"Patriarchy" is a word that has almost ceased to communicate a definable meaning in contemporary discourse. Feminist theory deploys the term so loosely that it may be applied to any institution or instance in which men dominate women or are perceived to do so. "Most feminist criticism," Heather Jones avers, "tends to represent the family as the main legacy of this male advantage and therefore as patriarchy's primary model and institution. Consequently patriarchy has been defined in this context as a general organizing structure apparent in most social, cultural, and economic practices world-wide, a structure that is considered to promote and perpetuate, in all facets of human existence, the empowerment of men and the disempowerment of women." Patriarchy, according to this familiar view, is thus "the rule of the Law-of-the-Father(s)," which brings about the existence of the family, which is in turn the model for every oppressive masculine structure in all facets of human existence. Nevertheless, although patriarchy arises in "prehistory" and pervades every niche of society throughout the world, "Much Anglo-American feminist criticism ... attempts to make patriarchal strategies visible, to reveal that they are neither natural nor necessary, and thus to enable women and other 'feminized' groups to empower themselves." (1) "Patriarchy" thus becomes, like "fascism," merely a term of abuse, applied to almost anything that certain fashionable intellectuals and academics find reprehensible according to the goals of their political agenda. This loss of meaning is regrettable, because an accurate understanding of patriarchy as a specific cultural institution provides genuine insight into the history of the interaction of family and society and the crisis now confronting Western civilization. In an essay first published in 1933, "The Patriarchal Family in History," Christopher Dawson provides an accurate historical sketch of patriarchy, showing both its crucial role in the development of higher civilizations and the threat it faces when those civilizations become excessively sophisticated and decadent. Most remarkable perhaps is Dawson's explanation of the way in which the rise of Christianity transformed the patriarchal family into something more egalitarian and more spiritual in both its social and sexual dimensions without losing the cultural order and energy that patriarchy had provided. Finally, Dawson considers the implications of the decline in Europe and North America not only of patriarchy but also of its spiritually enhanced form in Christian marriage. Writing more than seven decades ago, he manifests remarkable prescience in foreseeing the disastrous effect of the wholesale rejection of traditional norms of marriage and family life that had swept across what had once been Christendom by the beginning of the twenty-first century.
