The Origin and Nature of the Family

a) Meaning of Family

When a man and a woman marry, husband and wife constitute a conjugal society. When their marriage is blessed with offspring, the conjugal society becomes a family. A family is a social group composed of father, mother, and child or children. This is the strict meaning of the term family, and in this sense particularly we shall employ the word in our study. Sometimes family is enlarged in sense to include the entire domestic society> which is a group of relatives living together, with their servants and others who habitually make their home with them. The family is a natural society, prior in nature as in existence to every kind of civic group, or State, or nation, and vested with rights and duties proper to itself which no civil power can abrogate or unjustly limit. To account for the family, evolutionists ascribe its origin to the parallel development of biological, mental, and social processes. So, from loose groups of half-human animals, propagating promiscuously, mankind has progressed by successive upward stages to the recognition of the modern family-group as sacred and ideal. Notable among futile theorists who offer such an explanation of the family are Lewis Morgan (1818-1881) and Herbert Spencer (1820- 1903). There is absolutely no evidence worthy of the name scientific to support the evolutionistic theory of the family; indeed, what evidence there is, is very much the other way. It may be safely declared, without recourse to the revelation of God and the Christian consciousness of peoples, that the family has been monogamous (1. e., one wife and one husband) from the beginning, and that promiscuity in greater or lesser degree, as well as plurality of spouses, has always been recognized as exceptional, and was never a general human practice.

b) Marriage

The family has its origin in marriage. Marriage is a stable union entered into by solemn, irrevocable, and exclusive contract, by a single (or widowed) man and a single (or widowed) woman, for the purpose of begetting children, and for mutual support and helpfulness. The definition indicates the primary end of marriage as the begetting of children, that is to say, the founding of a family. The secondary end of marriage is the happiness of the spouses, their mutual support and helpfulness. Of course, both primary and secondary ends are subordinated to the ultimate end of all human acts and institutions, that is, God and unending beatitude. Marriage is meant to help man to this ultimate end, and fidelity to its proper ends will inevitably have that effect, while it renders earthly existence happy and fruitful. Marriage is a natural institution, and it is also an institution of the divine positive law. It is natural, for nature inclines man towards it, and the human race could not get on without it. Children could, indeed, be born out of wedlock, but without the stable institution of marriage and the resultant family, children could not be properly reared and trained; children could not, without marriage and the family, be given the fulness of opportunities for physical, mental, and spiritual development which their nature calls for. For, if the begetting of children is the primary end of marriage, the term begetting means more than conceiving children and giving them birth; it means the bringing of children to existence and maturity in a manner consonant with the requirements of right reason and normal human inclinations. Therefore, the primary end of marriage may be restated as the good of offspring; and this good includes conception, birth, loving care, training, unceasing affection and interest; and to give these things to children is the fundamental reason (dictated by the law of nature) which brings a man and a woman into the rounded, beautiful, and complete humanity of “two in one flesh.” Marriage is also a divine institution. In Genesis (ii, 18-24), we read: “And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself… And the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam. And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh… Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.” It is obvious from the very words here quoted that the marriage of Adam and Eve, divinely brought about, was a most close and intimate union, of itself perpetual, for begetting and rearing children. If any doubt as to the purpose of this marriage lingers in the mind of a skeptical person, it will be dispelled by consulting the context (Genesis i, 27, 28): “And God created man to his own image… male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth…” Marriage is the normal earthly destiny of most human beings. Yet is it a contract, and a contract is ever free in the sense that one need not make it; once it is made, however, it binds according to its nature and terms, and these, in the case of marriage, require its exclusiveness and perpetuity. But if a man choose not to marry, he may not be compelled. On the other hand, if a man choose to marry, he has the natural law on his side to justify his act, and no program of social “betterment” may violate his inborn right by preventing him, or mangling his body by sterilization so that he may not qualify to discharge the functions of valid marriage. A man marries for God, for children, and for his own wellbeing; and, while the best results accrue to the State from normal and decent marriage, it must always be remembered that man does not marry primarily for the State. Nor does the State have the right to direct or control marriages for its own interests (truly or falsely interpreted). Man is prior to the State and does not belong to the State; the family, founded by marriage, is also anterior to the State and is not in the essential control of the State. Therefore, those sociologists have the wrong viewpoint who seek to make marriages and families subservient to the ends of State policy. Programs framed with such a purpose cannot but be harmful and unjust. No matter what social good may be envisioned as the outcome of controlled marriages, and no matter what evils may (in theory) be avoided by sterilization and other “eugenic” measures, there is never a lawful reason for doing what is wrong in itself. And it is wrong in itself to deprive a man, guiltless of crime, of his natural rights, or to thwart and hamper their exercise. Hence, unless a man forfeit his right by crime, and so, for the period of imprisonment, be prevented from marrying; or unless a man lack the necessary qualifications (such as age, freedom, physical ability to perform the basic function of the wedded state, normality or sanity in such degree as permits his free association with fellowmen) he may not be lawfully prevented or prohibited if he wishes to marry. Summing the matter up, we may say: To marry is the inalienable right of every human being who is capable of exercising the functions and discharging the basic duties of the married state; to take away such a right is evil in itself. And it is a changeless precept of the natural law that one may never, under any circumstances whatever, do that which is evil in itself (however slightly evil) so that good (however great) may come of it. The end does not justify the means. One who is physically or mentally defective, yet not incapacitated, may not, apart from punishment for crime, be prevented from marrying. Nor may such defectives be lawfully segregated. On the subject under discussion, Pope Pius XI (Encyclical “Casti Connubii ” 1930) makes the following authoritative statements: “Public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects. Therefore, when no crime has taken place and there is present no cause for grave punishment, they can never directly harm or tamper with the integrity of the body either for reasons of eugenics or for any other cause… The family is more sacred than the State, and men are begotten not for the earth or for time, but for Heaven and eternity. Although often these individuals (that is, defectives and the unfit) are to be dissuaded from entering into matrimony, it is certainly wrong to brand men with the stigma of crime because they contract marriage, on the ground that, though they are in every way capable of matrimony, they will give birth only to defective children…” The sentimental sociologist who likes to paint a piteous picture of a poor, sordid, and overcrowded home—with, perhaps, a drunken father and a mother crushed under an intolerable accumulation of duties —and to exclaim: “Would it not be better if these hapless children, robbed of every opportunity for decent rearing, had never been born?” should be sharply checked with a decisive, “No!” Human life is valuable in itself, and if it is begotten in lawful wedlock, it is never to be regarded as a thing regrettable; nay, even the illegitimate child, once begotten, is so valuable and so desirable that no reason or sum of reasons can justify its destruction; and the regrettable thing about it is not its life or existence or lack of opportunities, but the sin against God and reason which preceded its conception. Of course, if the sociologist is a materialist and an evolutionist, that is, in more accurate and less genteel terms, a breeder of human cattle, his position, however false, is logical in view of his principles. But for the Christian sociologist to grow tearful over conditions that have their origin, at least partly, in the greed and selfishness of the so-called “upper and more desirable” classes, and to seek their cure in a further oppression of the poor and less gifted, is the height of unreason. Christ Our Lord named only one sort of person whose birth must be regarded as a regrettable thing; and this was not the poor man, nor the defective, nor the child of an overcrowded or sordid home; it was the person who does harm to minds and souls, a type perilously close in character to the modern materialistic sociologist. For the rest, while the child has a natural right to decent and normal opportunities, the^e may be in some measure supplied, no matter what the conditions or circumstances of birth; but if birth itself be denied, nothing can supply what is taken away. Again and yet again the student is reminded that essential personal value or dignity attaches to the individual human being from the moment of his conception; it does not attach to society, nor to human opportunities, nor to desirable circumstances for birth and rearing. The true sociologist keeps his scale of values properly balanced, and is never swayed by loose, facile, and fallacious sentiment. See a man as he is; see a human being against the light of eternity for which he is made; conceive in proper terms the value of human existence in itself, and you will never be misled into the absurdity which regards a child born to poverty, or a child diseased, deformed, defective, as one that had better not been born. You will not, seeing things clearly as they are, be disturbed by the whine of modern sociologists that defective and “superfluous” children are a burden to society. As though society had any rights apart from those of human beings! As though society had any function other than bearing the burdens of mankind and making them lighter! As though society had any claim to existence apart from that of acting as the natural and necessary servant of all! Therefore, let not the sociologist, with that bland and boorish impudence which is so maddening in many of the breed, go about preaching up plans and programs that would limit the right of men to marry and beget children; offering, against human rights and human liberty and human lives, the argument that if such or such men marry, society will be burdened with the care of children, probably defective and certainly poor and lacking in opportunities. The sociologist who favors this sort of argument has four things to learn, and they are fundamental in the science he professes to understand and apply: he has to learn the value of human life and dignity; he has to learn the true function of society; he has to learn that no lack of opportunities includes deprivation of the one opportunity that really matters; he has to learn the meaning and power of divine grace and divine providence. The sociologist who aims only at making men to suit the State, or breeding children in such manner and measure as will save society from the bother and expense of taking care of those who lack normal advantages, is a bad sociologist, and his influence can never make for lasting human welfare; in a word, he is not a sociologist at all. True, children have a natural right to certain opportunities. We have instanced this right as a conclusive argument for the existence of the normal family. But if this right cannot be met adequately in this or that individual family, it can be at least imperfectly supplied by other families, and by those social institutions which exist because human reason recognizes the necessity of family-life and establishes means to supply it, as well as may be, when it is lacking. Further, if the right to normal opportunities cannot always be met, it will not remedy matters to take away still other and far more urgent rights, vis,, the right to marry and beget children, and the right of children to exist. The discussion of marriage and its history usually involves a list of terms—not highly important for sociology itself—with which the student should be familiar. For this reason we append the more ordinary names given to true marriage and to exceptional and debased forms of marriage.

(a) Monogamy (from Greek monos, “one; single,” and gamein, “to marry”) is marriage to one person at a time. It means, “one husband, one wife.” (&) Polygamy (from Greek poly, “many,” and gamein) indicates a plurality of marriages simultaneously. “One husband, several wives; or one wife, several husbands.”

(c) Polygyny (from Greek poly, and fyyne, “woman”) means a plurality of wives. “One husband, several wives.”

(d) Polyandry (from Greek poly and aner [stem, andr] “man”) means a plurality of husbands. “One wife, several husbands.”

(e) Monandry (from monos and aner} means a single husband, that is, the possession by a woman of only one husband at a time. (/) Monogyny (from monos and gyne) means a single wife, that is, the possession by a man of only one wife at a time. (</) Endogamy (from Greek en3 “in; within,” and gamein) is a system which requires one to marry within the relationship, or clan, or other social group.

(h) Exogamy (from Greek ek or ex3 “out; without,” and gamein) is a system which requires one to marry outside the relationship, clan, or social group.

c) Characteristics of Marriage

The marks or characteristics of marriage are exclusiveness and permanence, or, to use the more technical terms, unity and indissolubility.

I. The Unity of Marriage.—By the unity of marriage is meant the stable union of one man and one woman, in which the wife is exclusively the wife of this man, and the husband is exclusively the husband of this woman. Opposed to unity are polygyny and polyandry, both of which are states in conflict with the natural law. Marriage is, as we have seen, a natural institution and office, and, therefore, whatever is opposed to its ends in their essential perfection, is opposed to the natural law. Now, polyandry would make it impossible to determine the father of each child or to fix responsibility for the child’s rearing, insuring to the child that care and attention which is its natural right. Further, polyandry would defeat the secondary end of marriage, for it is unthinkable that a woman and a group of husbands should dwell together in mutual love and esteem, lending one another steady support and aiding one another unto lasting peace and happiness. Finally, polyandry is obviously not required for the rounded perfection of humanity discerned in the union of the complementary sexes; for this perfection, the union of two in one flesh is manifestly all that is needed or even admissible. Polygyny is also opposed to the ends of marriage and so to the natural law. It is a manifest degradation of woman; it is not required for the adequate propagation of the race; it is not required for the perfection achieved by the union of the complementary sexes; it is (as its history proves) the fertile source of jealousy, domestic strife, and unhappiness.

2. The Indissolubility of Marriage.—By the unity of marriage we mean the union of one wife with one husband. By the indissolubility of marriage we mean its unbroken and unbreakable endurance as long as both husband and wife are alive. That marriage is indissoluble means that no earthly power can break it, or invalidate its contract, once it has been validly established. The indissolubility of marriage is neatly expressed in the phrase: “Husband and wife are inseparably husband and wife until death does them part” That marriage must have permanence is a requisite of the natural law, for without such permanence (i. e., indissolubility), the ends of marriage cannot be achieved. Marriage is not only for the procreation of children, but also for their rearing unto maturity; this is its primary end. And to achieve this end, many years are required, so that even the parents of a single child are normally beyond the age of procreating by the time the child has attained full manhood or womanhood. And at this time the secondary end of marriage begins, in a special way, to be realized. It is when children have grown up, and perhaps have gone away to found homes of their own, that the aging parents become to each other a consolation and support, and a source of mutual peace and happiness that could be found in no other union. Nay, even childless parents find the secondary end of marriage realized in greater and greater degree as the years advance. We speak, of course, of normal persons, and rightly so, for from the normal tendencies of decent men and women we safely judge the intent of nature itself. Thus, facing the facts fairly, we must inevitably conclude that the natural law requires the permanence or indissolubility of marriage. By the natural as well as the divine law, therefore, we recognize the imperative necessity of obeying the prescription, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Opposed to the indissolubility of marriage is the abominable theory and practice of divorce, and the lustful device called Companionate Marriage or Trial Marriage. Equally opposed to this necessary attribute of true marriage is the sentimental (and sexual) notion that romantic love justifies the abandoning of one’s spouse for the person who happens, at the moment, to arouse the passion of desire. Being opposed to a necessary and natural requirement of marriage, these evil theories and practices are directly in conflict with the natural law and are therefore never justified. Divorce is opposed to the natural law for the following reasons: (a) it is opposed to the naturally necessary attribute of marriage, called indissolubility; (&) it is a breach of honor, and makes a mockery of the most solemn human vows; thus it tends to destroy mutual trust among men and to take away the value of a man’s word, and the thing that does this is a fundamentally evil and destructive force in society; (£) it inflicts a grave evil upon society, for it tends to destroy the monogamous family upon the permanence of which society absolutely depends for peace, order, and welfare; (d) it is the most fruitful source of all social ills, for the records of courts, schools, reformatories, and prisons, prove beyond question that delinquency and crime, especially among the young, is due in very large measure to the breaking up of homes and families by divorce; (§) it “opens the floodgates to immorality.” Some people offer in justification of divorce the fact that it was divinely granted in ancient times. They quote Scripture to prove the point. But what God does, man cannot do. Besides, as the same Scripture testifies, marriage is in itself indissoluble. In St. Mark’s Gospel (x, 6-p) we read: “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother; and shall cleave to his wife. And they shall be two in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” And with direct reference to divorce we read (Mark x, 11—12): “And he [Christ] saith to them: Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committed! adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committed! adultery.” In the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians we read (vii, io-ii; 59): “But to them that are married, not I, but the Lord commanded!, that the wife depart not from her husband. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife. A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband die, she is at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord.” Nothing, therefore, can be clearer than the Scriptural condemnation of divorce. As for the divorce which was permitted to the Jews of old, Christ Himself says (Matthew xix, <?): “Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so ” And, as we have remarked, what Moses did by divine command was God’s work. God made the bond of marriage; God can take it away. But the point is that man cannot take it away. What God hath joined, let man not sunder. No human power can enact a valid divorce.

The sociologist inquires: “What is to be done against this terrible evil of divorce? It goes on increasing. It grows in favor, being no longer regarded as something shameful. What can be done to stop it?” Divorce certainly does go on increasing. During the last fifty years the rate of divorce has increased from something less than ten percent of the marriage-rate to something near twenty percent, perhaps over twenty percent. It has been estimated by statisticians that the present acceleration of the divorcerate will, if it remain constant, bring it to fifty percent of the marriage-rate before the current century is out. Some sociologists would remedy the evil of divorce by establishing uniform divorce-laws. They would make divorces hard to obtain, requiring, as valid grounds, most serious reasons, such as desertion and infidelity. But, while legislation in the matter is important, it is not sufficient. And such legislation as merely aims at reducing a radical evil can serve no ultimate good purpose; if a thing is fundamentally wrong, it must be extirpated. Legislation which looks merely to the reduction of the number of divorces is, while well intentioned, socially shortsighted. Besides, the history of restraining laws against divorce is not encouraging. Civil enactments for the limitation of divorce are sprinkled through the pages of the laws of all nations and times, from ancient Rome to modern France, from the Lex Julia of Augustus, the decrees of Constantine, and the

Code Napoleon, to the restriction on alien petitioners enacted in France in 1927. Lasting good has not come of these ordinances, for the evil of divorce is more rampant to-day than ever before. Surely the only sensible way of attacking the social cancer of divorce will be indicated by a study of its causes. And, fundamentally, the cause of the divorce-evil, as of all social evils, is the refusal of men to hear the words and heed the commands of Jesus Christ. In other words, the fundamental cause of social ills is the rejection, by a large majority of men, of the rule of faith and morals established by the God-Man in the Catholic Church. For, once men have lost sight of the essential truth which must illumine minds and hearts unto salvation; once the law divinely set for human wills and human conduct is ignored, society, morally speaking, goes all to pieces, and social ills of every sort afflict mankind. Without authoritative guidance, men are inevitably led by whim or passion. Without God’s law and the Cross, men unfailingly follow license in the name of liberty. Christ came to save the world for time as well as for eternity, and if fallen man will not have the Savior, fallen man cannot be saved. Fundamentally, therefore, the attack upon divorce, as upon all radical social evils, must consist in an energetic renewal of Catholic faith and practice among Catholics themselves. What is basically required for the battle against social evils is an earnest, whole-souled, persevering effort on the part of all Catholics to lead the Catholic life perfectly, and to work by prayer, example, pious association, and direct word, to spread Catholic faith and Catholic morality throughout the world. It is usual, in our day, to state this requirement succinctly by saying that what is needed is Catholic Action. “This is the victory which overcometh the world, your faith.” The general objective, therefore, in the attack on any radical social evil is the spread of the Catholic faith and Catholic morality—which, as we have elsewhere seen, means the one true faith and the one perfect and unchanging morality. Special objectives which subserve the general end indicated are many, and the sociologist, above others, must turn his earnest attention to them. With special reference to divorce, let the sociologist be watchful against legislation which would make easier the obtaining of divorces; let him frame and promote the enactment of measures looking to the abolition of the evil. Let him seek the establishment of the Catholic practice of making public announcement of prospective marriages, proclaiming banns, advertising the lists of licenses issued, requiring the issuance of license several days before the marriage-ceremony may be legally performed. By such measures many hasty and secret marriages, which so frequently end in divorce, could be prevented.

Further, let the sociologist and every decent citizen actively resist the influence of agencies, such as newspapers, magazines, novels, cinemas, which teach people in general, and the young in particular, that divorce is natural and desirable. Day after day newspapers give us stories of gay divorcees; and the shelving of a series of husbands is reported casually, as though nobody of sense could possibly object to so normal a procedure. Besides, many newspapers promote sex-consciousness and stimulate sex-impulse by page after page of feminine nudity displayed in the news and advertising columns. Out of such an influence proceeds, in a notable measure, the general spirit of restlessness and passion which renders futile the hope of universal stability even among married people. Against this newspaper evil, sociologists should promote campaigns of protest to editors and owners of papers, and, this failing, they should establish and further associations of Christian citizens who would agree to cancel their subscriptions to offending newspapers and to boycott the shops and the products which make use of indecent advertisements. It is not too much to say that the average daily newspaper can, in the space of a single month, do more harm to the morals and the spiritual tastes of young and old in a modern home, than all the books of all the atheists and anarchists could accomplish in the same home in a quarter-century. And out of such harm to morals and spiritual refinement come many social evils, sexual in character, which, at least indirectly, strike at the sacredness and stability of marriage. Magazines too, especially the more popular fiction-magazines (three-fourths of which are frankly pornographic), are equally offensive and dangerous. Yet there are parents—and Catholic parents too, sad to say—who would not think of going without their daily paper; who allow their children this daily diet, amplified with weekly or fortnightly magazines that are unfit for a sty or a brothel! Such parents, if appealed to, may dismiss the matter with a shrug, or may declare that one must (God knows why) keep up with current events and current “literature.” As if there were no decent reviews, Catholic and secular! As if there were no decent fiction to be found by interest and effort! Parents would not allow their children to be fed by contract, accepting filthy and disgusting food as daily prepared and delivered without care for the needs or tastes of the consignees. Yet they will and do accept the filthy and disgusting newspaper and magazine as the daily and weekly diet of their children’s minds and souls! The sociologist who makes his life-work consist in converting such parents to a right and reasonable view, is a sociologist in the highest and finest sense. At the moment, the cinemas of the country are a powerful influence for evil and for divorce. Not only in the fact that many of the favored pictures represent (like the novels aptly criticized by Bertie Wooster) “married couples who find life grey, and can’t stick each other at any price,” but also, and chiefly, in the fact that most patrons—especially young patrons—of the moving-pictures are fully and affectionately conversant with the lives of the actors whom they admire, and these lives are almost always a living story of frequent, facile, and whimsical divorces. The heroes and heroines of the screen are both idols and ideals to millions of youths and maidens in America. And if marriage means little to one’s idol or in one’s ideal, what wonder that it is regarded as a passing and inconsequential thing in one’s practical career ? The boycotting of bad motionpictures is urgently needed to-day. In 1934 a Catholic movement of the kind was inaugurated on a nation-wide scale. No more important or valuable sociological program has ever been enacted in America. Anything which tends to stress things sexual, to make sex a subject of curious interest, to obtrude it upon the notice of individuals, special groups, or people generally, tends also to hurt the sanctity of marriage and to imperil its stability. For sex has no legitimate use or meaning outside marriage. Loose and vicious notions on the subject cannot fail to influence those who are married, or who are to marry, to an improper estimation of the conjugal state and its exactions of exclusiveness, permanence, and unflinching fidelity. Therefore, the sociologist should set himself to curb, by whatever lawful means lie at his disposal, the restless and selfish modernity which seeks unbridled pleasure, and exalts bodily beauty, bodily fitness, bodily display, all of which have a decidedly sexual tinge. The sociologist will labor to bring into disfavor the indiscriminate and intimate mingling of the sexes, married and unmarried, divorced and hopeful of divorce, in places of private as of public amusement and entertainment. He will do what he can to direct the trend of style in dress away from its present course towards semi-nudity, recalling with Newman that, since the Fall, and especially for “civilized” (i. e., nervously alert) people, adequate clothing of the body is almost a part of nature. To these ends, associations, particularly of Catholic women and girls, could be organized and promoted. If even one-third of the present number of Catholic women and girls in America would unite to combat, by example and ardent word (and, above all—a point which even Christians so often neglect —by prayer), the evils that have so largely destroyed Christian modesty, and which react so violently against stability in marriage, we should quickly experience a great change for the better; we should breathe a cleaner air; we should find more and more persons happily, peacefully, and fruitfully married; we should hear of fewer and fewer divorces. Our Catholic academies and colleges for women should be encouraged to take the lead in forming and vitalizing such associations. This is no pious recommendation of something desirable; it is a bare indication of something absolutely requisite. “Tor,” says Father Gillis, and his words express the unvarnished truth, “unless civilization reverts to the law of Christ, it will once again be destroyed by the swiftly increasing evil of divorce.” Companionate Marriage and other forms of Trial Marriage, and of pairing without marriage, are neither more nor less than fornication and concubinage hiding behind “parlor names.” Degrading sentimentalism seeks to justify the debasing service of the flesh, and the safest way to accomplish such justification among a people content with meaningless words as an explanation, is to invent an appealing name and concoct a sticky apologetic for the evil thing. Of course, trial marriages and soul marriages and companionate marriages and all the rest of the evil litany are no marriages at all. They are one and all strictly against the natural law; for, be it repeated, sex has no meaning and no lawful use outside strict, monogamous, exclusive, permanent, faithful marriage. The sentimentalists have a wrong idea of marriage. They regard it as a matter of mating for ardent feeling, for romance; their idea of it can be gathered arty day or hour by listening to two or three popular songs delivered on the air for the millions by singers who seem to suffer a good deal of physical pain in their vocalizing. But the married state, while admitting the rapture of clean and noble romance, is, like every decent state of man, a matter of sacrifice, hard work, persevering purpose. In a word, marriage means the cross, as does every decent vocation. And, “no cross, no crown.” Christ did not hesitate to require hard service. “Take up the cross daily,” He cried. His requirements for decent human life find expression in the piercing question, “Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?” His prescription for ultimate success is patient endurance under the weight of hourly cares and trials and temptations: “He that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.” This earth is not Heaven, but the place to work for Heaven; and Heaven is not secured by sentimentalism or lawless sexuality, but by hard work. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.” And only hard, faithful, and sinless labor brings the happiness and peace which the licentious seek in sham marriage, easy divorce, and service of sex. This is the truth, yet a truth too paradoxical for the world to understand. It is the truth expressed divinely in the startling words that tell us that he who seeks his life (or his “good time”) shall not find it, but he that shall lose his life (or make sacrifices for a decent observance of the law of nature and of God) shall find happiness. We have listed the marks or characteristics of marriage tzs unity and indissolubility. These are attributes of marriage; they attach by natural necessity to its character as a natural institution and office, consisting essentially in a lifelong and irrevocable contract—a contract which has been supernaturalized and made sacred by Our Redeemer, and has been committed for ministration to His true Church. Now, there is another quality which attaches necessarily to the marriage-contract, a quality which touches the spouses and their conduct rather than the marriage itself. This necessary quality is fidelity. The virtue of fidelity has a twofold meaning with reference to a married couple. It means that their love and their interest and their marital function must admit no third party, but must ever be a matter of decency and duty between themselves exclusively. Further, fidelity means that the husband and wife must fulfil their function perfectly, without unnatural avoidance or hindrance of its effect. In a word, fidelity means that husband and wife must be true to each other, and must be true to their marital duty. We need no argument to prove that spouses who are unfaithful to each other offend against both the natural and the divine law. But we do need—such is the mental density and spiritual degradation of our times—to prove that infidelity to marital duty is contrary to law, and a thing evil in itself and never permissible. Now, infidelity to marital duty is summed up in one foul phrase, “Birth Control.” We must show that Birth Control is an evil, a social evil, a ruinous evil, which the sociologist must sturdily and steadily combat. Birth Control has been aptly defined by Mr. G. K. Chesterton as “fewer births and no control.” That sums it up neatly. It does not mean (unless carefully interpreted in a special sense) the permissible, and often praiseworthy, abstention from the marriage function. If both spouses freely consent to such abstinence, they offend against no law. What Birth Control means is that spouses do not abstain from the marital right, but employ physical, chemical, mechanical, or other artificial means to prevent the normal and natural effect of their action. In a word, it means that the spouses practise what is called contraception in the “parlor dialect” of modern filthmongers, and what Mr. G. B. Shaw more properly (if more brutally) calls “reciprocal masturbation.” Birth Control, whether practised by use of contraceptive devices or by onanism (read Genesis xxxviii, 5~io), is directly against the obvious intent and purpose of nature, and hence is in conflict with the natural law. It defeats the primary end of marriage, which is the begetting and rearing of children; therefore, it is against the natural law. It is contrary to the secondary end of marriage, for its practice inevitably leads normally decent people to an utter disgust with their state and with each other, and so they cannot possibly be to each other a source of comfort, happiness, and peace; therefore, it is against the natural law. Contraception is against the divine law, for in uniting the first man and woman in wedlock, God Himself gave the command: “Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” Birth Control is a refusal to increase and multiply, coupled with a mode of action which, if unhindered, would fulfil the law; it is thus a mockery of the law. St. Paul says (I Timothy ii> 14-15): “And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression. Yet she shall be saved through child-bearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety.” How shall the wife be saved if, while performing marital acts, she refuses the duty of childbearing? How shall the husband be saved if he is guilty, in fact or effect, of the “detestable thing” (Genesis xxxviii, 10) for which God slew the offender ? Now, an evil that is in direct conflict with the natural law or the positive divine law cannot be tolerated on any pretext whatsoever. All argument is vain. If the thing is an evil in itself, no reasons will avail to make it permissible. A thing that is evil in itself is a thing like murder, for instance; and such a thing is no more permissible than murder is permissible. People may say, “We can’t afford children,” but they say it in vain in the face of the natural and divine law; they might as well say, “We can’t afford to refrain from murder.” A man may say,

“The doctor says my wife will die if she has another child,” but he says it in vain in the face of the law. To the first complainant we may say: “Abstain then from the marriage-act. It can be done. There is such a thing as grace. And there is such a thing as abstaining from occasions and situations which invite the act. But why not follow a normal marital life, and take the children as God sends them? You will manage to get through. Faith in God and reliance on His providence are not mere pious phrases, but actual and workable realities. But if you insist in attending to matters after which the heathen seek, not minding first the kingdom of God, accept the cross and the sacrifice of the one legitimate way that is free to you. But be sure you do not offend by forcing such a course of action upon an unwilling spouse.” To the distraught husband with the second complaint we may reply: “Doctors are not infallible, nor are they legislators for human conduct. God’s law is above the rule of a physician. Besides, if your wife should die doing her duty, what more could she ask of life? Is it not a glorious death, and a martyrdom? It will mean hardship for you and the children, should she be taken, but you both risked that when you swore your solemn vows to abide by your duty ‘for better or for worse, in sickness, in health, till death? And who led you to expect that married life would be other than a life of continual hardships? You entered it with open eyes. Be man enough to stand by your bargain. But if you insist on avoiding the crucial issue, there is the way of abstinence open, provided your wife freely concurs in following it.” Artificial Birth Control is, therefore, radically and essentially evil. Nothing can make it good or right. And the sociologist, who knows that this evil is rampant to-day, and furthered by large and powerful agencies, sees his way to service. And let him consider what a source of social devastation and degradation this evil is. The advocates of Birth Control seek to take the management of human life out of the hands of Almighty God. Indeed, they ignore God and scoff at His law, and usually also at His very existence. This is a radical social evil. Further, Birth Control is preached up by easily available agencies (Father Gillis instances the fact that many little girls, aged about fourteen, procure and read the pamphlets and books describing this foul and inhuman thing), and thus it is a horrible evil in its effects upon young minds and souls. Again, Birth Control is a direct and powerful means for arousing disgust and even hatred between married couples; the natural reaction from any act of impurity is one of spiritual (and sometimes physical) nausea, and continuance means utter disgust. Thus this practice kills the love and respect that alone can secure the permanence of marriage. Birth Control is at the root of many divorces and broken homes. Not only does the practice of Birth Control lead to marital unhappiness, hatred, and divorce; it so debases the individual who is guilty of it that it kills all that is fine and manly or womanly in the heart, it destroys the appreciation of human life, it ruins the sane estimation of what sex and marriage are for, it leads a person to weigh as in a balance his own convenience, comfort, and low pleasure against the infinite and all-beautiful God and to find his own baseness a greater value than the Almighty. In a word, Birth Control brutalizes the person who practises it. And, like all impurity, it kills the virtue of divine faith. Further, it makes the home where it is practised a foul nest of vice, and the children in such a home—if any—cannot but be debased by its very atmosphere and infected by its contagion. There can be no doubt that the practice of Birth Control is the basest and most brutalizing of all social influences. There is nothing human in it; there is only lust and low love of convenience. There is no word to describe its vileness; the term bestial will not serve, for beasts do not practice it. The sociologist must be alert to prevent legislation which would open the mails to the advertisements, books, and pamphlets recommending the practice (and describing methods) of Birth Control. He must promote boycotts of such stores and shops as have contraceptive devices for sale. This was effectively done in 1934 by the Reverend Doctor Coakley of Pittsburgh, who, with one single threat to publish from his pulpit the names of offenders within his parish district, brought about a complete removal of such devices from the shops of the territory; the merchants knew their man, and they realized perfectly that what he said he would do, that he would unfailingly do. The sociologist must act positively to arouse a decent appreciation of the meaning and purpose of marriage, and must spread abroad, by the printed and the spoken word, the knowledge of the social ruin which must follow upon the continuance or the enlargement of the abominable practice of Birth Control. Educators must descend from the serene summits of academic lore to impart practical knowledge of high duty in this matter; and our Catholic institutions of higher learning must send us annually bands of splendidly instructed men and women prepared to do apostolic sociological labor against this devastating evil, and to give the world the benefit, in their own later married lives, of a living example df unblemished purity, and fidelity unshakable by any human consideration. Catholics must recognize the natural and the divine law, and accept the truth that marriage is inescapably an exclusive and permanent union that must be borne with perfect and stainless fidelity. To many non-Catholics this is “a hard saying,’’ and they refuse to hear it. Their refusal is a declaration that they will be guided neither by reason nor by revelation. Their rejection of the natural and the divine requirements for married life is a piece of mental as well as spiritual insainity. And it is also social insanity, for, as we have seen, it points inexorably to the ruin of civilization and of supportable human life. But, it is objected, are not some unions found to be intolerable? Does not this doctrine of unity, indissolubility, and fidelity, sometimes bind a man, and more frequently a wife, to a contract too burdensome to be supported by human strength? Are not some marriages utterly vile and degrading to one of the parties, and must such shame be endured inescapably till death? The objection is no poser; its validity is mere seeming. When conditions become intolerable, separation is possible, but not divorce. Hear Pope Leo XIII on this subject: “When matters have come to such a pass that it seems impossible for them [husband and wife] to live together any longer, then the Church allows them to live apart, and strives at the same time to soften the evils of the separation by such remedies and helps as are best suited to their condition; yet she never ceases to endeavor to bring about a reconciliation, and never despairs of doing so.” Separation “from bed and board” is legally permissible (and should have, for Catholics, the express approval of ecclesiastical authority in each case) when conditions are so bad as to warrant it, and when no injustice is thereby inflicted upon children or fellowmen.

Still, it is objected, separation leaves the parties without the possibility of lawfully following normal tendencies. Even so. And to the objection we offer the fine criticism wasted by Petruchio upon a trifle of ornament: “Eie! ‘tis lewd and filthy!” The celibate life, despite the denials of those who have never tried it, is not only a possibility, but for those who will take God’s ready grace, it is “a property of easiness.” Mr. George Bernard Shaw mulled over this matter and made the following honest, if somewhat puzzled, statement: “If you go to a Catholic priest and tell him that a life of sexual abstinence means a life of utter misery, he laughs, and obviously for a very good reason.” (Cf. Gillis, The Catholic Church and the Home, p. 82). Persons who never look to God for Lid or direction of life cannot understand how celibacy is possible, or, if possible, not a heavy burden. Nkturally so. “Without me,” says Our Lord, “you can do nothing.” But the celibate who, in the scriptural figure, has made himself a eunuch for the sake of Christ, knows that the requirements of his life are not really heavy, and he never adverts to them as a burden or a cross. Like the great St. Paul, he can truly say: “I can do all things in him who strengtherieth me.” Moreover, the objectors are not sincere in ^heir refusal to believe in the possibility of a celibate life. Do they believe, or, believing, do they take it for a natural and tolerable thing, that their sons and daughters, once puberty is reached, are quietly indulging in sexuality as a matter of regular custom? Are they content to think that? Does the thought stir no apprehension in the breast of a normal parent ? And is there in all the human family one decent and unmorbid husband or wife who calmly accepts the conviction that absence or protracted illness in one spouse entitles the other to indulge in infidelity? Does a decent son or daughter think that of father or mother? All human beings are called upon for celibacy or perfect continence, and for long periods of time. But what is possible for long periods, is possible for life. What shred or patch of common sense is left in the stupid statement that perfect and life-long celibacy is impossible or very burdensome? The person who makes the statement is either a fool, or is very frank in confessing what manner of a man he is. As to this business of “normal tendencies,” let it be recalled (as Mr. G. K. Chesterton finely shows in one of his essays) that, since the Fall, no man is wholly normal or natural. Human nature has been injured, and there are only two possibilities now left to us: to be supernatural or to be unnatural. There is no excusing sexuality on the ground that it is “natural”; outside the realm of lawful wedlock, sexuality is unnatural, and its impulse and invitation is to be overcome by recourse to God and the use of grace, which makes a man supernatural. Now, in the fact so much deplored by the sentimentalists, the emotionalists, the perverts, and other morbid persons, in the fact, namely, that marriage is a “world without end bargain” and a contract demanding exclusiveness, permanence, and fidelity, there is something supremely satisfying to all that is noble in heart and mind and will. There is here something of glorious finality that answers, as nothing else can, the finest fundamental requirements and tendencies of the undying soul. All decent lovers feel it, and they glory in pledging to each other a devotion that stops not short of eternity in its vows. Nay, even indecent lovers feel it, and their amours would lose all attraction beyond that of a moment’s lust, were they to admit, even to themselves and in the face of past philandering, that this love could ever die. Good, bad, and indifferent regard the thing which they dignify with the name of love as a vision and promise of unending Paradise. With poor William Sylvanus Baxter (aged seventeen) they rapturously sigh, “The real thing! At lastI” But enough of argument and example. The fact that marriage is necessarily to be regarded (by force of natural and divine law) as marked by unity, indissolubility, and perfect fidelity, and the further fact that these necessary requirements are ignored or derided so largely to-day, indicate the social evil which the Christian sociologist must combat by personal life and effort, and by forming and promoting agencies for destroying divorce, Birth Control, and marital infidelity.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned the precise meaning of family. We have indicated its character as an institution anterior to every other social group, vested with rights and duties which no State can limit or take away. We have considered the origin of the family, and have found that this is not an evolutionary process, but the institution of monogamous marriage which came into the world with the creation and mission of the first man and wife. We have seen that marriage is both a natural and a divine institution, which is the normal earthly destiny of most human beings, yet is not compulsory upon all, for those who choose may lead a life of single continence. We have considered the fundamental importance of the family, and have discerned the essential evil of institutions and devices which tend to forbid it: sterilisation, prevention, segregation. We have discussed the attributes of marriage (unity and indissolubility) and have shown the anti-social character of divorce (and evils that lead to and favor divorce). We have shown that marriage is not a matter of sentiment or passing attraction, but an enduring contract, which calls for perfect fidelity on the part of the spouses. We have seen, in consequence