Pope Leo XIII (b. 2 March 1810 – d. 20 July 1903), born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci, began his pontificate on 20 February 1878. His papacy is the fourth longest in the history of the Church. He is known for his intellect, for having composed the Prayer to Archangel St Michael and for combating modern errors.
On 10 February 1880, he published the encyclical “Arcanum” on Christian marriage. It is approximately 8,400 words in 45 paragraphs and begins by first reminding the audience that Our Lord came to “divinely renew the world” and to lead us to Heaven.
In order that these unparalleled benefits might last as long as men should be found on earth, He entrusted to His Church the continuance of His work; and, looking to future times, He commanded her to set in order whatever might have become deranged in human society, and to restore whatever might have fallen into ruin.
This includes the family and the State of which the former is the foundation.
Leo XIII recounts history in highly generalized terms, particularly the attacks on marriage followed by the counterpoints which is what the Church has always taught. Since the teachings of marriage are linked back to the attacks, it can come across as a little repetitive—that is simply the context.
Below are key points and excerpts.
● God in the beginning “decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race” and that this union of man and woman has two properties, “unity and perpetuity”.
● Over time, laws were invented that contradict nature, including the plurality of wives and husbands. Thus “sprang up the greatest confusion as to the mutual rights and duties of husbands and wives”.
● This also led to husbands abusing their wives, with girls bought and sold as “merchandise” and even the husband inflicting capital punishment on the wife.
● Christ “restored our human dignity and who perfected the Mosaic law” at Cana [John 2] and He openly declared that the union be between one man and one woman “are not two, but one flesh” and criticized the plurality of wives and the custom of divorce which Moses permitted amongst Jews “by reason of the hardness of their heart” [Matthew 19].
● Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament and this has been the tradition handed down since the time of the Apostles as corroborated by St Paul as written in Ephesians 5.
● “By the command of Christ, it [marriage] not only looks to the propagation of the human race, but to the bringing forth of children for the Church…”
● Also, the “mutual duties of husband and wife have been defined, and their several rights accurately established. They are bound, namely, to have such feelings for one another as to cherish always very great mutual love, to be ever faithful to their marriage vow, and to give one another an unfailing and unselfish help. The husband is the chief of the family and the head of the wife.”
● As regards children, they are to be brought up with care. By submitting to the authority of their parents, children learn to respect authority in general which contributes towards a well-ordered society.
● “That the judgment of the Council of Jerusalem reprobated licentious and free love [Acts 15] we all know; as also that the incestuous Corinthian was condemned by the authority of blessed Paul [1 Corinthians 5].”
● Leo XIII mentions in passing those who have attacked marriage since the early centuries of the Christian era “such as the Gnostics, Manicheans, and Montanists; and in our own time Mormons, St Simonians, phalansterians, and communists”.
● Likewise, the Church taught that the marriage law applies equally to all with the “abolition of the old distinction between slaves and free-born men and women; and thus the rights of husbands and wives were made equal…”
● Also limited was “the power of fathers of families, so that sons and daughters, wishing to marry, are not in any way deprived of their rightful freedom…”
● Although many in the ancient world “showed themselves the enemies of marriage in many ways”, the moderns are worse since their attack is not merely on marriage but also on society as well as the Church and God Himself.
…imbued with the maxims of a false philosophy and corrupted in morals, judge nothing so unbearable as submission and obedience; and strive with all their might to bring about that not only individual men, but families, also—indeed, human society itself—may in haughty pride despise the sovereignty of God.
● It is about power. To look at it from another angle: since the Church has power over marriage and marriage is the foundation of the family which in turn is the foundation of society, the enemy attacks the Church.
Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.
● In other words, the above is the usual Church-is-hogging-power argument so give us the power instead even though “for so many centuries, have the nations lived on whom the light of civilization shone bright with the wisdom of Christ Jesus.” Contrary to the “naturalists”,
marriage is holy by its own power, in its own nature, and of itself, it ought not to be regulated and administered by the will of civil rulers, but by the divine authority of the Church, which alone in sacred matters professes the office of teaching.
● As for the conditions of marriage which the Church has always taught, some claim it was under the civil authorities. But it would be absurd that
…Apostle Paul taught that divorces and incestuous marriages were not lawful, it was because Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero agreed with him or secretly commanded him so to teach. No man in his senses could ever be persuaded that the Church made so many laws about the holiness and indissolubility of marriage, and the marriages of slaves with the free-born, by power received from Roman emperors, most hostile to the Christian name, whose strongest desire was to destroy by violence and murder the rising Church of Christ.
● The “[marriage] contract is inseparable from the sacrament”. It is not an added element as claimed by some with the implication that the State can then have overriding authority.
● Whether instituted directly or by/through nature, God intends certain things, including marriage, to help humanity achieve a certain end. As such, these things are “the more profitable and salutary the more they remain unchanged in their full integrity”.
● Marriage is to make the “lives of husbands and wives might be made better and happier … by their lightening each other’s burdens through mutual help; by constant and faithful love; by having all their possessions in common; and by the heavenly grace which flows from the sacrament.”
● Leo XIII highlights the link between the Christian religion and marriage, that the former provides the strength to uphold the latter.
27. … When the Christian religion is rejected and repudiated, marriage sinks of necessity into the slavery of man’s vicious nature and vile passions, and finds but little protection in the help of natural goodness. A very torrent of evil has flowed from this source, not only into private families, but also into States. For, the salutary fear of God being removed, and there being no longer that refreshment in toil which is nowhere more abounding than in the Christian religion, it very often happens, as indeed is natural, that the mutual services and duties of marriage seem almost unbearable; and thus very many yearn for the loosening of the tie which they believe to be woven by human law and of their own will, whenever incompatibility of temper, or quarrels, or the violation of the marriage vow, or mutual consent, or other reasons induce them to think that it would be well to be set free. Then, if they are hindered by law from carrying out this shameless desire, they contend that the laws are iniquitous, inhuman, and at variance with the rights of free citizens; adding that every effort should be made to repeal such enactments, and to introduce a more humane code sanctioning divorce.
● In other words, marriage and society are degraded by “the abandoning of God” which the past century, particularly France, has shown. The results are obvious.
29. Truly, it is hardly possible to describe how great are the evils that flow from divorce. Matrimonial contracts are by it made variable; mutual kindness is weakened; deplorable inducements to unfaithfulness are supplied; harm is done to the education and training of children; occasion is afforded for the breaking up of homes; the seeds of dissension are sown among families; the dignity of womanhood is lessened and brought low, and women run the risk of being deserted after having ministered to the pleasures of men. Since, then, nothing has such power to lay waste families and destroy the mainstay of kingdoms as the corruption of morals, it is easily seen that divorces are in the highest degree hostile to the prosperity of families and States, springing as they do from the depraved morals of the people, and, as experience shows us, opening out a way to every kind of evil-doing in public and in private life.
30. Further still, if the matter be duly pondered, we shall clearly see these evils to be the more especially dangerous, because, divorce once being tolerated, there will be no restraint powerful enough to keep it within the bounds marked out or presurmised. Great indeed is the force of example, and even greater still the might of passion. With such incitements it must needs follow that the eagerness for divorce, daily spreading by devious ways, will seize upon the minds of many like a virulent contagious disease, or like a flood of water bursting through every barrier. These are truths that doubtlessly are all clear in themselves, but they will become clearer yet if we call to mind the teachings of experience. So soon as the road to divorce began to be made smooth by law, at once quarrels, jealousies, and judicial separations largely increased: and such shamelessness of life followed that men who had been in favor of these divorces repented of what they had done, and feared that, if they did not carefully seek a remedy by repealing the law, the State itself might come to ruin. The Romans of old are said to have shrunk with horror from the first example of divorce, but ere long all sense of decency was blunted in their soul; the meager restraint of passion died out, and the marriage vow was so often broken that what some writers have affirmed would seem to be true—namely, women used to reckon years not by the change of consuls, but of their husbands. In like manner, at the beginning, Protestants allowed legalized divorces in certain although but few cases, and yet from the affinity of circumstances of like kind, the number of divorces increased to such extent in Germany, America, and elsewhere that all wise thinkers deplored the boundless corruption of morals, and judged the recklessness of the laws to be simply intolerable.
31. Even in Catholic States the evil existed. For whenever at any time divorce was introduced, the abundance of misery that followed far exceeded all that the framers of the law could have foreseen. …
● Attack the family and society as a whole suffers, resulting in the “overthrow of order which is even now the wicked aim of socialists and communists”.
● The Church has always guarded the sanctity and the indissolubility of marriage. In addition to the already mentioned, other examples are “to be found in the decrees of Nicholas I against Lothair; of Urban II and Paschal II against Philip I of France; of Celestine III and Innocent III against Alphonsus of Leon and Philip II of France; of Clement VII and Paul III against Henry VIII; and, lastly, of Pius VII, that holy and courageous pontiff, against Napoleon I, when at the height of his prosperity and in the fullness of his power.”
● The Church considers her “sacred power to be distinct from the civil power, and each power to be free and unshackled in its own sphere” but this is on the condition that “concord should be maintained between them” and that ultimately “secular matters have been entrusted should happily and becomingly depend on the other power which has in its charge the interests of heaven”.
● As already mentioned, it is religion that enables people “to bear tranquilly and even gladly the trials of their state, such as, for instance, the faults that they discover in one another, the difference of temper and character, the weight of a mother’s cares, the wearing anxiety about the education of children, reverses of fortune, and the sorrows of life”.
● “Care also must be taken that they do not easily enter into marriage with those who are not Catholics; for, when minds do not agree as to the observances of religion, it is scarcely possible to hope for agreement in other things.”
This is a long encyclical and in that regard not easy to read. Leo XIII makes good points but, given his usual brilliance, this could arguably be better structurally although the context perhaps makes it difficult. Personally, I would appreciate a single-sentence description of the attack on marriage attributed to each party mentioned rather than just mentioning the party.
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