increases the likelihood of divorce and family break-ups (e.g., affluent families tend toward
less social cooperation and connectedness in these edge cities,
see Sloan-Wilson, 2013).
Why are there more family break-ups? Because people need
larger communal connections than