Fraternity obliges
4th February 2025, the Fraternity World Day
What exactly is meant by fraternity? In the strict sense, brothers and sisters are those beings who share the same parents. Although it is increasingly admitted – bearing in mind consent – that parents have chosen each other, quite the opposite is true for siblings: they decided nothing for themselves. “One doesn’t choose one’s parents, one doesn’t choose one’s family”, nor one’s place of birth, nor its date, nor one’s sex, nor one’s first name, nor one’s surname etc.
We do not even choose to be born into the world. And we are even less able to choose our brothers and sisters. They are imposed: what a gift! To receive a brother or a sister – who has the same inestimable value as I have – it magnifies the value… of fraternity, the link which binds us.
The fraternity so extolled is merely the result of a “shared history”, genealogical first and foremost (sometimes only: cf. the fine example of fraternity in the film In Fanfare), existential next, through shared experiences. In childhood, brothers and sisters are those who – in principle – live together without choosing one another, simply because they have the same parents. Most often, fraternity is associated with the idea of a visceral attachment, to the extent that certain friends will claim to be brothers in order to express the strength of their bonds.
Some Indians in America became blood brothers, by mixing their blood from two deliberate cuts. The shared wound established their solidarity “for life, till death”. The wound is well suited to fraternity because in all fraternity there is a risk of injury: is it ever possible to live as brothers and sisters without ever more or less coming into conflict? One has to accommodate to differences; in childhood, one has to share one’s parents, make room for the newcomer, put up with the constraints suffered, bear any mood incompatibilities, align one’s rhythm with that of the most fragile – not necessarily the youngest – a drag on life which can generate frustration.
Fraternity teaches altruism and tolerance, and counters omnipotence. It involves adaptation, consent to what was neither chosen, nor planned. Fraternity brings with it its share of tensions. Jealousy, anger, competition, violence, abuse: more than one might care to admit, fratricide and fraternity coexist in the heart of many a brother and sister. Feelings which awaken, and may be regressive, when it comes to inheritance.
That is the context in which the French Republic has added “Fraternity” to the pediments of all public buildings. So that widespread fraternity be extended to all and sundry. Fraternity obliges: fraternity of the family, the village, the locality (in terms of territory) up to the entire nation, and beyond. At every stage, fraternity is always in tension between conflict – or even war – and peace. Civil war is a fratricide. The first world war was a fratricide for Europe.
One must never forget one’s origins. The French Republic has sometimes attempted to compete with the family; certain ideologists even dreamed of replacing it. Consider the presence of the word fraternity in our national motto as a homage – whether conscious or not – which it grants to the stable family. The promotion of fraternity which binds us, softens what liberty and equality may have which is cold and individualist. It is only in the stable family that fraternity finds its origins and its perpetuation.
Republican fraternity incites citizens to recognise themselves durably as children of the same motherland, under the protection of the same “paternal” laws which – in principle – establish the limits and justice.
Consequently, citizens experience solidarity between one another, since they live together without having been chosen. The acceptance of differences and recognition of what we have in common go together.
With globalisation, humanity is becoming increasingly aware that it lives in a (fragile) “shared house”. The Fraternity World Day has found its reason for being: We automatically experience solidarity between one another, because our human condition, with its corresponding genes, makes interdependent. The same human blood flows through our veins. We are responsible for and duty bound to one another. We have a duty of fraternity with respect to those living in poverty, enduring natural catastrophes, who lack anything which is vital, suffer bereavement. We must also, through a duty of fraternity, pass on to the future generations the magnificence of our “dwelling” (biodiversity, landscapes, heritage, languages etc).
Fraternity is naturally universal, ever extending: living all together without being chosen, passengers in the same ship called planet, searching together for a common aim, preserving both life and the living conditions of our human brothers and our ecosystems; accepting that we are all responsible for one another, as members of the same human family, past, present and to come, with a destiny which is ever more shared.
The fact that “the heritage of humanity” is increasingly recognised and protected as a common inheritance does not delete any of the strata from which fraternity takes its roots, extends, spreads and diversifies. Born to the family, fraternity deserves being celebrated and extended. But remember: its source – the family – must be recognised and protected if fraternity is to become universal without being distorted.
