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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Family |
 | | Being the provider of the family, and the superior of the wife both in physical strength and in those mental and moral qualities which are appropriate to the exercise of authority, the husband is naturally the family's head, even "the head of the wife", in the language of St. Paul. |
 | | To say that the family is the social unit is not to imply that it is the end to which the individual is a means; for the welfare of the individual is the end both of the family and of the State, as well as of every other social organization. |
 | | The family is the basis of civil society, inasmuch as the greater majority of persons ought to spend practically all their lives in its circle, either as subjects or as heads. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/05782a.htm (3202 words) |