Since its release last weekend, I’ve been trying to read Pope Francis’ new encyclical Fratelli Tutti, but distractions abound. In my experience, life with young kids doesn’t lend itself to many quiet moments where one can truly comprehend (let alone contemplate) things like global solidarity, distributism and subsidiarity. I’ve probably read half of the eight-chapter, 45,000-word document, in fits and starts — mostly because whenever I start, it seems that one of the kids decides to throw a fit.
But I’ve read enough to know, first, that Fratelli Tutti is being unofficially translated as “Brothers All,” and second, that Pope Francis’ central point is that everyone — individuals, families, businesses, governments, etc. — should be treating those around us like brothers and sisters.
He clearly doesn’t know how most brothers and sisters treat each other, I thought — not in my experience, anyway. Pope Francis was the oldest of five kids, with two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Maybe he was like our oldest — a classic overachiever who mostly avoids the fray. I’d wager I’m right; I mean, he grew up to become the pope. Me? I was two years younger than my brother and two years older than my sister — a classic middle child who would fight up and down in weight class. I’ve got kids who are the same way; they take no mercy — with their words or with their hair-pulling.
With this in mind, never once have my wife and I told our children that they need to treat those around them like they do their brothers and sisters. We wouldn’t dare, because we wouldn’t have the money to bail them all out of the local juvenile detention center.
But then I kept reading and saw that Pope Francis does get it. He knows families fight, but he also knows that when it comes to the important things, families have one another’s backs. There is a level of trust — and a feeling of acceptance — that you can only get within a family.
In Chapter 7 of Fratelli Tutti, he quotes a speech he gave during his 2015 visit to Ecuador, in which he said: “In a family, parents, grandparents and children all feel at home; no one is excluded. If someone has a problem, even a serious one, even if he brought it upon himself, the rest of the family comes to his assistance; they support him. His problems are theirs. … In families, everyone contributes to the common purpose; everyone works for the common good, not denying each person’s individuality but encouraging and supporting it. They may quarrel, but there is something that does not change: the family bond. Family disputes are always resolved afterwards. The joys and sorrows of each of its members are felt by all. That is what it means to be a family!” (No. 230).
Again, just so I don’t forget it: “They may quarrel, but there is something that does not change: the family bond.”
Sometimes, in families, we parents focus on the wrong things — the negative things. I certainly do. I clean the messes without seeing the fun they had making them; I break up the fighting without seeing the unspoken apology or small act of kindness that follows; I hear the hurtful words they say to each other without acknowledging that they’d have their brother or sister’s back if anybody outside of the family spoke to them that way.
When we parents are busy cooking and cleaning and helping with homework and shuffling kids to and fro, our kids are taking time to simply be together. These are how familial bonds are created — they’re forged in the fire of growing, learning, playing, praying and, yes, fighting in close quarters under the same roof. And, God willing, if we do our jobs right, that bond will be unbreakable.
And this is the love that Pope Francis wishes for the world.
“Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all” (No. 8).
Scott Warden is managing editor for Our Sunday Visitor.
