The Siege of Verona
on the Spectacle at the Thirteenth World Congress of Families
Thirty years ago I was one of the two co-founders of the World Congress of Families project. My partner in this was Anatoly Antonov, professor of sociology at Moscow State University. Our initial purpose was to compare and contrast the family crisis found in the post-Communist lands of Eastern Europe with the parallel crisis found among the nations of the West: in both cases, failing marriage systems, sexual disorder, and tumbling fertility. How much of the East’s troubles derived from decades under Marxism-Leninism? How much came from corrosive social and political pressures shared by the East and the West? And what might be done to renew the stability, autonomy, and fecundity of the natural family?
By the time we were able to convene our first congress in 1997, with 700 participants gathering in Prague, open hostility to family life had emerged at the United Nations and within the incipient European Union. Our second congress, meeting two years later in Geneva, Switzerland, and with 1,200 attending, focused on this emerging global culture war. Other major congresses followed, with the fifteenth meeting held last year in Guadalajara, Mexico, with attendance reaching 8,000.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Allan C. Carlson is the author of numerous books, including Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis and The American Way: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity. He attends St. Paul Lutheran Church in Rockford, Illinois. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
29.2—March/April 2016
The History of Family Strength in America May Reveal Good News by Allan C. Carlson
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
