For all its sacredness and importance, a natural family must always be subservient to a higher family, the family of charity. Jesus, himself, clearly affirms this when he says, “Who are my mother, and brother and sisters? Those who hear the word of God and keep it!” In Jesus’ view, only one kind of family does not, at a point, have to give way to something higher and more important than itself. The family that is constituted by “charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, faith, fidelity, mildness, and chastity” is the only normative family. Its bonding alone is nonrelative. All other families are subservient to it. To deny this is to break the first commandment and worship the golden calf. We all belong to many families. Many kinds of things naturally bond us to certain people and separate us from others. Blood, ethnic origins, language, gender, country, city, religion, political affiliation, ideology, a shared cause, a shared enemy, a shared neighborhood, a shared history, or even shared wounds divide us from some persons and form us into a certain natural family with others. Nature, temperament, and circumstance spontaneously form us into various cliques. One of these, our blood family, has a certain inherent sacredness and demands, just of itself, a primal loyalty and duty. All groups must ultimately be subservient to the family of humanity and to the non-negotiable demands of charity and respect. When membership in any group blocks that it becomes, at that moment, idolatrous. This is, today, hard to admit in both liberal and conservative circles. In more pious circles, blood and religious family easily becomes idolatrous. (“My family, my country, my church – I am for them, right or wrong – love’em or leave’em!”) In more liberal circles, like-mindedness, shared cause, and shared gender easily become idolatrous. (“How can I respect or work with those who are so unenlightened?”) In both circles, there is the tendency to rationalize lack of respect and charity by appealing to family, namely, to some group loyalty (party affiliation, ethnic or language group, gender, cause, or shared wound) which justifies a certain smallness of mind and heart. But that is idolatry. Family is sacred, but, unless it itself submits to the higher call to charity and respect, it becomes the golden calf. – Excerpt from “Family as Idolatry” by Fr. Ron Rolheiser