The uneasiness of youth today—said the President of the Dicastery, Msgr.
Vincenzo Paglia, in his introductory lecture on the first day of the interdisciplinary conference organized in Rome by the Pontifical Council for the Family, on Friday the 15th and Saturday the 16th of November 2013, under the title: “
I have received, I have transmitted: the crisis of the alliance between the generations”—
is not caused by an excessive presence of the father, of the parental authority, as was the case until just a few decades ago, but rather
“by the absence, in particular, by the evaporation and decline of the father.” “Children are like Telemachus waiting for his father’s return on the seashore rather than setting out to search for him.” It therefore seems that adults have not met their responsibilities in the transmission of life, humanity and faith. However, this break of the alliance between the generations is connected to the breaking of the covenant with God. Moreover, as in a vicious circle—says the theologian, Msgr.
Franco Giulio Brambilla, Bishop of Novara—“
transmitting the faith has become difficult simply because human generation itself, the transmission of a human quality of life, has entered into a crisis.” The present generation of man presents
“the characteristics of the cure” and is asking to
“pass from dissipative freedom to generative freedom.”
The image of Telemachus was used in several interventions in the course of this two-day conference. For the psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati, “there is an ethical transformation of fatherhood, in its weakening.” Recalcati (as well as the psychoanalyst Francesco Stoppa), referred to Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road as a metaphor for what is happening to the relationships between parents and children in contemporary society, in a conception of the “heritage not only as the conveyance of goods or genes, but also transmission in the testimony of life.” The father is no longer an educator, but the one who protects life and takes care of the child. In this sense, the conditions of the father’s return seem to be present in the his absence. “The Odyssey opens with a Telemachia, with the journey of Telemachus who sets out to search for his father Ulysses, and faces dangers that threaten his life.” However, as Cacciari said, “the heir is also an orphan,” and therefore, the baton is handed on at the moment of the separation from parents and the acceptance of the inheritance. “The child has the task of protecting the heritage, and the parents, like Abraham, have the task of ensuring care by absolute presence: ‘Here I am,’ says the father to the child.” “Legacy is an active movement that reconstructs the alliance between the generations.”
In the history of human freedom, for the sociologist Mauro Magatti, the crisis of the alliance between the generations belongs to the age of adolescence, which consists in “an idea of freedom and of power as arrogance and omnipotence: ‘being able to do anything you want.’ Once it has been declared that God is dead, man claims God’s omnipotence for himself” and becomes arrogant, individualistic and narcissistic. In order to reach adulthood, it’s necessary to “evolve towards an idea of freedom as deponency, that is, the ability to set aside a part of one’s power in order to generate life,” and, so, a “generative” idea of freedom is needed, based on a force of life and not on “consumption,” i.e. an impetus toward death.
The historian Margherita Pelaja reconstructed the path of family relationships. It was Roman law that gave marriage a legal status as an institution. However, “the first great transformation was effected by Christianity, which introduced three constitutive elements: ‘sex, the public character, and indissolubility.’” For many centuries, “the relationships between parents and children were governed by the law of the father.” The Pater Familias had “absolute power of life and death” over all members of the family, and “until Christianity children were not taken into account.” Yet, “throughout medieval and modern times, the education and socialization of children and adolescents were not tasks reserved to the natural parents.” Indeed, “the women, wives before mothers in the social representation and perception of family ties, entrusted the new born to nannies and servants.” The change of civilization took place in the eighteenth century with the recognition of “the irreplaceable function of maternal care on the child’s character” and the affirmation of a new mother-child relationship. “Even in their emotional and concrete life, the bond of the children with their parents has gained a new visibility and a new duration: it is not broken nor diluted when they reach adulthood and form of new households; if anything, on the contrary, the responsibilities for care are redistributed.” Today, “people stop being children very late, often not when they are parents, but even grandparents.” So, the family has become “the specialized area of affectivity.” Yet, “along the way something is lost.” There has been a “reversal of parental roles and the family has imploded.”
According to Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, it’s necessary to rebuild the relationship between “work and affection,” in the two-way sense of work on affection and the affection to work. “Much has been said about the feeling of love—says theologian—, but this is love as a reflection of oneself in the other, as a spontaneous emotion and, therefore, as narcissism. Courtly love, fairy tales, or even tragedies enjoy their own torment. This is the love of love.” “By chance the love of one’s life is protected, by misfortune it is lost and one suffers out of love: the dominant category is luck.” In contrast, “maturity is reached with the deconstruction of the myth of endless adolescent love as a condition of happy love and with the rediscovery of the work of affection, in a love that lasts”.
