The Dignity of the Family and American Democracy
In a famous Fourth of July speech, Frederick Douglass recalled for his audience the horror of family separations during the domestic slave trade. He recounted how he had personally witnessed such an incomprehensible practice often decided over a game of cards. As he told his audience, “The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother, by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.”
One of the principal evils that characterized the American slave trade was the practice of family separation. Slavery was abolished, but only by the “mighty scourge” of the Civil War, the devastation of which, as Lincoln phrased it in the Second Inaugural, was “fundamental and astounding.” Still, the abolition of slavery and its evils, together with the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, redounds to the glory of the United States, notwithstanding the uneven and incomplete nature of their implementation.
It should disturb the American conscience that family separation has once again become common practice in our land. Although it is no longer slaves but illegal immigrants who are its victims, the widespread and forced separation of family members in the name of immigration enforcement nonetheless raises urgent moral questions.
We can begin with the central moral question. Can the United States government, through a methodical program of mass deportation of illegal immigrants, justly separate parents from their children? Do the ends, in this case, justify the means? In large part, the answer to this question depends on how fundamental (or not) the family is among the goods of human nature. The Christian tradition views the family as one of the most fundamental human goods, comparable to life itself because it is received from the hand of God. If the family is held as a basic good, then mass deportation without regard for family ties, and the consequent family separations, would seem to be transgressions of the state against the family. But this answer, on its face, seems to place the good of the family at odds with the good of law enforcement.
The problem, then, appears to be an intractable choice between family separation, on one hand, and a nation that does not enforce its own laws or protect its own borders, on the other. How to proceed?
To begin with, the deliberate separation of family members by the state is sometimes necessary and just. In cases of child or spousal abuse, or cases of violent or felonious criminal activity, the state has a duty to separate the offender, whether by legal mandate, incarceration, or even deportation.
In such instances, however, the actions of the state are warranted in order to protect and safeguard the family and, in this way, society as a whole. It is because an abusive father or mother poses an irremediable threat to the family that children can be removed from abusive parents. Similarly, incarceration that separates families is justified and moral only when the offender poses a serious threat to the common good that can be remedied in no other way. In this way, the dignity of the family has always been an underlying assumption of American jurisprudence and explains why judges often try to keep families together, even when pronouncing a sentence against criminal activity
Such actions are just when undertaken for the sake of, or for the protection of, the family. Family separation of this kind may be likened to a surgery, or even an amputation. The good of the health of the whole is commensurate to the evil of the pain of surgery, even though it may cause permanent damage. Family separations of this kind are, therefore, moral, done with a view to the good of the family, and by extension, of society.
Consider now the current and widespread practice of family separation of undocumented immigrants by means of mass deportation that, by policy, does not take into consideration the preservation of family bonds. In this case, the strict enforcement of the law—by which the offending immigrant is subject to incarceration and deportation, and so separated from his family—is an action of the state commensurate with what good? With the overall good and well-being of the immigrant’s family? Evidently not, for there is no danger to the family members, against which they must be protected.
Might it not be said, however, that family separation of immigrants, while perhaps regrettable, is at least commensurate with the good of enforcing the law, and is in this way a good for society?
It is true that America is a nation of laws, and the rule of law must be upheld. But also, Americans know from their history that laws may be just, and that laws and policies may be unjust. The Dred Scott Supreme Court decision at one time was the law, but by no means was it a just law. The same applies to enforcement of the law, which must be done justly, attending to the common good and the natural law. Just enforcement requires taking circumstances into consideration, ensuring that the enforcement itself not violate the natural law. For example, suppose young children are playing soccer in a field, but without the property owner’s explicit permission. It would be manifestly unjust to charge and fine or jail the children for trespassing, even though, strictly speaking, they are guilty. Prudence guards against the unjust enforcement of a just law.
Mass deportation of illegal immigrants means indiscriminate deportation without regard for the well-being of the family of the one deported, without consideration for personal histories and exigent circumstances, and without care for the fact that many such individuals in no way endanger the safety and peace of family or society. It means also the scorning of the many ties of home and hearth already established between people—citizens and undocumented alike—across the nation. To separate families on this basis, then, is an offense against the family commensurate with no good.
Suppose that the immigration laws of United States over the last (say) half-century could be shown to have always been just and consistent and humane. Even in that case, however, the indiscriminate mass deportation and forceful separation of family members would still constitute an example of the unjust enforcement of a just law and so would be immoral.
Furthermore, it should be pointed out that mass deportation in the sense intended here is listed by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor as among the intrinsically evil acts that offend against the dignity of the human person. These are acts that, “on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances,” can be ordered in no way toward God. This ought to be remembered by those who cavalierly dismiss the recent magisterial teaching of the Church regarding immigration.
Should the government, then, pay travel expenses for the undocumented to depart with their family members? Such a hypothetical would not escape the intrinsic evil of forced deportation, mentioned above, and would also make the mistake of seeing human beings as isolated atoms, who can be arranged at will into this community or that. In fact, however, the ties of family preexist and are presupposed in any elective form of government, and so form the very fabric of society.
The reassertion of the dignity of the family ought to be a central component in formulating an answer to the morality of family separations. Here, the Church would do well to turn to the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth-century Dominican priest and doctor communis of an as yet undivided West. In a well-known passage, Aquinas holds that the forced separation of children from their parents is most unjust. He draws a comparison between the child enfolded in the womb of its mother, and the child enfolded within the “womb” of the family, which he sees as a spirituali utero, a “spiritual womb.” But if the family is indeed a spiritual womb, then, just as the intentional destruction of a baby in its mother’s womb is the great crime of abortion, so also the intentional destruction of the “spiritual womb” of the child and his family amounts, in effect, to a spiritual abortion.
Aquinas offers valuable intellectual resources for responding to the crisis of family separations in the United States. Based on his reasoning, any deliberate family separation (excluding those cases in which the parent poses a threat to society that cannot be mitigated without incarceration), should be seen as a violation of the most fundamental and sacred ties that can exist between human beings. Such reasoning can help fortify the recent Special Message on immigration from the bishops of the United States.
The Catholic Church has rightly recognized the degradation of the family as part of a culture of death. In Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II spoke of the sanctity and inviolability of the family, and reminded us that laws of the state are obligated to “support and positively defend the rights and duties of the family.” That is, it is not a question only of the state placing no obstacles before the family. The state, via its laws and institutions, is responsible especially for the positive support and protection of family, since it is the family that is the foundational unit of society, and so of American democracy.
Despite the somber tone of his July Fourth address, Frederick Douglass sought to conclude with hope. Slavery will end, he tells his listeners, because of the marked progress of human nature and the advances in American technology and innovation. Such a confidence anticipated the bombast of the Gilded Age, yet was naïve (how could it not be?) to the impending doom of the Civil War.
In our time, we should perhaps be more circumspect and take inspiration rather from the pro-life movement of the last decades. They reminded our nation that a culture that degrades and diminishes the value of children and the family has no future. How can we fail to take up the torch they pass on to us, and uphold the dignity of the family in our day?
Image licensed via Adobe Stock.