The Family of the Church

In RCIA we talk about the Church in terms of family.  Perhaps people get frustrated with the slow pace of RCIA and wish they could get into the Church without delay.  They may share the sentiments of Chesterton's Babe Unborn

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,
If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.
In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.
Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.
I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.
They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

But Chesterton had more to say about families. In Heretics, he described those who trade their localities for the world.

If we were to-morrow morning snowed up in the street in which we live, we should step suddenly into a much larger and much wilder world than we have ever known. And it is the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from the street in which he lives. First he invents modern hygiene and goes to Margate. Then he invents modern culture and goes to Florence. Then he invents modern imperialism and goes to Timbuctoo. He goes to the fantastic borders of the earth. He pretends to shoot tigers. He almost rides on a camel. And in all this he is still essentially fleeing from the street in which he was born; and of this flight he is always ready with his own explanation. He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is exacting because it is alive. He can visit Venice because to him the Venetians are only Venetians; the people in his own street are men. He can stare at the Chinese because for him the Chinese are a passive thing to be stared at; if he stares at the old lady in the next garden, she becomes active. He is forced to flee, in short, from the too stimulating society of his equals--of free men, perverse, personal, deliberately different from himself. The street in Brixton is too glowing and overpowering. He has to soothe and quiet himself among tigers and vultures, camels and crocodiles. These creatures are indeed very different from himself. But they do not put their shape or colour or custom into a decisive intellectual competition with his own. They do not seek to destroy his principles and assert their own; the stranger monsters of the suburban street do seek to do this.
...
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one's duty towards humanity, but one's duty towards one's neighbour. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. That duty may be a hobby; it may even be a dissipation. We may work in the East End because we are peculiarly fitted to work in the East End, or because we think we are; we may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting. The most monstrous martyrdom, the most repulsive experience, may be the result of choice or a kind of taste. We may be so made as to be particularly fond of lunatics or specially interested in leprosy. We may love negroes because they are black or German Socialists because they are pedantic. But we have to love our neighbour because he is there--a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us. Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody. He is a symbol because he is an accident.
...
Now, exactly as this principle applies to the empire, to the nation within the empire, to the city within the nation, to the street within the city, so it applies to the home within the street. The institution of the family is to be commended for precisely the same reasons that the institution of the nation, or the institution of the city, are in this matter to be commended. It is a good thing for a man to live in a family for the same reason that it is a good thing for a man to be besieged in a city. It is a good thing for a man to live in a family in the same sense that it is a beautiful and delightful thing for a man to be snowed up in a street. They all force him to realize that life is not a thing from outside, but a thing from inside. Above all, they all insist upon the fact that life, if it be a truly stimulating and fascinating life, is a thing which, of its nature, exists in spite of ourselves. ... It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world.
...
The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

Family life is definitely a challenge, but it's a rewarding challenge.  Chesterton was a controversialist, so he got energy and enjoyment out of the squabbles he describes above.  Most people are not wired thus.  They'd prefer that everyone agree with them on at least the essentials.

When we bring people through RCIA we have a rite where they are asked "what do you ask of the Church?" and the answer is "Faith".   Faith in what?  In Chesterton's poem above, the unborn babe dreams of a fairy land where trees grow tall and grass is short, with twisty streets and doors and men living behind.  Of course, that describes the dull ordinary world we live in.  The unborn babe hopes that he should be allowed to see such a place.  His faith, should it be called that, is that such a place exists.

In the passage from Heretics, there is no need to have faith that family and neighbors exist. They are all too real. So real that Chesterton describes people running away to distant lands.  Perhaps our new Catholics find themselves in this position a year or two after entering into the Church.  These people are crazy!  I've had people in RCIA express wonder that Catholics would dispute the teachings of the Church.  That Catholics -- Catholics! -- don't seem to be with the program.  The family is a wild and weird group of people.

In my own family, I can state unequivocally that there are members who, where they not related to me, I would not have associated with.  In particular I had an uncle who was cantankerous, hard-headed, ignorant and possibly a little crazy.  I would never willingly spend so much as 5 minutes with such a person today.  Yet when I was growing up he was absolutely my favorite family member.  His insanity was his charm ("charm" being a word rarely used to describe him).

Chesterton describes the family as a kingdom in a state of anarchy.  That pretty much sums up the state of the Church in 2015, with the Synod of the Family coming up, and the old modernists (there's a paradox for you) from the 1970's being promoted by the Pope.  Of course, the close of the Synod will do nothing to stop this anarchy. After that, the world will wait for the post-synod exhortation which will inevitably hand the matter back to the national Bishop's conferences, which is where the trouble started in the first place.

So what faith is required here?  A child growing up in a family does not need faith that his family exists.  That much is obvious.  His very presence in the world indicates that he had a biological father and mother (though he may not be raised with either).  He does need faith that he has a family who loves him and wants the best for him.  Regardless of what kind of family he grows up in, or even if he doesn't have a family to speak of, he needs faith that someone in the world loves him and will protect him from the evils of the world.  It may be someone he hasn't yet met.

It's hard to have that faith.  It's easy to believe that God loves you. It's hard to believe that the local parish is the place to find God.  It's hard to trust that the Church, with all it's boisterous dissenters will lead us to eternal life (which is what the rite says is the benefit of "faith").   One of the most difficult parables in the Bible is the wheat and the tares.  The farmer won't pull the weeds out lest some of the wheat be lost as well.  The upshot is these people are going to be with us as long as we live.  We really are like a dysfunctional family: we can't stand each other, but we can't avoid each other and we're called to love each other.

So, like Chesterton, we might as well learn to embrace it.  That's easier said than done, but it's what we have to do.