Section 5: The Mutual Duties of Brothers and Sisters and Other Relatives, and of Masters and Servants

1. THE MUTUAL DUTIES OF BROTHERS AND SISTERS.—While the family converges towards unity in the parents, it diverges into variety in the children. The natural tie that binds brothers and sisters together is not their individuality, but their common relation towards their parents and towards the family to which they belong. For this reason the bond in question is much weaker and entails fewer duties than the one which unites parents and children.

Broadly speaking, brothers and sisters are bound to love one another more dearly than other human beings and to help one another, not only in urgent, but also in grave and ordinary necessities.¹

¹ Ps. CXXXII, 1–3; Ecclus. XXV, 1 sq.—St. Alphonsus, Theol. Mor., l. III, n. 340 (ed. Gaudé, I, 606).

These duties, however, vary even between brothers and sisters. Older brothers and sisters have more duties towards younger brothers and sisters because they are the natural representatives of the parents. If they marry, however, their duties to their younger brothers and sisters must in case of collision give way to the duties they owe to husband or wife, and children. As a rule, too, brothers have more onerous duties towards their sisters than vice versa. Thus, if an unmarried sister would probably be exposed to want in case her brother joined a religious order, he would have to give up his intention, or at least postpone its execution, until satisfactory provision could be made for the dependent sister. If the parents are dead and an older brother or sister takes their place in rearing the younger children, he or she has a right to demand from them, in all that pertains to unity and peace of the family, the same respect and obedience that they would show to the parents, were they alive. Uncharitableness, enmity, and revenge among children of the same parents is doubly detestable and sinful.²

² See this Handbook, Vol. I, pp. 215 sq.; cfr. O. v. Marmerie, Die Familie, pp. 331 sqq.

2. THE MUTUAL DUTIES OF RELATIVES.—When a family broadens out into several, we have what is called relationship. Descent from the same ancestors is a bond that unites relatives into a natural group. This bond grows weaker in proportion to the distance of the descendants from their common ancestor. Consequently, the duties of relatives to one another are difficult to define. We may lay it down as a general rule, however, that when different relatives are simultaneously in need, the nearer should be given precedence over the more distant. For the rest, the duties which relatives have towards one another are obligations of charity rather than of justice, except when there is question of an inheritance ab intestato.³

³ Sporer-Bierbaum, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 2nd ed., 803.

Lack of affection for one’s relatives is a sign of selfishness and involves a gross violation of Christian charity. On the other hand, love of one’s relatives should never be allowed to degenerate into unjust partiality or lead to the neglect of higher vocational duties.⁴ Nepotism, i. e., favoritism extended to relatives, near or distant, in the bestowal of offices, in fact every species of undue discrimination in favor of relatives, especially in governmental patronage, is detrimental to private and public morality because it leads to violations of duty, unjust preference, and other vices.

⁴ Matth. VIII, 21 sq.; XII, 46 sqq.; Luke IX, 59 sqq.

It belongs to the allied sciences of politics and political economy to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the patriarchal or feudal system of society as against its opposite extreme, the atomization of society and property into minute particles. Both tendencies involve grave social dangers.

Another danger, which affects morality very closely, is inbreeding, i. e., marrying among near relatives. It is apt to result in physical degeneration and the transmission of undesirable characteristics, notably mental defects, from ancestors to descendants. Though the physiological consequences of inbreeding are undeniable, it will be well to put the case against it on moral grounds, because heredity is still a largely unexplored subject. Among the moral dangers of inbreeding are too great intimacy between near relatives, the exclusion of new blood, and the cultivation of a spirit of social pride and exclusiveness that is detrimental to society at large. Marriages between near relatives as a rule are not contracted for love, but for extrinsic, conventional reasons, and hence involve an undue restriction of individual liberty. It is difficult to determine the exact limits to which parental authority may go in controlling the rights of children, though quite evidently he who shares in the advantages of family life, ought to submit to a certain amount of compulsion for the benefit of the whole.⁵

⁵ St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps., 127, n. 12: “The Lord wills that we prefer God to earthly blood relationships. Defer to your father, because he is your father; defer to God, because He is God. Your father begot you by furnishing his flesh; God created you by applying His omnipotence. Do not— let the father be angry when God is preferred to him; rather let him rejoice that so much deference is paid to him, that He alone was found who ought to be preferred to him.” (Migne, P. L., XXXVII, 1685).

Unequal treatment of relatives is not immoral so long as the personal rights of each are respected and no one is compelled to choose a vocation, to marry or to abstain from marriage, to sacrifice his religious convictions, or hindered in the performance of his duties. But when love of one’s kin leads to clannishness, to undue pride, and to the exploitation of outsiders, it is sinful and apt to foment social disturbances.⁶

⁶ St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, l. XV, c. 16, n. 1: “Since, after the first union of the man made from dust and his wife from the man’s side, the human race needed the joining of males and females in order to be multiplied by generation, and there were no human beings except those who had been born from those two, the men took their sisters as wives; and this act, certainly, the earlier it was under the compulsion of necessity, the more damnable it afterward became when religion prohibited it. For the most right account was taken of charity: that men, for whom useful and honorable concord existed, should be bound by the ties of diverse relationships, and that one man should not have many of them in one person, but that individual relationships should be distributed among individuals and thus, for the more diligent binding together of social life, many relationships should hold many persons. Father and father-in-law, indeed, are names of two relationships. Therefore, in order that each person might have one man as father and another as father-in-law, charity extends itself more widely.”—Ibid., n. 3: “The union, therefore, of male and female, so far as the mortal race is concerned, is a kind of nursery of the state.” (Migne, P. L., XLI, 457, 459).—St. Thomas, S. Th., 2a 2ae, qu. 154, art. 9; 3a, Suppl., qu. 54, art. 3: “Incidentally, the end of marriage is the alliance of men and the multiplication of friendship, since a man regards his wife’s blood relatives as his own. And therefore prejudice would be done to this multiplication of friendship if someone married a wife connected to him by blood, because from this no new friendship would accrue to anyone through marriage.”—On endogamy and exogamy see Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 451 sqq.—Cfr. Linsenmann, Moraltheol., pp. 654 sq.

The duties arising between masters and domestic servants from the express or implicit contract existing between them, are duties of justice in the strict sense,⁷ neglect of which involves sin and the duty of making restitution. Besides the duties flowing directly from the contract, there are other duties, which bind masters to provide for the spiritual and, to a certain extent and more remotely, also for the temporal welfare of their servants. They should not only make it possible for their servants to comply with their religious duties, but exhort and persuade them to avoid proximate occasions of sin. Servants, on their part, should be faithful to their employers, honor them, promote their interests, obey them in all legitimate things, and keep the secrets entrusted to them. As a rule it is a mortal sin for a servant to make statements which are apt to cause his employer considerable loss or annoyance.

⁷ Ecclus. XXXIII, 31; Eph. VI, 5–9; Col. III, 22–24; IV, 1; 1 Tim. VI, 1 sq.; Tit. II, 9; 1 Pet. II, 18 sq.—Elbel-Bierbaum, Theol. Mor., Vol. I, 3rd ed., 740 sqq.; Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 392–394.

In the ideal social order every servant would be enabled sooner or later to become his own master and to govern others, service would merely be a condition of, and a preparation for, the government of others, and no one would command who had not previously learned to obey.

READINGS.—Sailer, Handbuch der christl. Moral, Vol. III, pp. 194 sqq.—Jocham, Moraltheologie, Vol. III, pp. 336 sqq.—H. Noldin, Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. II, pp. 314 sqq.—A. Lehmkuhl, S. J., Theol. Mor., Vol. I, pp. 554 sq.—Th. Meyer, S.J., Inst. Iuris Nat., Vol. II, pp. 112 sqq.—F. A. Göpfert, Moraltheologie, Vol. II, pp. 29 sq., 427 sqq.