FULTON 1. SHEEN





THE CHRISTIAN ORDER AND

The Family

by

RT. REV. MSCR. FULTON J. 5HEEN



Published By

THE CATHOLIC INFORMATION SOCIETY
214 West 31st St., New York City

(OPPOSITE PENN TERMINAL)



RT. REV. MSGR. FULTON J. SHEEN

T
HAT the family is disintegrating in our

national life, no one will deny. Court-

ship takes place outside the home, general-

ly in a crowded room with a low ceiling,

amidst suffocating smoke while^istenua^ tocA'f’b

a tom-tom orchestra glamoured by a girl

who invariably cannot sing. The wife

listens to radio serials with their moans,

groans, and commercials, where triangles

are more common than in a geometry book.

She reads magazine articles by women who

never stay at home, saying that a woman’s

3



place is in the home. The Family Bible re-

cording dates of birth and baptism, is no

longer existent because few read the Bible,

few give birth, and few are ever baptized.

One of the most evident symptoms of the

breakdown of the family is divorce. The

universalizing of easy divorce means that

the institution of marriage is slowly degen-

erating into State-licensed free love.

This modern polygamy and polyandry

are recognized now on condition that hus-

bands or wives, as the case may be, do not

harness other wives or husbands together

to the coach of their egotism, but that they

hitch them up in tandem fashion, or single

file. To the extent that the courts disrupt
this natural unity of a nation, they will

incapacitate themselves for international

fellowship. For if we destroy this inner

circle of loyalty, through disloyalty, how

shall we build up the larger international

circles of loyalty from which world peace

is derived ?

4



5U,\ AftCnufrC-ftTs Alts

Divorce makes the right of living souls

to love dependent on caprice of the senses

and the terminable pact of selfish fancy.

We Christians argued with those who be-
lieve in divorce, but we know no one was

ever convinced by our arguments. Not be-

cause the arguments are not sound. That is

the trouble. They are too good! Good rea-

sons are powerless against emotions. Like

two women arguing over back fences, we

are arguing from different premises. The

majority of people who are opposed to the

stability and continuity of family life for

the most part do not believe in the moral

law of God. They may say they believe in

God, but it is not the God of Justice.

Instead then of arguing against the mod-

ern pagan who believes in the disruption

of the family, let us—for the sake of argu-
ment—assume that his premises are right,
namely, that man is only an animal; that

morality is self-interest; that if there is a

5



God, He never intended that we should not

do as we please
;
that every individual is his

own standard of right and wrong
;
that the

amount of wealth one has must be the de-

terminant of the incarnations of mutual

love; that when we die that is the end of

us—or, if there be a heaven, that we all go
there independently of a moral law.

NoWTtee you start with these principles,

then certainly divorces are right; then cer-

tainly we should shirk sacrifices. If we are

only beasts, and love is sex, then there is

no reason why anyone should assume re-

sponsibility.

But why not go all the way ? By the same

principle anything is right if I can get away

with it. If bonds between husband and wife

are revocable at will and for advantage or

self-love, why should not the treaties be-

tween nation and nation be revocable at the

will of either partner? If a husband may

steal the wife of another man, why shoufd
tjTGA if-

6



not Germany steal Poland? If John Smith

can break his treaty to take Mary Jones until

death, who shall say Italy fs.wrong in break-

ing its treaties with Ethiopia, or that Japan

wrong in seizing Manchuria ?

If divorces from marital contracts, why

not divorces from international contracts?

If in domestic society moderns sneer at

marital fidelity as "bourgeois virtue,” what

right have they to ask that "bourgeois vir-

tue” be recognized in world society?

What are the Christian principles con-

cerning the family?

First, marriage is one and unbreakable

unto death, naturally and supernaturally.

Naturally, because there are only two words

in the vocabulary of love: "you” and "al-

ways”
—

"you,” because love is unique: "al-

ways,” because love is eternal. Super-

naturally, because the union of husband

and wife is modelled upon the union of

Christ and His Church, which endures

through the agelessness of eternity.

7



Second, the foundation of marriage is

love, not sex. Sex is physiological and of the

body: love is spiritual and therefore of the

will. Since the contract is rooted not in the

emotions, but in the will, it follows that

when the emotion ceases, the contract is not

dissolvable, for the love of the will is not

subject to the vicissitudes of passion.

A lifetime is not too long for two beings

to become acquainted with each other. Mar-

riage should be a series of perpetual and

successive revelations, the sounding of new

depths and the manifestation of new mys-

teries. At one time there is the revelation of

the mystery of the other’s incompleteness

—

which can be known but once, because cap-

able of being completed but once; at an-

other time, the mystery of the other’s mind;

at another the mystery of a fatherhood and

motherhood which never before existed;

and finally, the revelation of the mystery

of being shepherds for little sheep usher-

8



ing them in to the Christ Who is the door

of the sheepfolcj^ L t

Third, love by its nature is not exclusive-

ly mutual self-giving, otherwise love would

end in exhaustion, consumed in its own use-

less fire. Rather it is mutual self-giving

which ends in self-recovery. As in heaven

the mutual love of Father for Son recovers

itself in the Holy Ghost, the Bond of Unity,

so too the mutual love of spouse for spouse

recovers itself in the child who is the incar-

nation of their lasting affection. All love

ends in an Incarnation, even God’s.

Procreation then is not in imitation of

the beasts of the field, but of the Divine

God where the love that vies to give, is

eternally defeated in the love that receives

and perpetuates. All earthly love therefore

is but a spark caught from the Eternal

Flame of God.

Fourth, every child is a potential noble-

man of the Kingdom of God. Parents are

9



to take that living stone from the quarry

of humanity, cut and chisel it by loving

discipline and sacrifice, mould it on the pat-

tern of the Christ-Truth until it becomes a

fit stone for the Temple of God, whose

architect is Love. To watch a garden grow

from day to day, especially if one has

planted the seed himself, and cared for it,

deepens the joy of living. But it is nothing

compared to the joy of watching other eyes

grow, conscious of another image in their

depths.

^ C£rWi W DWldW
Fifth, at a time when the first wild

ecstasies begin to fade, when the husband

might be tempted to believe that another

woman is more beautiful than his wife, and

the wife might be tempted to believe that

another husband would be more chivalrous

—it is at that moment that God in His
Providence sends children. In each boy the

wife sees the husband reborn in all his chiv-

alry and strength, and in each girl the hus-

10



band sees his wife reborn in all her sweet-

ness and beauty. The natural impulse of

pride that comes with begetting, the new

love that overblooms the memory of a

mother’s pain as she swung open the portals

of flesh, and the joy of linked creatured in

each other’s fruit, are as so many beads in

the rosary of love binding them together

in an ineffable and unbreakable union of

love.

Sixth, if the bringing of children into

the world is today an economic burden, it

is because the social system is inadequate;

and not because God’s law is wrong. There-

fore the State should remove the causes of

that burden. The human must not be lim-

ited and controlled to fit the economic, but

the economic must be expanded to fit the

human.^ LAW fO* ^ LL
Such is the Christian position concerning

marriage, and one that is, outside the

Church, very largely misunderstood. It is so

n



often said: "They can divorce and remarry,

because they are not Catholics,” or "the

Catholic Church says so-and-so about the

duties of the married state.” No! No! No!

Divorce is not wrong because the Church

says it is wrong. Why does the Church say

it is wrong? The Church says it is wrong

because it is a violation of the natural law,

which binds all men. There is not one God

for Catholics and another God for Hotten-

tots. And all who violate the natural law

will be punished by God. A modern pagan

is no more free to break God’s law than a

Catholic.

But why does almost everyone outside

the Church associate the objection to di-

vorce with the Church ? Because the Church

is today almost alone in defending the nat-

ural law. If a time ever came when the

Church alone defended the natural truth

that two and two make four, the world

would say: "It is a Catholic doctrine. And

12



if ‘the natural law continues to be defended

almost alone by the Church, a day will

come when Catholics will have to be pre-

pared to die for the truth that it is wrong

your

altars to Life and Love while there is time

!

If you have not found the Citadel of mar-

ried happiness, it is because you have

failed to lay siege to the outer walls of

your own selfishness. The purpose of war

is not the loot of the private soldier,

neither is the purpose of your marriage

the loot of life. Like Apostles you have

been sent out two by two, not that you

may merely eat and drink, buy and sell,

but that you may enrich the Kingdom of

God with life and love and not with

death. The soil that takes the seed in the

springtime is not unfaithful to its messiah-

ship of harvest, so neither may you play

recreant to the responsibilities of love.

13



The fires of heaven which have been hand-

ed down to you as to an altar, have not

been given for your own' burning, but that

you may pass on the torch that other fires

may climb back into the heavens from

which they came.^^

Your marital love is happiest when it

becomes an earthly trinity: father, mother,

and offspring; for by filling up the lacking

measure of each in the store of the other,

there is built up that natural complement

wherein your love is immortalized in your

offspring. If love were merely a quest or

a romance, it would be incomplete ; on the

other hand, if it were only a capture and

an attainment, it would cease to rise. Only

in heaven can there be combined perfectly

the joy of the chase and the thrill of the

capture
;
for once having attained God, we

sW wH have captured something so Infinitely

Beautiful it will take an eternity of chase

to sound the depths. But here on earth

14



God has given to you who are faithful in

the Sacrament, a dim sharing in those joys

wherein two hearts in their capture con-

spire against their mutual impotence and

recover the thrill of chase in following

their young down the roads that lead to

the Kingdom of God. It was a family in

the beginning that drew a world of Wise

Men and Shepherds, Jews and Gentiles,

to the Secret of Eternal Peace. It will be

through the family too that America will

be reborn. When the day comes wherein

mothers will consider it their greatest

glory to be the sacristans of love’s fruit,

and when fathers will regard it their

noblest achievement to be stewards of

love s anointed ones, and when children

realize that nature set no limit on the

number of uncles one might have but that

a man could have only one mother—then
America will be great with the greatness

of its Founding Fathers and the greatness

of a nation blessed by God.

15



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