The Family: The Economy of Love

THE WORD ECONOMY comes from the Greek word oikonomia, which literally means law of the house or law of the hearth. There is an oikonomia, a law of the hearth, a law of the family, and that law is a law of love. The means of exchange in the family economy is not one measured in specie, but one measured in communion.

In the oikonomia, the family "business," investments are made not in securities or manufacturing plants or in fixed assets, but in persons. "The family is present as a place where communion . . . is brought about. It is the place where an authentic community of persons develops and grows thanks to the dynamism of love . . . ." (Compendium, No. 221)

In the economy of the family, profit is of no motive, and there is not thing such as Pareto efficiency; rather, love is at the heart of it all. And love does not think in terms of efficiency or net margins. "To love means to give and to receive something which can neither be bought nor sold, but only given freely and mutually." (Compendium, No. 221) Indeed, love is profligate, wasteful, heedless of efficiency and gain.

In the family economy, men and women not exploited in self-interest, sharp practice, or fraud. No. The relationship is one as distant from mutual exploitation as can be possible, for the dignity of the other is what is at the heart of all labor and effort. It is in marriage and family that the person "is recognized, accepted, and respected in his dignity." The "only basis for value" in this family economy is the dignity of the other, and this results in "heartfelt acceptance, encounter, and dialogue, disinterested availability, generous service, and deep solidarity." (Compendium, No. 221) (quoting JP II, Familiaris consortio, 43) These are the goods that are traded.

What a contradiction is the economy of the family from the economy on Wall Street or even Main Street! Indeed, the "existence of families living this way exposes the failings and contradictions of society that is for the most part, even if not exclusively, based on efficiency and functionality." (Compendium, No. 221)



If the "Occupy Wall Street" folks want to challenge Wall Street greed, be more that adult street urchins, and see a stimulus that works, then the first thing they should do, after taking showers and finding jobs, is to found families. For it is by "constructing daily a network of interpersonal relationship, both internal and external," that the family becomes "the first and irreplaceable school of social life, and example and stimulus for the broader community relationships by respect, justice, dialogue, and love." (Compendium, No. 221) (quoting Familiaris consortio, 43)

The family thrives on this reversal of values, and that is why the law of the jungle that seems to govern businessmen will cast away those things that are most treasured in the law of the hearth: The young--who are treasured for their promise and their innocence, and the elderly--who are treasured for their prior contributions and their current wisdom. The usufruct of the old never declines. The elderly in particular have something to teach us, for "they show that there are aspects of life--human, cultural, moral, and social values--which cannot be judged in terms of economic efficiency . . . ." (Compendium, No. 222)

The elderly are therefore a source of capital never exhausted:

As the Sacred Scripture says: "They still bring forth fruit in old age" (Ps. 92:15). The elderly constitute an important school of life, [one] capable of transmitting values and traditions and of fostering the growth of younger generations, who thus learn to seek not only their own good but also that of others.

(Compendium, No. 222)

At the foundation of the family is a contract. But this is no ordinary contract, one based on the consideration or peppercorn. And it is a contract without any condition, without any escape clause. It is a contract more properly called a covenant, where force majeure based upon fickle feelings is unknown, and where the only "act of God" clause is this: "what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." (Mark 10:9)

When it is manifested as the total gift of two persons in their complementarities, love cannot be reduced to emotions or feelings, much less to sexual expression. In a society that tends more and more to relativize and trivialize the very experience of love and sexuality, exalting its fleeting aspects and obscuring its fundamental values, it is more urgent than ever to proclaim and bear witness that the truth of conjugal love and sexuality exist where there is a full and total gift of persons, with the characteristics of unity and fidelity.

(Compendium, No. 223)

In the greater economy, at least modernly, the ideal seeks to erase distinctions between man and woman: equal work, equal pay. Women and men are to be judged solely on individual merit, without regard to sexual identity. Asexual beings is the preference.

In the economy of the family, this sort of reasoning is unknown:

[T]he Church does not tire of repeating her teaching: "Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarities are oriented towards the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarities, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out. According to this perspective, it is obligatory that positive law be conformed to the natural law, according to which sexual identity is indispensable, because it is the objective condition for forming a couple in marriage.*

(Compendium, No. 224)

In the world at large, unions are measured in terms of convenience, not of permanency. And while it may be acceptable for the consumer to shift loyalties from Kellogg's Frosted Flakes to General Mill's Cheerios, or from the Blackberry to the iPhone, and from Sprint to Vonage, such fickleness is not part of marriage and family life. In the family, loyalties outlast even death.

The nature of conjugal love requires the stability of the married relationship and its indissolubility. The absence of these characteristics compromises the relationship of exclusive and total love that is proper to the marriage bond, bringing great pain to the children and damaging repercussions also on the fabric of society.

The stability and indissolubility of the marriage union must not be entrusted solely to the intention and effort of the individual persons involved. The responsibility for protecting and promoting the family as a fundamental natural institution, precisely in consideration of its vital and essential aspects, falls to the whole of society. The need to confer an institutional character on marriage, basing this on a public act that is socially and legally recognized, arises from the basic requirements of social nature.

The introduction of divorce into civil legislation has fueled a relativistic vision of the marriage bond and is broadly manifested as it becomes "truly a plague on society."

(Compendium, No. 225) (quoting CCC § 2385)

Marriage is a natural institution between two persons, but it is also a social institution since it has "a social dimension that is unique . . . attending as it does to caring for and educating children," with the aim of having them both self-integrated and integrated into social life. That is one reason, among others, that the law ought not to legitimize forms of relationships that are nothing but ersatz marriages or relationships that ape--even mock--marriage.

De facto unions . . . are based on a false conception of an individual's freedom to choose and on a completely privatistic vision of marriage and family. . . . . Making "de facto unions"** legally equivalent to the family would discredit the model of the family, which cannot be brought about in a precarious relationship between persons but only in a permanent union originating in marriage, that is, in a covenant between one man and one woman, founded on the mutual and free choice that entails full communion oriented towards procreation.

The fact is that there will never be anything close to approaching a just society as long as our laws do not recognize the characteristic traits of marriage: a relationship between one man and one woman that is marked by unity, indissolubility and fidelity, and fruitfulness. It must reject other false models of marriage. Similarly, it must promote the unique oikonomia of the family.

Granted, where the social evil reigns as it does in our society, the law may have to tolerate evil. In the current state of Western society, it would impossible to enforce the natural law of marriage. Yet toleration is not promotion. Positively, the law ought not to "weaken the recognition of indissoluble monogamous marriage as the only authentic form of the family." Though it may cut against the grain of specious liberty, there is such a thing as the pedagogy of the law. The law must teach of the importance of marriage and family life as understood by the Church:

It is therefore necessary that public authorities "resist these tendencies which divide society and are harmful to the dignity, security, and welfare of the citizens as individuals, and they must try to ensure that public opinion is not led to undervalue the institutional importance of marriage and the family."

(Compendium, No. 229) (quoting JP II, Familiaris consortio, 81)

Clearly, positive law alone will not cure the social ills we suffer from false concepts of marriage and family. Positive law is a slim reed, and is a poor tool to hold social corruption in check. The cure for our social disease will require the concerted action of the entirety of civil society:

It is the task of the Christian community and of all who have the good of society at heart to reaffirm that "the family constitutes, much more than a mere juridical, social, and economic unity, a community of love and solidarity, which is uniquely suited to teach and transmit cultural, ethical, social, spiritual, and religious values essential for the development and well-being of its members and of society."

(Compendium, No. 229) (quoting Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family (24 November 1983), Preamble, E)

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*For those Catholics that are tone deaf as a result of listening to the loud music of modernity: this means no civil unions or same sex travesties of "marriage." Later, the Compendium tackles the issue head on when it refers to the demands of legal recognition of homosexual unions. Under the light of authentic anthropology, the incongruity of the demand to accord marital status to such unions is patent. (Compendium, No. 228) By nature, these unions are unopen to life, infertile per se. Moreover, the requisite complementarity is absent. And while homosexual persons (but not homosexual acts!) are to be given the respect due all persons, there is no justification for "the legitimization of behavior that is not consistent with moral law." "By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties." What God has clearly sundered, let no man join.
**A pastoral way of saying what used to be called in the days of a moral theology less pastoral but more accurate: in peccato existens, living in sin. Legally, it was called concubinage.

Natural Law of Marriage: Arcanum divinae sapientia

THERE IS NO STATE IN THE WORLD that recognizes Christian marriage and that enforces its law in all its purity. Indeed, there is not a state in the world that recognizes the natural law of marriage. Every nation in the West has abandoned the teachings of Christ and His Church on marriage, those that pertain to the divine law and even those that pertain to the natural law. There is no nation in the East that, in its laws, pays the Lord's teachings on marriage any heed, although they may, in some respects pay greater respect to the natural law on marriage than the West. In the West, the discrepancy between the natural law of marriage and the positive law is the result of the secular State's intentional rejection of the public role of Christ (the reign of Christ the King) and the jurisdiction of the Church over those areas of her competence and then later an intentional rejection of any notion of natural law. In the East, the public role of Christ has never had to be rejected since it never was institutionalized as it had been in the West.

Marriage, and its basis in natural law, is addressed by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Arcanum divinae sapientia. This encyclical was published in 1880. It is written with the intention of addressing the secular state's arrogation of rights over marriage. As Leo XIII put it:

But, now, there is a spreading wish to supplant natural and divine law by human law; and hence has begun a gradual extinction of that most excellent ideal of marriage which nature herself had impressed on the soul of man, and sealed, as it were, with her own seal.

Sed quia modo passim libuit humanum ius in locum naturalis et divini supponere, deleri non solum coepit matrimonii species ac notio praestantissima, quam in animis hominum impresserat et quasi consignaverat natura.

AD, 27.

The much vaunted principle of "separation of Church and State" in the modern, liberal West in practice means "removal of Church from State," that is, removal of the Church from any public, civil role, including those areas where she has competence and jurisdiction by divine appointment. Marriage is one of those areas. As the State has exercised more power over marriage, it has arrogated to itself the right to define it, and, ignoring its fundamental nature, has allowed such corruptions to enter into the positive laws of marriage such as divorce and remarriage, and serial polygamy. In some instances, the modern secular liberal state has even considered homosexual unions as "marriages"* (which is about the same as legislating that "cats" shall henceforth be considered "dogs"). The State, in fact, has obviously decided that marriage is nothing but convention, to be defined at will, without reference to its fundamental nature or to God who instituted marriage.

As part of this process of usurpation, liberals and secularists have sought to restrict the rights of the Church in the area of marriage, to "bring it [marriage] within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community." AD, 7. Moderns "attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church," except, perhaps by courtesy. "[W]hen 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 [the modern secularists whom Leo XIII calls naturalists or those who divinize the State] 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." AD, 7.

Since the 1800s, the naturalists and secularists have been remarkably successful at dismantling the natural institution of marriage. And in supplanting the role of God and the Church, modern secularists have put man in control of marriage, which means that they have rejected the role of God and the role of nature of marriage. This is necessarily the case because marriage is not something instituted by man, but rather is something instituted by God in nature: non ab hominibus acceptum, sed natura insitum. AD, 19. It is this fundamental liberal and secular proposition--that man and his political institutions have authority over marriage, i.e., that marriage is nothing but convention--that allows the absurd discussions over whether the State through the judiciary, or through the legislative, or even through the democratic process can define marriage as something that occurs between two people of the same sex. Does no one see the arrogance of the State--its legislators, its judges, or its people--in suggesting that it has such authority? In the public debate, most seem to accede that the State--acting through legislators or judges--or the people--acting through a vote--have authority over this natural institution.

However, no human, singly or in the aggregate, and no human civil institution (including the State) have power over the fundamental nature of marriage. The Church alone has Christ's authority in the area of marriage, and that power does not include any power to change its fundamental nature. Christ exercised jurisdiction over marriage. It was Christ's by right. That power was not given Christ by the State. Nor was it taken by Christ from the State. "It would, for instance, be incredible and altogether absurd," observes Pope Leo XIII, "to assume that Christ our Lord condemned the long-standing practice of polygamy and divorce by authority delegated to Him by the procurator of the province, or the principal ruler of the Jews." AD, 21. Leo XIII observes further: "And it would be equally extravagant to think that, when the 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 . . . 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" AD, 21. Manifestly, both Christ and then subsequently the Church exercised fundamental jurisdiction and authority over marriage over and against any civil authority because they had it.

In fact, the natural law on marriage is an area where the Church, as custodian and expositor of the natural law, speaks for all mankind.** She speaks with Christ's authority to further Christ's mission. Christ's mission, as St. Paul puts it, was to "divinely renew the world, which was sinking, as it were, with length of years into decline." AD, 1. Christus in terris erat perfecturus, eo spectavit, ut mundum, quasi vetustate senescentem, Ipse per se et in se divinitus instauraret. The Church was founded by the Lord with his mission:

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.

Quo vero tam singularia beneficia, quamdiu essent homines, tamdiu in terris permanerent, Ecclesiam constituit vicariam muneris sui, eamque iussit, in futurum prospiciens, si quid esset in hominum societate perturbatum, ordinare; si quid collapsum, resituere.

AD, 2. The collapsed world, or at least part of it, for a time, grew young, it enjoyed "a new form and fresh beauty" to which Christ restored it, Christ, who took away the effects of the world's "time-worn age." Over centuries, the Roman and Barbarian laws on marriage were modified to conform to the natural law and the Gospel teaching. At one time a famous writer could say with but minimal controversy, Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe, and it would have included Europe's law on marriage. But this world made young grew older again and forgot the Lord and His Church who brought joy to its youth, and indeed not only brought joy to its youth, but brought it youth. It rejected its Christian patrimony, first by rejecting the Church, then by rejecting Christ, then by rejecting God, and the finally by rejecting Nature herself. Thus in stages it dismantled Christendom, disassembled Christian rule, and dissipated its moral capital, a moral capital hard-earned by thousands of popes, bishops, pious kings and queens and princes and princesses, monks and nuns and friars, and millions of laymen who had cooperated in the reign of Christ that clambered over the body of a dying paganism.

What this new neo-pagan worldview saw as progress was, in many respects, and in many important respects, really regress. The West was like a foolish man who--losing his hair, his muscle tone, his teeth, and his eyesight and hearing--kept insisting that there was progress, increasing vitality, and growing resiliency in his life. But all this was false. Like some foolish old man dying his hair dark, combing it over his balding head, and wearing youthful clothes, the newly secularly-accoutered West has really just become old again, but it looks young because it has new technology: useful stuff such as nuclear bombs, Viagra, latex condoms, RU-486, and abortion clinics. But in fact, it has lost both youth and youth's resilient joy, and it has re-collapsed, like a senile old man, into the senescence of relativism, skepticism, and self-indulgence. The Christian bang is gone. The world is reduced to a whimper. Compare St. Francis of Assisi to Charlie Sheen and you see how the world's gone.

This is not how it is supposed to be. Christ's restorative mission was (and is) aimed at the restoration of the entire man, both natural and supernatural. So Christ's mission benefited (and benefits) all men even if they were not members of His Church.

Although the divine renewal we have spoken of chiefly and directly affected men as constituted in the supernatural order of grace, nevertheless some of its precious and salutary fruits were also bestowed abundantly in the order of nature. Hence, not only individual men, but also the whole mass of the human race, have in every respect received no small degree of worthiness. For, so soon as Christian order was once established in the world, it became possible for all men, one by one, to learn what God's fatherly providence is, and to dwell in it habitually, thereby fostering that hope of heavenly help which never confoundeth. From all this outflowed fortitude, self-control, constancy, and the evenness of a peaceful mind, together with many high virtues and noble deeds.

Quamquam vero divina haec instauratio, quam diximus prae cipue et directo homines attigit in ordine gratiae supernaturali constitutos, tamen pretiosi ac salutares eiusdem fructus in ordinem quoque naturalem largiter permanarunt; quamobrem non mediocrem perfectionem in omnes partes acceperunt cum singuli homines, tum humani generis societas universa. Etenim, christiano rerum ordine semel condito, hominibus singulis feliciter contigit, ut ediscerent atque adsuescerent in paterna Dei providentia conquiescere, et spem alere, quae non confundit, caelestium auxiliorum; quibus ex rebus fortitudo, moderatio, constantia, aequabilitas pacati animi, plures denique praeclarae virtutes et egregia facta consequuntur.

It is, of course, impossible to engage in "what ifs" without entering into the world of speculation. What if Christ had not come into the world and His Church not been founded? The way the world would look under that scenario is impossible to know. But this much is certain: there is much that the world has to be thankful to the Christ and His Church, even though it be not Christian and even it they be not Catholic.** AD, 3. Christians and the Church have been the salt of the earth. The contribution to mankind's development by Christ and His Church, especially in the area of marriage and family life, have been immense.

On the other hand, the verdict appears to be against modernity. While modern notions seem to have given us some "liberties" that seem to advantage the vicious the most, these have been purchased at tremendous price: millions dead in wars, millions more dead in concentration camps, hundreds of millions affected by social deracination, endemic poverty, and the destruction of indigenous cultures, and hundreds of millions perhaps even billions of deaths of human zygotes, fetuses, and children as a result of artificial contraception (frequently a disguised abortifacient) and medical and drug-induced abortion. And these, of course, are just the material costs. At what sort of spiritual costs have these "liberties" been purchased? This is shuddering to contemplate.

What the fruits of modernity and its political structures suggest, of course, is that even an unbeliever, at least an unbeliever of good will, would be better off under a Christian order than he is under a liberal, practically (and theoretically) atheist, order. Viewed from the perspective of the common good, no one, it would seem, except the wicked, are better off in a liberal order than a Christian order. It is impossible to believe that the good and the virtuous would be worse off in an order that conformed itself to the natural moral law rather than an order that ignored it. It is the ignorant, the greedy, the lecherous, the impious, the self-indulgent, the vicious who flourish in liberalism's order and society formed about its premises. The virtuous and those of good will may, with greater effort given the lack of support in public institutions, also flourish. It is the majority in the middle, or those who are excluded altogether from the program by being called "non-persons," who, as a whole, are worse off in a liberal society and its mores. Has the common good really been advanced by a civil society whose governing and legislative institutions are built without reference to God and nature if we include all the hundreds of millions of silent victims too small to be buried in a casket? Are most of us really better off because Charlie Sheen can have sex with a bunch of hookers, get high on cocaine, and not be thrown in jail or put in stocks? We might be better off if he were punished. Imus was without even the process of law, and he did much less that Charlie Sheen ever did.

One area where Christ's influence was deeply felt, and therefore where his modern absence is deeply felt, was the institution of the family. In particular, Christ's influence on marriage, which is the beginning and the foundation of family life, has been significant. Christ's influence upon human marriage must start with an understanding of whence marriage comes.

The true origin, the vera origo, of marriage is God. God is the creator of marriage.

God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time.

Qua in re hoc voluit providentissimus Deus, ut illud par coniugum esset cunctorum hominum naturale principium, ex quo scilicet propagari humanum genus, et, numquam intermissis procreationibus, conservari in omne tempus oporteret.

AD, 5. Marriage is thus part of God's creative activity. It is part of the natural endowment given man, and therefore a natural institution. While it is a natural institution, it has an implicit or intrinsic leaning towards the sacred, one might say even a natural sacramentality associated with it. As Leo XIII explains:

Marriage has God for its Author, and was from the very beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of His Son; and therefore there abides in it a something holy and religious; not extraneous, but innate; not derived from men, but implanted by nature.

Etenim cum matrimonium habeat Deum auctorem, fueritque vel a principio quaedam Incarnationis Verbi Dei adumbratio, idcirco inest in eo sacrum et religiosum quiddam, non adventitium, sed ingenitum, non ab hominibus acceptum, sed natura insitum.

AD, 19.

The intrinsic sanctity and solemnity of the marital bond and its religious meaning was recognized even by pagans, who usually accompanied marriage with religious rites and before their priests and pontiffs. "So mighty, even in the souls ignorant of heavenly doctrine, was the force of nature, of the remembrance of their origin, and of the conscience of the human race." AD, 19. Even in natural marriage, a marriage between two non-Christians, the Gospel of Christ is implicitly revealed. Anima naturaliter Christiana, said Tertullian. The soul is naturally Christian. In Tertullian's spirit, we may state a corollary: Matrimonium naturaliter Christianum, marriage is naturally Christian.

According to Christ's teaching, "even from the beginning,"*** vel ex eo tempore, marriage was sealed with two "most excellent properties," duas potissimum, easque in primis nobiles, that being "unity and perpetuity," unitatem et perpetuitatem. Therefore, as Christ's teaching make clear, from the beginning, that is as part of the natural institution of marriage, marriage was to be "between two only, that is, between one man and one woman," inter duos esse debere, scilicet virum inter et mulierem. AD, 5. Christ's proclamation with respect to marriage was "in character of supreme Lawgiver," supremi legislatoris suscepta persona, and as supreme lawgiver, Christ "brought back matrimony to the nobility of its primeval origin, primaevae originis nobilitatem, by condemning the customs of the Jews in their abuse of the plurality of wives and of the power of giving bills of divorce; and still more by commanding most strictly that no one should dare to dissolve that union which God Himself had sanctioned by a bond perpetual." AD, 8. This is the natural law on marriage.

Polygamy, both simultaneous and serial,**** therefore, is excluded under the natural law by the design of God. AD, 5. It is a departure from the natural law as it relates to marriage. Clearly, any sort of homosexual union is, as a matter of natural law, morally abhorrent since it is in direct contravention to the natural law. Moreover, from the beginning, God's intent was to exclude divorce and remarriage. Christ made clear that "from the beginning" the "marriage bond is by the will of God so closely and strongly made fast that no man may dissolve it or render it asunder," nuptiale vinculum sic esse Dei voluntate intime vehementerque nexum, ut a quopiam inter homines dissolvi, aut distrahi nequeat. AD, 5.

What Christ's teaching suggests is that the liberal West's vision of marriage as well as traditional Islam's vision of marriage are contrary to the natural law: the natural institution of marriage is defiled by both Western secular and Islamic religious marital laws. The current state of the law on marriage is no different than when Christ first encountered its corruption even among the Jews: "All nations seem, more or less, to have forgotten the true notion and origin of marriage; and thus everywhere laws were enacted with reference to marriage, prompted to all appearance by State reasons, but not such as nature required." AC, 7. In large part, as Leo XIII observes, the woman bore the brunt of the conventional marriages that violated the natural law, since they favored the male, his dominion and his lust, and reduced the status of the woman "to be all but reckoned as a means for the gratification of passion, or for the production of offspring." AC, 7. In some cases, women were bought and sold as chattel, and men had the right to put them to death for the most specious of reasons, or, to beat them (idhrib, إضرب), but not with severity. Modernly, the burden on women is not one of chattle slavery, but it shows up in other forms, in their unreasonable subordinate role in Muslim countries or, in the West, in the pressures put on single mothers and single-parent families. Modernly, the real brunt has been felt by the unborn, that is to say, the never-to-be-born. Moreover, the common good has suffered all of the evils that Leo XIII anticipated it would suffer be relaxing marital laws to allow divorce and remarriage in contravention to the natural law.

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.

AD, 29. Is there any doubt every society in the West suffers from these social problems? We claim to want to solve them, but they are insoluble if we ignore their root cause.

So it appears that, with respect to marriage, we have come full circle:

[T]here are persons who, thanklessly casting away so many other blessings of redemption, despise also or utterly ignore the restoration of marriage to its original perfection. It is a reproach to some of the ancients that they showed themselves the enemies of marriage in many ways; but in our own age, much more pernicious is the sin of those who would fain pervert utterly the nature of marriage, perfect though it is, and complete in all its details and parts.

AD, 6. The Western dog has returned to his own Western vomit. Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum sic inprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam. "As a dog returns to his own vomit, so is a fool who repeats his folly." (Proverbs 26:11)

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*According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the following countries allow homosexual marriage: The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden. In the United States, homosexual marriage is legal in six states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. This does not include countries or states of the United States that recognize some other form of civil union between homosexual couples.
**The Church, however, though it can declare the natural law, and therefore is the teacher of all mankind. With respect to marriage, "with such foresight of legislation has the Church guarded its divine institution that no one who thinks rightfully of these matters can fail to see how, with regard to marriage, she is the best guardian and defender of the human race." AD, 15. The Church, however, would not have jurisdiction over marriages where there is no baptized party involved.
***We may refer the reader to such books as H. W. Crocker, III's Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001); Thomas E. Woods, Jr.'s How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005). In the area of marriage and family life, Leo XIII states that as a result of Christ and His Church, mankind received the following benefits related to marriage and family: (1) it raised it to the status of a Sacrament; (2) it emphasized its essential sanctity; (3) it condemned extra-marital relationships thus fortifying the exclusivity of marriage; (4) it prohibited incest, polygamy, adultery, fornication, homosexuality and other crimes against conjugal chastity; (5) it insisted on the equal rights of husband and wife, since it imposed the same law of chastity and mutual affection on both; (6) it prohibited the man from killing his wife on the grounds of adultery; (7) it tempered the powers of fathers over their families (the Roman law of paterfamilias); (8) it assured liberty in marriage by preventing undue parental infringement of their child's right.
****The fact that Christ in Matthew 19:4 spoke about what God intended "in the beginning" (ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς or ab initio) is highly significant, since it states that the teaching of Christ on marriage with respect to its exclusivity and permanency is not a matter of Christian discipline only, but is a matter of the natural law which binds all men and woman by virtue of their being human. That marriage is between one man and one woman and that no human authority has the authority to allow for divorce is not a confessional truth, but a universal, natural truth. Christ's teaching in this regard was to bring back matrimony "to the nobility of its primeval origin." AD, 8. To this teaching regarding the natural institution of marriage as ordained by God one must then add the specifically Christian teaching of its sacramental nature and function. On the sacramentality and sanctity of marriage, there was, as Leo XIII points out, a primitive religious understanding of sacrament and sanctity in the marital covenant among the better pagan thinkers. "We call to witness the monuments of antiquity, as also the manners and customs of those people who, being the most civilized, had the greatest knowledge of law and equity. In the minds of all of them it was a fixed and foregone conclusion that, when marriage was thought of, it was thought of as conjoined with religion and holiness." AD, 19.
*****Simultaneous polygamy is having multiple spouses at the same time, a practice accepted, for example, by traditional Islamic doctrine for men (which allows simultaneous polygyny, up to four simultaneous wives, but not simultaneous polyandry, although it allows serial polyandry as a result of its acceptance of divorce and remarriage). Serial polygamy is what is commonly allowed in the West, and it constitutes of polygamy in series (marriage-divorce-remarriage-divorce--remarriage, etc.). A Western man who has been married thrice, and divorced twice, is a serial polygamist having "enjoyed" three women as wives. A Muslim man who has three wives simultaneously is a simultaneous polygamist "enjoying" three women as wives. The difference in these two practices of polygamy is one of degree, not of kind. Both violate the divine and natural law. (This is one reason why both liberalism and Islam are false and unreasonable political philosophies or religions: on this and many other particulars (e.g., acceptance of onanism/contraception or al'azl or العزل), they contradict the natural law on the matter of marriage and conjugal relations). A true political philosophy or a truly revealed religion would not contradict the natural law on marriage and conjugal relations.)

Pope Leo XIII on Socialism: Quod apostolici muneris

THE NATURAL LAW ALSO PROVIDED the foundation for Pope Leo XIII's encyclical on socialism, Quod apostolici munerus which was issued in 1878. In that encyclical, Leo XIII set himself against "that sect of men, who under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists." QA, 1. Socialists, communists, and nihilists "leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws (quod humanis divinisque legibus) has been wisely decreed for the health and beauty of life." Spurning, then, the influence of natural and divine law, socialists "proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties." shunning any differences between the ruler and the ruled. On the domestic, familial front, they "debase the natural union of man and woman," naturalem viri ac mulieris unionem . . . dehonestant, and weaken its bond, vinculum . . . infirmant. They therefore weaken if not altogether sever the authority of the father as head of the family, and relationship between husband and wife, and between parents and children. Driven by their materialistic philosophy, they "assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law," jus proprietatis naturali lege sanctitum impugnant, which leads them "seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor or brain and hands, or by thrift in one's mode of life." QA, 1. It is these three errors--a false egalitarianism, a false notion of marriage and family life, and the rejection private property--that Leo XIII addresses in his encyclical Quod apostolici munerus. It is these three errors that come in the wake of the "plague of socialism," pestis Socialismi advanced by this "abominable sect," secta abominata. Cf. QA, 10, 11.

Fundamental Tenets of Socialism Against the Natural Law

As with much of our modern philosophical ills, Leo XIII finds the seed of socialism in the 16th century, specifically in the error of philosophical rationalism. Socialism (with which term we will use to include communism and political nihilism) is nothing less that a form of political rationalism. Rationalism, which entails a false, materialistic notion of reason, is intended to subvert revelation and to "overthrown the supernatural order." QA, 2. Disdaining religion and disdaining God, rationalism in the political realm has sought to found political institutions on the will of the people alone, without regard to God or his order. Under the guise that supernatural truths are hostile to reason, political rationalists have sought to remove from any public institution--including universities, the lyceums, the gymnasia--any mention of God and the supernatural order. Their view of life is entirely here-and-now, "limited to the bounds of the present," and gives utterly no weight to the concept of eternity or to "the rewards and punishments of a future and eternal life." QA, 2. In fine, they live sub specie temporis, under the light of the here-and-now, and not sub specie aeternitatis, under the light of eternity. And this they do even while "stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary." QA, 5. Like the devil who quoted scripture to tempt Christ, so do socialists frequently invoke alleged evangelical values while actually subverting them.

Socialists advocate in a sense altogether false "that nature has made all men equal," and so reject any office or laws or relations that are not predicated on their radical egalitarianism. While Pope Leo XIII acknowledges that the Gospel teaches an equality among men, the Gospel's notion is different from the equality advocated by the socialist:

[I]n accordance with the teachings of the Gospel, the equality of men consists in this: that all, having inherited the same nature, are called to the same most high dignity of the sons of God, and that, as one and the same end is set before all, each one is to be judged by the same law and will receive punishment or reward according to his deserts.

Contra vero, ex Evangelicis documentis, ea est hominum aequalitas, ut omnes eamdem naturam sortiti, ad eamdem filiorum Dei celsissiman dignitatem vocentur, simulque ut uno eodemque fine omnibus praestituto, singuli secundum eamdem legem iudicandi sint, poenas aut mercedem pro merito consecuturi.

QA, 5. Outside of this equality among men--an equality of human nature and an equality of our supernatural calling--there are palpable inequalities among men: and indeed, the inequality among men in these other particulars is part of the plan of God, especially the inequalities arising out of the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed.

The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature, "from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named." (Eph. 3:15)

Inaequalitas tamen iuris et potestatis ab ipso naturae Auctore dimanat, ex quo omnis paternitas in caelis et in terra nominatur.

QA, 5. Depending upon office, station, relation, and right order there may be various duties and rights, and so one person (for example a ruler, a bishop, or a father) will have rights over as well as duties to another (e.g., his subject, a layman, or a son), even while the latter (e.g., the subject, the layman, or a son) has rights over as well as duties to the former (e.g., the ruler, or a bishop, or a father).

For, He who created and governs all things has, in His wise providence, appointed that the things which are lowest should attain their ends by those which are intermediate, and these again by the highest. . . . [God] appointed that there should be various orders in civil society, differing in dignity, rights, and power (plures esse ordines, dignitate, iuribus, potestate diversos), whereby the State, like the Church, should be one body, consisting of many members, some nobler than others, but all necessary to each other and solicitous for the common good."

QA, 6.

Rulers are answerable to God for the use of their power. So does the book of Wisdom warn us: "For a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule," should they judge rightly or fail to keep the law of justice. Wisdom 6:6. Rebellion against even a rash and tyrannical ruler must not be countenanced ordinarily since to "allow an insurrection on private authority" results in greater ills not only because public order would be "only the more disturbed," but also because society would run the risk of taking "greater hurt therefrom." Therefore, even patience toward tyranny befits concern for the common good. Insurrection is not something to be engaged in lightly. There is, however, one exception:

But, if the will of legislators and princes shall have sanctioned or commanded anything repugnant to the divine or natural law, the dignity and duty of the Christian name, as well as the judgment of the Apostle, urge that "God is to be obeyed rather than man." [Acts 5:29]

Quod si legislatorum ac principum placita aliquid sanciverint aut iusserint quod divinae aut naturali legi repugnet, christiani nominis dignitas et officium atque Apostolica sententia suadent obediendum esse magis Deo quam hominibus.

QA, 7.

With respect to marriage and family life, Leo XIII insists that civil society, in particular the State, must recognize the importance of the family:

Even family life itself, which is the cornerstone of all society and government . . . . [T]he foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law, and is completed in the mutual rights and duties of parents and children, masters and servants.

[E]tiam domestica societas, quae omnis civitatis et regni principium est . . . . Rectam hujus societatis rationem, secundum naturalis juris necessitatem in indissolubili viri ac miilieris unione primo inniti, et mutuis parentes inter et filios, dominos ac servos offîciis iuribusque compleri.

QA, 8.

The socialists "strive almost completely to dissolve this union," this fundamental cell of society. In particular they seek to remove any religious element from it, rejecting both its natural order and the Church's authority over it. This necessarily weakens the headship of the father over his wife and family, the authority of the parents over their children, and the reciprocal duties of the children to their parents. QA, 8. The family is a subtle instance of hierarchy within love and love within hierarchy.

Wherefore, as the Apostle has it, [Eph. 5:23] as Christ is the head of the Church, so is the man the head of the woman; and as the Church is subject to Christ, who embraces her with a most chaste and undying love, so also should wives be subject to their husbands, and be loved by them in turn with a faithful and constant affection. In like manner does the Church temper the use of parental and domestic authority, that it may tend to hold children and servants to their duty, without going beyond bounds. For, according to Catholic teaching, the authority of our heavenly Father and Lord is imparted to parents and masters, whose authority, therefore, not only takes its origin and force from Him, but also borrows its nature and character. Hence, the Apostle exhorts children to "obey their parents in the Lord, and honor their father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise"; [Eph. 6:1-2] and he admonishes parents: "And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord." [Eph. 6:4] Again, the apostle enjoins the divine precept on servants and masters, exhorting the former to be "obedient to their lords according to the flesh of Christ . . . with a good will serving, as to the Lord"; and the latter, to "forbear threatenings, knowing that the Lord of all is in heaven, and there is no respect of persons with God." [Eph. 6:5-9] If only all these matters were faithfully observed according to the divine will by all on whom they are enjoined, most assuredly every family would be a figure of the heavenly home, and the wonderful blessings there begotten would not confine themselves to the households alone, but would scatter their riches abroad through the nations."

QA, 8.

Controversial as it may modernly be, Pope Leo XIII clearly promotes the continuing validity of the so-called Haustafel, the "Domestic Code" found in St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians (5:22-6:5) and also in St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians (3:18-41) and in St. Peter's First Epistle (1 Pet. 2:18-3:7).*

From marriage and the family, Pope Leo XIII addresses the socialists' rejection of private property. Basing itself on "the precepts of natural and divine law," the Church's doctrine concerns itself with the public and private good regarding the duty of government and the distribution of the goods that are necessary for human life and its flourishing. Socialists reject the natural right to private property, finding it to be an invention of man, a mere convention:

For, while the socialists would destroy the "right" of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate.

Cum enim Socialistae ius proprietatis tamquam humanum inventum, naturali hominum aequalitati repugnans, traducant et communionem bonorum affectantes pauperiem haud aequo animo esse perferendam, et ditiorum possessiones ac iura impune violari posse arbitrentur; Ecclesia multo satius et utilius inaequalitatem inter homines, corporis ingeniique viribus naturaliter diversos, etiam in bonis possidendis agnoscit, et ius
proprietatis ac dominii ab ipsa natura profectum, intactum cuilibet et inviolatum esse iubet.

QA, 9.

That private property is recognized by revelation is clear from the divine laws against stealing and robbery. But the right to private property ought not to be grounds or excuse for neglecting the poor. On the contrary, the Church insists that they ought to be cared for, and she is constantly enjoining upon the rich "that most grave precept to give what remains to the poor; and she holds over their heads the divine sentence that unless they succor the needy they will be repaid by eternal torments." QA, 9. There is, to be sure, "the old struggle between the rich and the poor," but it is not solved by rejecting private property. The best method would seem to be the Christian formula which demands that the rich, like Christ, become poor for the sake of their brothers, and the poor recognize the blessings that Christ has put upon the sufferings of the poor and the rewards of eternal life.

[I]f this method is rejected or disregarded, one of two things must occur: either the greater portion of the human race will fall back into the vile condition of slavery which so long prevailed among the pagan nations, or human society must continue to be disturbed by constant eruptions, to be disgraced by rapine and strife, as we have had sad witness even in recent times.

QA, 9.
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*The Church continues to insist on the paternal headship of the family and the complementarity of the masculine (paternal) and feminine (maternal) roles in the family, but, especially during the pontificate of John Paull II, has elaborated the radical Christian concept of subjection, making it clear that "subjection" must not be understood as the world understands it. A good discussion of the Scriptural, Patristic, and Magisterial teaching on the headship of the father in the family may be found in the article The Authority of the Husband According to the Magisterium by Rev. Paul N. Check.

Magisterial Invocation of Natural Law: Pio Nono

PIO NONO, AS PIUS IX (1792-1878) is frequently referred even in English, was a remarkable figure who ruled as Pope during a time of social, political, and moral ferment. The successor to Pope Gregory XVI, who died in 1846, Pio Nono's confronted an age of revolution, and when elected to the papacy was considered relatively liberal. However, early during his reign, confronting revolutionary elements in his administration of the Papal States, and suffering the humiliation of being a "prisoner of the Vatican," and opposing himself to the Italian forces of unification and liberalism, he seemed to harden into conservative positions. Next to St. Peter himself, Pius IX enjoyed the longest reign of any Pope (more than 31 years), rivaled only by John Paul II (more than 26 years). A victim of rising Italian nationalism, the Risorgimento and its insistence on the unification of Italy, Pope Pius IX was the last Pope to rule the Papal States which, by 1870 had been wrested from the Holy See.

Pius IX--Pio Nono

But while he saw his temporal power taken from him, his spiritual realm appeared to rise in an inversely proportional manner. He is considered the first modern pope, and under his reign the influence of the papacy grew in terms of influence and centralization. He convened the First Vatican Council which define the dogma of papal infallibility. He defined as dogma the Immaculate Conception of Mary through his constitution Ineffabilis Deus on December 8, 1854. He is perhaps most excoriated by the liberals because of his promulgation of his Syllabus of Errors (Syllabus errorum) in conjunction with his encyclical Quanta cura, a virtual declaration of war against the excesses of liberalism and its errors. He re-established the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England changing its status from a missionary territory. Perhaps his most controversial act, and certainly one that cuts against the grain of modern standards, was the position he took in the case of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy who was baptized by a Christian servant girl and so who fell under a law that prohibited Christians to be raised by Jews, even if they were his own parents. Mortara was raised in the Papal household and eventually became a priest and Augustinian missionary. Pius IX was beatified by John Paul II on September 3, 2000. Evviva Pio nono!

It was the political fervent in Italy and in greater Europe that forced Pius IX to draw from the natural law foundation of Catholic and human morality which lay, as it were, below the surface to be drawn at need, to provide the authentic Catholic and human response to questions such as contraception, neo-Malthusianism, the foundations of civil law, the indissolubility of marriage, and other political, social, and legal questions. It seems as if everything was up for deconstruction.

For example, the following acts were taken by the the Holy Office on May 21, 1851, and approved by Pope Pius IX, in response to certain questions relating to coitus interruptus (also known as "Onanism") as a form of birth control.* The ruling makes it clear that Onanism is against the natural law. To the questions of whether it was "permissible for spouses to use marriage the way Onan did [eo modo quo usus est Onan], if their motives are worthy [ob rationes honestas]," or if it was probable that "such use of marriage is not forbidden by the natural law [prohibitum iure naturali]," the Holy Office called the first proposition "scandalous, erroneous, and contrary to the natural right of matrimony [iuri naturali matrimonii contraria]," and the second "scandalous, erroneous, and elsewhere implicitly condemned by Innocent XI."**

In the Syllabus of Errors, promulgated under his authority, Pius IX also invoked the natural law on the issue of the relationship between human, positive law and the natural law, and on the issue of marriage as an institution under the auspices of the natural law. The following propositions were condemned by the Syllabus:

The laws of morals by no means need divine sanction, and there is not the least need that human laws conform to the natural law [naturae ius], or receive the power of binding from God

By natural law [iurae naturae] the bond of matrimony is not indissoluble and on various grounds the civil authority may grant divorce.

Morum leges divina haud egent sanctione, minimeque opus est, ut humanae leges ad naturae ius conformentur aut obligandi vim a Deo accipiant.

Iure naturae matrimonii vinculum non est indissolubile, et in variis casibus divortium proprie dictum auctoritate civili sanciri potest.

DS 2956; D 1756 (civil law); DS 2967; D 1767 (marriage). What the condemnation means, of course, is that civil laws must conform to the natural law, and that marriage is indissoluble by natural law, and not as a result of any positive law. Laws, therefore, that allow for dissolution of marriage are contrary to the natural law. Essentially, the marriage laws of every single Western country, by allowing for divorce and remarriage, are violative of the natural law in addition to divine law as found in the teachings of Jesus on the indissolubility of marriage. Is it any wonder society limps from intractable problems associated with shattered marriages and shattered families?

In his encyclical of August 10, 1863, Quanto conficiamur moerore, addresssing the issue of indifferentism, Pius IX spoke about the natural law and its role in salvation:

There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments.

Notum Nobis vobisque est, eos, qui invincibili circa sanctissimam nostram religionem ignorantia laborant, quique naturalem legem eiusque praecepta in omnium cordibus a Deo insculpta sedulo servantes ac Deo oboedire parati, honestam rectamque vitam agunt, posse, divinae lucis et gratiae operante virtute, aeternam consequi vitam, cum Deus, qui omnium mentes, animos, cogitationes habitusque plane intuetur, scrutatur et noscit, pro summa sua bonitate et clementia minime patiatur, quempiam aeternis puniri suppliciis, qui voluntariae culpae reatum non habeat.

Pius IX, Quanto conficiamur moerore, No. 5 (DS 2866; D 1677). Here, the natural law inscribed in the heart of all men--clearly a reference to the Pauline teaching contained in the Epistle to the Romans--links the natural moral law universally to all men, and makes it part of our reasonable obligation to submit ourselves to the law of God which is also the law in us. It is the law that is intended to be part of the guide that leads us to eternal salvation. Following the natural law, it would seem, is essential for salvation, a sine qua non not only for the Christian, but for every Jew and every Gentile, that is every man, woman, and child. No one is excused from following the precepts of the natural law.

In addressing these variety of issues, it is clear that Pius IX began drawing from that well of doctrine of the natural law, a well-spring of doctrine and doctrinal principles that had been held, as it were, in reserve to be drawn upon, as the sick drew upon the Pool of Siloam, the more and more society got sicker and sicker, and the further and further it distanced itself from the divine law, the natural law, and the very voice of reason and of conscience. Pius IX's successors, especially Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII were to follow the example of this Blessed Pope.

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*Coitus interruptus (from Latin "interrupted coitus") is a method of birth control known as the withdrawal method in which the man withdraws from the woman during ejaculation so as to avoid pregnancy. The system is not particularly effective as a contraceptive method, and, in any event, it is regarded as immoral since it seeks to disengage the unitive from procreative components of the conjugal act. It is also called Onanism. Onan was the second son of Judah, and was the younger brother to Er, Judah's first son. After Er died, he was required to fulfill the Levirate law and engage in intercourse with his Er's widow, Tamar. However, Onan, who was not eager to provide heirs to his brother's line, withdrew from Tamar prior to climax, and, as the biblical text puts it, "spilled his seed on the ground." "And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of the LORD," and he was punished by God by death. (Genesis 38:8-10).
**The Holy Office referenced the teaching of Innocent XI we discussed in a prior posting. See Magisterial Invocation of Natural Law: Pius II and Innocent XI The source for these is Batzill Hartmann, O.S.B.,Decisiones S. Sedis de Usu et Abusu Matrimonii (Torino: Marietti, 1944), 19-20 (May 21, 1851). The English translation of the Holy Office's texts may found at http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Abortion_Euthanasia/Abortion_Euthanasia_004.htm. The Latin may also be found in DS 2791-93:

2791 Qu.: Qua nota digna sint tres propositiones sequentes: 1. Ob rationes honestas coniugibus uti licet matrimonio eo modo quo usus est Onan (Gn 38, 8ss). Resp.: Ad. 1 Scandalosa, erronea et iuri naturali matrimonii contraria.

2792 2. Probabile est istum matrimonii usum non esse prohibitum iure naturali. Resp.: Ad 2. Scandalosa, et alias implicite condemnata ab Innocentio XI propos. 49 (DS 2149).

2793 3. Nusquam expedit interrogare de hac materia utriusque sexus coniuges, etiamsi prudenter timeatur, ne coniuges, sive uxor sive uterque abutantur matrimonio. Resp.: Ad 3. Propositio ut iacet, est falsa, nimis laxa et in praxi periculosa.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 18: Family Rights

THAT THE FAMILY HAS RIGHTS, natural rights at that, is forgotten in modern Western thought. The family has suffered assault from the existential, relativistic, liberal ethic, just like the individual. As the individual is said to be able to define himself without regard to his nature, so, analogously, is he able to define what he means by family. Man is answerable neither to God nor to his nature in respect to self or to family. This is the modern creed of liberalism, and it gives us such foul perversions and natural aberrations, indeed monsters, as homosexual "marriage." The intellectual dishonesty among its advocates is rank. Suggesting that homosexual "marriage" is constitutional is untenable under any reasonable theory of a written constitution, at least the U.S. Constitution. In no wise can it be said to have incorporated implicitly, much less explicitly, the right to homosexual activity, much less homosexual marriage. The suggestion is a legal enormity as much as it is a moral enormity.

The institution of marriage is a natural institution between a man and a woman formed by their mutual consent to join for life. The institution of the family derives from the institution of marriage and the procreation of children. Thus there are two societies or relationships: a conjugal "horizontal" one between spouses (which arises out of the marital covenant), and a "vertical" parental one between parents and children (arising out of consanguinity and procreation). In his discussion of right and duty, Mercier treats of the institution of marriage--its purpose, the perpetuity of the marital bond--and then family.

Mercier steps slightly outside of the typical presentation of marriage, at least at the time that he wrote his A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy. In his discussion on the purpose of the institution of marriage, he designates the first end of the family as the good of the spouses. He describes the second end of the family as the procreation and education of children. In most classical treatments of marriage, the hierarchy of ends is reversed. What Mercier appears to be doing, however, is not contradicting the classical treatment, but presenting the ends in chronological order. First there is marriage and union of the spouses, and second there is procreation. The chronology in ends is thus distinguished from the hierarchical ordering of ends.

A man and a woman generally agree to unite themselves in marriage each with a view to his or her own well-being and the well-being of his or her partner. "This is the reason why they give themselves to one another, each being the complement, as it were, of the other by sharing in common the physical, intellectual, and moral resources of their individual natures." [316(99)] The couple seek happiness in their wedlock. There is thus conveniently joined in marriage the happiness sought by the couple with the means to assure the perpetuation of the human race and the allaying of the "importunities of passion."*

Couple and Child by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

The second end of marriage and the family is the procreation and education of children. [317(100)] Human development is a lengthy process, and the marital relationship is accordingly naturally designed to be long-lasting, indeed permanent. Parents have the duty to form and educate their children.

To parents above all others falls the duty of being the protectors and educators of their child. This is not difficult to understand. Together they have been instrumental in bringing into being a human person like themselves, possessing the same imprescriptible right both to life and perfection and yet incapable of providing for himself. Tho whom should such a one turn to obtain the assistance to which he has a right unless to those who are the authors of his being? To their instrumentality his life is due; by bringing him into being they have taken upon themselves the duty of providing the means for his preservation and his full development. Such is what right order would require. . . . This is the dictate of logic, and is not the natural law the law of reason?

[317(100)] The natural disposition or natural inclination that parents have to their children is evidentiary of what reason would require of parents.

[In slightly different presentation, this is the Augustinian/Thomistic trilogy of the ends of marriage of marriage: offspring (procreatio), mutual help and aid (mutuum adiutorium or auxilium), and the legitimate expression for sexual desire (honestum remedium concupiscentiae). These are closely tied to the three goods (bona) of marriage: the good of children (bonum prolis), the good of fidelity (bonum fidei), and the good of a "natural" sacrament (bonum sacramenti).]

Mercier elaborates on what is meant by education of children. The education is holistic, and includes physical, intellectual and aesthetic, moral, and religious education. Physical education looks to the health of the body, and so includes providing a healthy physical environment, with opportunity of exercise. The physical development is important to the intellectual and moral life. Intellectual education helps develop those specific human faculties that have as their object the true and the beautiful. This requires the development of the senses, the memory, and intelligence. "The primary purpose of [intellectual] education is not to stock the mind with erudition, but to make it capable of thought." [319(101)] Although parents are preeminently the educators of their children, "public authority has here the right to interfere in the last resort in order to safeguard the right of the child [to education] against any remissness or selfishness on the part of the parent." [319(101)] The religious and moral faculties of the child must not be neglected.

As morality is meaningless if divorced from the idea of the Absolute--the proper object of religion--the moral upbringing of anyone must have religious education as its foundation. By the first he will be shown the law which must govern his conduct, he will be taught how to conform to it, and for this end his will-power will be strengthened against the allurements of the senses; by the second he will be shown the august origin of this law and the sovereign sanctions on which it rests. Parents owe to their children this moral and religious education . . . .

[320(101)] The duty that the parents have to their children suggests that the children have correlative duties, and they do:

The duty of parents towards their children implies as its counterpart the rights to obedience, respect and affection from the latter towards them.

[321(102)]

Viewed strictly from a natural law standpoint, and not from any religiously doctrinal point of view, marriage is, by nature, "an indissoluble contract." The reason for its indissolubility is that it s founded upon love, not sensual love, but "a love that is rational, which alone is worthy of the dignity of man." [321(103)] Thus, superficial, fleeting, passing qualities are not the substance of marriage. Marriage "has the grasp of a substance that is enduring." "Its very nature is that it should last." [321(103)]

The perpetuity of the marriage bond is made more manifest by the link it has to the procreation and education of children and their correlative duty to honor their parents. The education of children is a lengthy, laborious, and enduring one, which calls for a stable, long-lasting relationship between the parents. More, once the children become emancipated, they are still bound to their parents by the claims of gratitude which "may put upon them imperious obligations binding in strict justice." [321(103)] So the parental union would seem to endure by nature beyond the emancipation of the children. "The dissolution of the latter [marriage] would shake the very foundations of the economy of the former [obligations of gratitude, perhaps even care, that children should have to their parents]." [322(103)]

Mercier then handles the problem of divorce. He acknowledges that legislators have made exception to the perpetuity of the marital covenant and have permitted divorce. In discussing the issue of divorce, Mercier divides the issue into three separate parts: divorce by mutual consent, divorce for incompatibility of temper, and divorce for reasons of adultery, cruelty, or ill-treatment.

It is evident that divorce by mutual consent, or for mere incompatibility of temperament, notwithstanding the legal [civil] formalities that accompany it, is nothing short of a direct negation of the whole principle of the perpetuity of the marriage tie.

[322(103)] The entire edifice upon which such notion of divorce rests--the rescindability of the marital covenant--makes marriage as an institution less enduring.

Divorce on the account of adultery or some grave crime (violence against a spouse, for example) is a harder case. "For certainly the innocent party, condemned to live a solitary life under the hard law of continence, has a claim on our sympathy." But marriage is more than a contract for the convenience of two individuals; it also has a social role. And divorce, which is always an evil, may be viewed by some as the lesser of two evils. The Catholic Church has thought otherwise:

The Catholic Church has . . . absolutely prohibited divorce in the name of the higher interests of morality and social order. And the experience of centuries has clearly justified her action. We are well aware that when divorce is once sanctioned by law it slowly by surely becomes a practice in all classes of society. It works as a germ bringing social dissolution and death. In vain does legislation [or marital counseling, for that matter] attempt to restrain the growth of this evil. The time comes when the restrictions of thought to be capable of opposing further developments are swept away by the impulse of passion. . . . It was for this reason that the Founder of Christianity laid down the principle, 'what God hath joined together let no man put asunder.'

[323(104)]

Holy Family by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-82)

Let any modern argue that no-fault divorce has raised the health and welfare of family life. Let any modern argue that the current marital regime has led to more stable, more fulfilling family life. It is an impossible burden. The very opposite seems manifestly the case. In the West, the family is in shambles. And divorce and contraception are, above all, the principal culprits. They are fundamentally opposed to marriage, deny its very nature. Is it any wonder that, accustomed to such marital evils, we have lost the sense of what marriage is, and now hear arguments seriously entertained that marriage is even possible between two members of the same sex? It is but a short step, however, from marriage made artificially unfruitful to marriage by its nature unfruitful. But marriage made unfruitful, either by nature or by artifice, is no longer marriage. It is a travesty of marriage.

[S]igns are not lacking of a disturbing degradation of some fundamental values [relating to marriage and the family]: a mistaken theoretical and practical concept of the independence of the spouses in relation to each other; serious misconceptions regarding the relationship of authority between parents and children; the concrete difficulties that the family itself experiences in the transmission of values; the growing number of divorces; the scourge of abortion; the ever more frequent recourse to sterilization; the appearance of a truly contraceptive mentality.

Familiaris consortio, No. 6.

Before Mercier takes leave of his discussion of marriage and family, he briefly discusses the relationship between marriage and family and the State. "[T]he institution of the family is not the result of legislation, nor are the rights and duties of its members created by it." [324(105)] It is the height of hubris, indeed, it is absolutely tyrannous, for the State to suggest that it has the power of defining marriage through positive law. While the State should have a supportive role in its citizens' marriages, and may address certain aspects of marriage life, such as formalities of marriage, and financial and other social or public aspects of it, marriage and family life remain fundamentally outside and independent of the State. Marriage is a natural institution established by God, and is governed by natural law and natural right, which are absolutely preeminent over the State, and to which the State must be subordinate. For the State to arrogate to itself the right to re-define marriage, whether under the mantle of "equal rights" or any other pennant or standard, is an arrogation of power it does not have. In a sense, it is a claim to divinity, of power over nature, over man, and over God. The advocates of homosexual marriage are doing nothing other than feeding the ravenous appetite of a tyrannous state that sees no natural limitations on its legislative powers. If it can define marriage, it can define man, and that means he can define who is man, and who is not (as indeed it has done in legislating or by judicial opinion holding that children in the womb are not "persons" subject to legal protection).


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*Cardinal Mercier emphasizes that the fact that marriage "allay[s] in some measure the importunities of passion," that is, acts as a honestum remedium concupiscentiae, a legitimate remedy for sexual concupiscence, "must not have a preponderating influence." "Sensual gratification," Mercier reminds us, "must always be subordinated to a higher motive, for if this is sought as an exclusive end, the worst excesses may result. The union of marriage is not that of merely material organisms but of persons with spiritual natures. To be of one flesh is but a means to a closer union of soul. This the dignity of human personality requires." [316-17(99)]