NSABRE,O.R Wh&t (Sod bath ioinr5 toa* ibtr. inarr.Bt.tott.XI s '* ft V . * . * =-. UCSB LIBRARY Rev. Cornelius O'Connor, , CAL. ]V[ARRIAGE. CONFERENCES DELIVERED AT NOTRE DAME, PARIS. BY VERY REV. PERE MONSABRE, o.P. Translated from the French, BY M. HOPPER. ZSHHj tfjr SluHjor's S-jjrnal Devmisston. NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO : BENZIGER BROTHERS, Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 1890. flibil bstat. H. A. BRANN, D.D. Imprimatur. * MICHAEL AUGUSTINE, Archbishop of New York. NEW YORK, January 8, 1890. Copyright, 1890, by BENZICER BROTHERS. PREFACE. THE fame of Father Monsabre as a pulpit- orator is world-wide. He holds the same place to-day in the school of sacred oratory that Fa- ther Lacordaire held, and like the illustrious pane- gyrist of O'Connell, he has filled the first pulpit of the Church in France. The Lenten conferences in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, have been preached by Pere Monsabre since 1872 with singular success. They are remarkable for learning and piety, and have had a large circulation in France and Italv. The conferences on " Marriage " have an ever- present interest, and the following translation of them will afford the English-speaking world an opportunity to read the best thoughts of the greatest of modern preachers on Marriage, Divorce, etc. CONTENTS. CONFERENCE PAGE I. THE SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE, 7 II. THE CONJUGAL TIE, 35 III. DIVORCE, Gl IV. LEGISLATION ON MARRIAGE, 88 V. PROFANATION OF MARRIAGE, - 115 VI. CELIBACY AND VIRGINITY, - 138 INDEX OF THE PRINCIPAL ERRORS CONTRARY TO THE DOG- MAS SET FORTH IN THIS VOLUME, - 169 ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS, 223 CONFERENCE I. of MY LORD ' AND GENTLEMEN : There is no need of my announcing to you the subject on which I must speak this year. You know it. In the in- teresting study of the grace of Jesus Christ which has engaged us for five years, there is only one more sacrament for us to examine. It is marriage, the second of the social sacraments, ordained for the reparation of the losses which Christian so- ciety suffers from the blows of death, and for the education of the holy race of the children of God. As the natural family is the foundation of all civil society, so the Christian family is the foun- dation of that great spiritual society which is collected, governed, and made perfect by the priest- hood. The source of the natural family is the conjugal union of man and woman, but in order to make that union the source of the Christian family, God has transferred it from the world of nature to the world of grace, by raising it to the dignity of a sacrament. This, gentlemen, is an important fact. It will serve as a principle to determine clearly the condi- tion of those united under the law of grace, and to refute the errors of those who pretend to reduce 1 Monseigneur Richard, Archbishop of Paris. 8 The Sanctity of Marriage. marriage to the condition of a profane thing and to deliver it up to the sacrilegious caprices of hu- man legislation. Allow me to make a preliminary declaration in order to clear myself beforehand from the accu- sations of those who, after having heard me, may see in me only a critic. No ^one respects human laws more than I do, but this respect is subordi- nate to my reverence for divine truth and eternal justice. If human laws contradict these two sa- cred principles, it is not I who revolt against them, it is not I who condemn them : it is truth, it is justice, of which I am an apostle, and which no fear shall ever make me betray. The subjects of which we shall treat during this short course of sermons are : the sanctity of marriage, the conjugal tie, divorce, legislation on marriage, the profanation of marriage. We shall finally speak of the states of celibacy and virginity, those most delicate, most pure, and most glorious ornaments of society, of which marriage prepares the members. To-day we shall consider the sanctity of mar- riage in its primitive institution by God, the Crea- tor of humanity, and in its exaltation by Christ, the author of the sacraments. My Lord, I have received too kind and too precious encouragements from the place where Your Grace to-day presides over this large and distinguished assembly, not to offer to the vener- able prelate who gave them to me the public hom- age of my sincere regret and of my filial gratitude. The Sanctity of Marriage. 9 One thing alone consoles me for his absence, name- ly, to continue, under the auspices of Your Grace, the work which your venerable predecessor con- fided to me ; for I am sure to receive from your paternal heart the same kindness and affection, and from your sacred hands the same blessing. After having established the foundations of the earth and ordered its elements, God resolved to adorn it, and created those living agencies to whom He gave the command to increase and mul- tiply : Crescite et multiplicamini. ' This short epi- thalamium inaugurated universal marriages in the plains and in the air, on the mountains and in the depths of the sea. It preceded the appearance of humanity by a long epoch. Discreet hymen of flowers in the depths of their scented corollas, loving meetings of living creatures, who move about seeking for companions to propagate their species in new families. This union of pairs and this multiplication of life is full of venerable mys- tery, because God has put in it something of His own infinite power and eternal vitality. In obedi- ence to the divine command, individuals form the completion each of the other, in order to become one single principle of life. Partners of the fecund- ity of God, they perpetuate that which must perish, and prolong through time and space the effica- ciousness of the act of creation. 1 Gen. i. 22. io The Sanctity of Marriage. This mystery, gentlemen, grows with life. God had adorned the earth only to prepare it to re- ceive its king. He calls him from within Himself : "Let us make man," He says: Faciamus lio- minem ; let us make him to be master : Fitcitiinus ut prczsit; 1 and He makes him after His own image and likeness, so great, so beautiful, so per- fect, that all living creatures shnll come by and by to his feet, shall recognize his dominion and receive from him their appropriate names. 2 Man has all that is needful in order to command, and yet God pronounces that it is not good for him to remain alone, and that He must make him a help like unto himself : Non est bonum esse hominem solum ; fiuiamus ci adjut or him simile sibi. 3 I have already told you, gentlemen, when we were studying the origin of humanity, that man should imitate the principle of his being, the tendency of which is to communicate itself , because he cannot keep to himself all the germs of life which. God has placed within him. According to the profound reflection of St. Thomas, the high functions of human intelligence should not be sacrificed to the lower functions, whence the life of the body springs ; therefore " a help " is need- ful for man, in whom all the passive power of par- entage shall reside, while he, as sovereign dispen- ser, retains all the active strength. " There- fore let us make for man," said the Lord, " a help 1 Gen. i. 26. * Ibid. ii. 19, 20. 3 Ibid. ii. 18, The Sanctity of Marriage. \ I like unto himself : " Faciamus ci adjutorium simile sibi. ' Whence shall come this help ? From the dust from which man sprang ? No ! Man would cease to be, like God, the only and first principle of the life of his race if the human being to be united to him were not taken from his side. " Sleep, My son," said God, " sleep." And under the influence of a divine magnetism, Adam, lying down on the flowers of Paradise, is overcome by a mysterious sleep, during which God takes away one of his ribs, reclothes it with flesh, and makes for this part of animate man another soul, woman, the charm- ing and chaste spouse of the slumberer. 2 All astonished at the life she has just received woman waits To the marriage ! to the marriage ! King of the world, awake ! Adam awakes. He beholds with his eyes her whom he has seen in a prophetic dream, and understands that in her shall be accomplished his perfection. He is intelligence, she is love ; he is thought, she is sentiment ; he is majesty, she is grace ; he is strength, she is gentleness ; he is command, she is influence ; he is the sower of life, she is the fer- tile earth where life shall germinate. He admires her, he is softened, he is inflamed, and from his heart, filled with a new love, bursts forth the cele- brated epithalamium which reveals to the world of the future the essence and the holy laws of mar- 1 Cf. Exposition of Catholic Dogma, conference 26 : Humanity in Adam, part I. 2 Gen. ii. 21, 22. 1 2 The Sanctify of Marriage. riage : " This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she \vas taken out of man. Wherefore a man shall leave fa- ther and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh." ' To this cry of love God replies by a blessing .whence humanity springs, and which submits to man's dominion the creatures which He has already blessed and multiplied : " In- crease and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over " all that it contains : Crescitcct mul- tiplicannni ct replete terram, et subjicite earn, et doini- namini ... * Such was the first marriage, the typical marriage. I beg you to consider well its essence, for to this fundamental truth are allied those important ques- tions of rights and duties of which we shall pres- ently speak. According to current opinion, the essence of marriage consists in the exchange of two free acts by which a man and a woman give themselves each to the other, in order to reproduce their own life, to create a family, and to perfect themselves mu- tually in one common life. I am not afraid of making a mistake when I affirm that, whilst taking into account the blessings of the Church, to which you attribute the virtue of giving a sacred charac- ter to the conjugal union, the greater number of 1 Hoc nunc os ex ossibus meis, et caro de carne mea. Haec voca- bitur Virago, quoniam cle viro sumpta est. Quamobrem relinquet ho- mo patrem suum et mntrem, et adhserebit uxori suae, et erunt duo in carne una. Gen. ii. 23, 24. * Ibid. i. 28. The Sanctity of Marriage, 1 3 you have no other idea of marriage. It is a pure and simple contract, of which the whole essence consists in the reciprocal act of the giving and ac- cepting of persons. Allow me to tell you, there is an error in this. Assuredly, marriage is a contract, but a contract which in no way resembles other human contracts. It is the most exalted, the most venerable, I would almost say, the most extraordinary of contracts. What man therein transmits is not one of those subordinate benefits which are the accessories of his person or of his life ; it is not his field, his house, his flock, his fortune, his labor, his services, the fruit of his intelligence and industry ; it is himself, his own person, his living person, and with his person, the benefits which depend upon and are allied to it, and on his person, the most delicate and intimate rights. Man has dared to lay hands on his fellow-man. Abusing his strength, he has seized on human lives powerless to defend themselves against his brutal- ity : he has created slavery. " They are mine," said he formerly of the miserable creatures whom he enslaved to serve his wants, his greed, his caprices, his passions, and his vices. " Mine ! " ferocious and sacrilegious cry, which recalls the saddest days of humanity. " Mine ! " Oh, no ! Man has not the right to say that of another man. Two beings alone can say one to the other, " thou art mine," because they have freely and entirely given themselves to each other. Thou art mine ! I am thine ! it is the cry which thrilled through Eden when the father 14 The Sanctity of Marriage. and mother of the human race were married under the eye of God. Man and woman give themselves to each other by the exchange of their will and consent. But why ? Is it only in order to obey the divine com- mand which wills that the creative act, of which humanity is the issue, should be indefinitely pro- longed throughout the ages? Is it only for the happiness of seeing themselves live again in the offspring which resembles them ? Is it only for the honor of preserving in the bosom of human society a centre of life on which its existence and strength depend? No, the multiplication of species is an honor to marriage, but it is to a far higher, more delicate and intimate benefit that the conjugal union tends. This benefit is the intermingling of two lives to form one ; the mutual perfecting of these lives each by the other. It is the union of mind and heart : Cor unum et anuna una. It is one dis- position giving or imprinting on the other that wherein it is weak, natural qualities moderating and balancing each other, virtues communicated from one to the other in harmonious degrees. All these perfections are for the benefit of the hus- band and the wife who acquire them, and still more for the benefit of the children whom they shall bring up after having given them life. To the material birth succeeds a birth far more noble and in more need of care: the birth of an intellectual, moral, and religious life. To this work the two perfected lives of man and woman apply their virtue ; and this work is the sublime end of their contract. We The Sanctity of Marriage. \ 5 can learn from the manner in which the contract is carried out the influence of the motive which decided the union of will and consent. Between man, woman, and child there is a fellowship of love, which love alone has been able to found. Not that love which belongs merely to the senses, a blind and passing passion that fades as soon as it is satisfied, but the love of the heart, of a wise heart, illuminated by reason, of a heart which is not foolishly smitten with ephemeral charms, that the eyes alone can enjoy, but which seeks in respect and esteem the seat of a faithful and lasting attach- ment. Such is the matrimonial contract in its object, its end, its intention. It makes one understand the difference between the two benedictions by which God communicates His fecundity to living things. To plants and animals He says only, " In- crease and multiply : " Crescite ct multiplicamini. It is sufficient. The immovable and silent flower allows the fertile dust which shall reproduce it to fall, or itself unconsciously appropriates it; the animal obeys the unerring laws of instinct which impel it to seek a companion ; its fecundity is the result of a brute companionship, and its transient union in no way changes its nature. But to man and woman, who use their reason and their heart in the choice of the being to whom they unite their life ; to man and woman, who freely and entirely give themselves to each other ; to man and woman, who know themselves to be participators in the work of God ; to man and woman, who compre- 1 6 The Sanctity of Marriage. hend the great honor of parentage ; to man and woman, who are perfected and communicate their perfection in conjugal society ; to man and woman, who are not united like the creatures of an inferior species, but who marry to them God owed an ampler and more glorious benediction. God had already raised the human pair to the summit of nature ; He now adds the empire of the world to the promise of fecundity and to the commandment of reproduction : " Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth : " Crescite, et multiplica- mini, et replete terram, et subjicite earn, ct dominamini piscibus marts, et volatilibus caeli, et universis animan- tibus, qua moventur super terram. ' Such was the worthy consecration of that venerable and extra- ordinary contract the object of which is so pre- cious, the end so noble, the motive so pure and so sweet. Nevertheless, this contract is not the very es- sence of marriage. If theologians have called marriage a contract, it is in order to declare its cause, 4 and not to determine its essence. You ask, what, then, is its essence? Listen well and under- stand fully, for we are now laying down a principle of supreme importance for the whole of our doc- trine on matrimony. The essence of marriage is the union, the obligation, the tie resulting from per- 1 Gen. i. 28. 2 Causa matrimonii regulariter est mutuus consensus per verba de praesenti expressa. Cone. Flor. The Sanctity of Marriage, 17 feet mutual consent. 1 Marriage has been defined by law "to be the marital union of man and woman between legitimate persons, holding them bound together in one common life " : viri et mulieris con- junctio niaritalis, inter legitimas pcrsonas, individnam vita consuetudinem retinens. This definition has passed from law into theology, and from theology into the typical catechism, where we should seek the pure idea of Christian dogma. 2 It is the legal and scholastic translation of the poetic effusion of our first parent when he exclaimed : " A man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh " : Eterunt duo in carne una. You will say to me, no doubt, that from perfect mutual agreement there results an obligation, a tie, and that it is sufficient to determine the es- sence of marriage, if we are content to call it a contract. Pardon me, no, it is not sufficient, for the tie which is the result of the matrimonial con- tract is not the same as that which is the result of other contracts. 1 St. Thomas says of the matrimonial union that it is made ad modum obligationis in contmctibns materialibus (Supp. quoest. 45, a. 2). But this union is marriage itself: conjunctio potest acdpi pro ipsa rela- tione qua est matrimunmm (Ibid, qutest. 48, a. 5, ad. 2). Docendum est, quamvis hoec omnia in perfecto matrimonio insint, consensus videlicet interior, pactio externa verbis expressa. obligatio et vinculum quod ex pactione efficitur, et conjugum copulatio, qua matrimonium consummatur ; nihil horum tamcn matrimonii vim et rationem habere, nisi obligationem islarn, cl nexnin qui conjiinctionisvocabuloappellalur. Catechism. Trid., part 2, T)e matrimonii sacramento, no. 5. 2 Institut. i. 9 ; Magist. Sent. ; Catechism. Cone. Trid., loc. cit. 1 8 The Sanctity of Marriage. In human agreements, obligation is to some extent confounded with consent, because it abso- lutely depends upon it. All the customary con- tracts of social life : sales, exchanges, leases, service, bequests, and the like, can be cancelled at the will of those who made them. For a contract to be broken and for its obligation to cease, it is suffi- cient that the wills which had agreed in one sense should then agree in an opposite sense. ' It is not so in the matrimonial contract. The man and the woman who marry give themselves each to the other, but this gift, once made, depends no longer on mutual agreement. The united pair will say in vain, we were deceived, life to both of us is a burden too heavy for our weary shoulders, let us withdraw from our agreement. They cannot withdraw, for they are united, not by the strength of their wills alone, but by a mysterious power, which has seized them, bound them together in a common life, and on which henceforth they de- pend. This mysterious power is the very hand ot God, the author of our nature, giving to the conjugal union a religious and sacred character in which men can change nothing. * This character is not an accidental addition to the contract. It arises from the contract itself; it is the special 1 Qtur consensn contrahnniiir contrario consensu dissolvnntur. This is, says Pothier, a principle common to all mutual contracts. Contract of Marriage (Esfwitsals,') part 2, chap. vii. 2 Conjunctio potest accipi pro ipsa relatione, quse est matrimonium, et tails semper est a Deo.Summ. Theol. supp., qunest. 48, a. 2, ad. 2. Tfic Sanctity of Marriage. 19 mark which distinguishes and separates it from all human contracts. l Marriage is holy in its first institution : " it is so by its own strength and nature, and of itself, " says a memorable encycli- cal : Matrimonium cst sua vt, sua natura, sua spontc sacrum" a Antiquity bears witness to this sanctity. Consult its monuments, study the man- ners and institutions of the nations best governed and most skilled in the knowledge of law and justice, and you will see, as by a kind of antici- pation of the mysteries of the future, marriage appear under the form of an act permeated with religion and sanctity, and the nuptials consecrated by ceremonies of worship, by the authority of pontiffs and the ministry of priests ; so great has been the power of the voice of nature, of the remembrance of our origin, and of the conscience of the human race even on the souls whom reve- lation has not enlightened. Ita magnam in animis ccelcsti doctrina carcntibus vim habuit natura rernm, meuioria originum, conscicntia generis humani. 3 Gentlemen, it is the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII. 1 Inest in eo sacrum et religiosum quidclam, non adventitium, sed ingenitum, non ab hominibus acceptum, sed natura insitum. Leonis XIII. Encyclic. Arcanum divinte sapientig. 8 Ibid. 3 Testantur et monumenta antiquitatis et mores atque instituta po- pulorum qui ad humanitatem magis accesserant, et exquisitiore juris et aequitatis cognitione pnestiterant : quorum omnium mentibus in- formatum anticipatumque fuisse constat, ut cum de matrimonio cogi- tarent, forma occurreret rei cum religione et sanctitate conjunctoe. Hanc ob causam nuptiae apud illos non sine cceremoniis religionum, auctoritate pontificum, ministerio sacerdotum fieri scepe consueverunt. Ita magnam, etc. Ibid. 2O The Sanctity of Marriage. who has just spoken. His infallible authority reminds us that nature has made marriage a holy thing, a thing more holy still if we consider the dignity of the sacrament. n. The divine institution of marriage had for its end, not only the reproduction of human nature in its species, but also a perpetuation of a race holy as the pair who should beget it. We can conjecture what it would have been in a state of innocence, if we remember the original perfection of our first parents. The nobleness, majesty, and grace of their bodies, the complete harmony of line, feature, tone, and movement, moulded by God Himself, and animated with a breath of life which manifests itself through an immaculate flesh, radiates on a royal brow, and makes us ad- mire in its virginal beauty the double expansion of grace and of a perfect nature. A body free from the humiliating servitude of matter and giv- ing up to a contemplative life the leisure of a full expansion ; a soul illumined with divine knowl- edge, sensitive to the touch of grace, accustomed to the visits and love of God, invested with sover- eign empire over the creatures of this world. Happy pair, bound by an unquenchable love in a place of delights, and for whom all is holy, even in the flesh whose chaste nakedness they behold without blushing, of whose rebellion and criminal pleasures they are ignorant ; venerable stock and most pure offspring which they beget without The Sanctity of Marriage. 2 1 shame and pain, and to whom they communicate as a birthright the integrity and privileges of their sanctified nature. ' Who can express the joys and glories of this union ! Alas ! these joys and glories have passed like a dream. The union of our first parents was not long what God had made it. Man by disobe- dience frustrated the designs of his Creator, and gave a mortal wound to his nature, the effects of which should be felt by all his race. Marriage did not cease to be a divine thing, and was long respected in the traditions of humanity, but against the sacred recollections transmitted from age to age the passions of fallen nature plotted a univer- sal conspiracy. They obtained the mastery, and the holy laws of marriage were soon everywhere de- spised. God, to punish woman, had overwhelmed her with the weight of this terrible curse : Subviri potcstatc cris, ct ipse doniinabitur tui:" 1 "thou shatt be under thy husband's power, and he shall have dominion over thee." Awful to say, man has abused this divine curse even to the most abomi- nable excesses of injustice and cruelty. Chaste love and the oaths of Paradise, he forgot them all. Woman was no longer the inseparable companion of his life, for whom he should leave all, the help who asked of him an undivided heart, bone of his bones with whom he should make but one flesh. He appeared as a sensual and implacable despot, 1 Cf. Exposition of Catholic Dogma, conference 26: Humanity in Adam, part 2. * Gen. iii. 16. 22 The Sanctity of Marriage. multiplying unions, assembling around him many women, repudiating, selling, giving, exchanging, treating as a slave the mother of his children. No decent pen would dare relate all the dishonors of the conjugal union amongst the gentiles. God had separated from the gentiles a peo- ple who were to give their blood to the Deliverer Whom the world expected. Guardians of the sacred traditions of humanity, they honored mar- riage more than other nations, and yet, because of the hardness of their hearts, which rendered them capable of staining the domestic hearth with bloody acts of violence, God relaxed the ties of the primitive institution, and they, abusing this in- dulgence, took liberties which the rigorous formal- ities of the law were unable to restrain, and which tended to assimilate their manners with those of the heathen. The divine institution of marriage was every- where assaulted, and threatened to crumble to the dust. It was time that a God came to restore it. Behold Him ! He enters the world by the ineffa- ble and eternal marriage of His infinite nature with ours, and among all the reparations which He meditates and undertakes, He does not forget that of conjugal society. During the early days of His public life He is present at a wedding and honors it by the first of His miracles ; ' a miracle figurative of the wonderful transformation He de- sires to work in the union between man and woman. At His command, water changes into wine ; at His 1 St John ii. l-ll. TJie Sanctity of Marriage. 23 command, natural marriage, already holy, becomes a sacred sign among things divine, becomes a source of grace, a sacrament. ' He does not yet declare His design ; and when interrogated by the Pharisees on the delicate question of divorce, He escapes from their entanglements by leading them back to the primitive institution of marriage. " Have ye not read," He said, " that He Who made man from the beginning made them male and female ? And He said : For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore they are not two, but one flesh." Ita- 1 Per hoc ergo Dominus invitatus venit ad nuptias, ut conjugalis castitas servaretur et ostenderetur sacramentum nuptiarum. S. Aug., Tract, ix. in Joan. no. 2. Christus ipse cum discipulis suis invitatus venit [ad nuptias] non tarn epulaturus, quain ut miraculum faceret, ac prceterea generationis principium sanctifiraret, quod ad carnem nimirum attinet. Conve- niebat enim, ut qui naturam ipsam hominis renovaturus erat, non so- lum iis, qui jam in ortum vocati erant, benedictionem impertiretur, sed et iisquoque, quipostea nascituriessent, gratiamprrcstitueret, et eorum ortum sanctum efficeret : Kti^iijftlvoy 8s XjHff-os x,ai auTot; Tmq ot^etotq tx,v'iTai ls QmttutToopff^ewv ft3JJiov } ij~p ffTtttff6ftwt t STL TS OUTOJ Xo si yap Tyy avffpancou baiv foazfvTa, TOV yvvT]ffdii.V()v ) TOV dvaffps^'d jSi ZjUtvov TI i'^ouffTfj TT^oo? auTov xpofftyiMaTai, x,at xdvTtov npoTifjio. S. Chrys., Homil. xx. /// Epist. ad n. 4. TJtc Sanctity of Marriage. 27 in giving themselves to each other, ought mutual- ly to sanctify each other. And this is why mar- riage is a great sacrament : Sacrament inn hoc mag- num cst. Besides, gentlemen, if even in this place the au- thority of the Apostle should be disputed, it must be admitted in the universal and constant tradition of the Church, which is and only can be an echoof apostolic doctrine. Now, according to the lan- guage of tradition, " marriage is a union sealed with the blessing of God." ' It is not sufficient that the persons jointly con- sent and give themselves to each other ; the author of grace must intervene. By virtue of His inter- vention the union is both sanctifying and sancti- fied. 2 Divine grace penetrates and strengthens it by tightening the bonds. 3 1 Quod (matrimonium) Ecclesia conciliat, et confirmat oblatio, et obsignat benedictio. Tertul., lib. ii., Ad Uxorem, cap. viii. Nam quod in ipsa conjunctione connubii a sacerdote benedicatur, hoc est a Deo primo in ipsa conjunctione hominis factum est. S. Isidor Hispal.. De origin* Efdes., lib. ii., cap. xix. * Neque vero nos negamus sanctificatum a Christo esse conjugium. S. Ambros., Epist. ad Siricttm Papatn, n. 5. Bonum nupttarum per omnes gentes, atque omnes homines in causa generandi est in fide castitatis ; quod autem ad populum Dei pertinet, etiam in sanctitate sacratnenti. S. Aug., De bono conjugal', cap. xxiv., n. 32- 3 Si ergo ratum est apud Deum matrimonium hujusmodi, cur non et prospere cedat, ut pressuris, et angustiis, et impedimentis, et inquina- mentis non ita lacessatur, habens jam ex parte divinae gratice patroci- nium. Tertul. lib., Ad Uxor., cap. vii. Cognoscimus veluti prsesulem custodemque conjugii esse Deum, qui non patitur alterum thorum pollui ; et si qui fecerit peccare eum in Deum, cujus legem violat gratiam solvat ; et ideo quia in Deum 28 The Sanctity of Marriage. It is a sacrament; 1 and in Christian marriages the sanctity of the sacrament is more important than the fecundity of the womb: In cliristianis nnptiis plus valet sanctitas sacramenti quant foecundi- tas uteri. " A sacrament ! We see this word written in all the councils, the liturgies, and in all sacramentaries. Eastern heresies and the great Greek schism did not efface it. It resounds in all the theological schools of the middle ages ; we scarcely find in the crowd of the masters of sacred science an original scholastic who is doubtful about its meaning. 3 After this, gentlemen, let Luther deny the trans- formation worked by Christ in marriage ; let Calvin assert that to marry, to labor, to make shoes, are things no more sacred one than the other; let legislators endeavor to reduce marriage to the condition of a purely profane contract ; it is indeed high time after fifteen centuries of a teaching which has never varied and which refers to Christ Himself the sanctification of Christian marriage. The Council of Trent was right when it said: peccat, sacramenti coelestis amittit consortium. S. Ambros., lib. i., De Abraham, cap. vii., n. 59 1 In nuptiis bona nuptialia diligantur proles, fides, sacramentum. S. Aug., lib. i., DC myst. et concitpisc., cap. xvi. n. 19. Hujus procul dubio sacramenti res est ut mas et fcemina connubio copulati, quamdiu vivunt, inseparabiliter perseverent. S. Aug., lib. i., De nuptiis, cap. x., n. 2. 2 S. Aug., De bono conjngali, cap. xviii., n. 21. 3 Council of Verona, 1181; II. Council of Lyons, 13^4; Sacramen- tarians of St. Leon., 461 ; of St. Gelasius, 496; of St. Gregory the Great; Greek Sacramentarians ; Liturgies of the Nestorians, Copts, Jac- obites, Armenians. (Cf. Perrone, Detnatrimonw christiano, tome i., cap. i.. i., art. i.) The Sanctity of Marriage. 29 " If any one says that marriage is not truly and properly one of the seven sacraments of the Gospel Law, instituted by Christ Our Lord, but that it has been invented in the Church by men, and that it does not confer grace, let him be ana- thema." ' Observe, the council does not say there is a sac- rament in marriage, but that marriage itself is a sacrament. These words are of sovereign impor- tance. They protect the conjugal union against the usurpations of which we shall have to speak, and teach us that we ma)' not separate these two things : the human act by which man and woman give themselves to each other, and the divine act by which grace is conferred. Like the religious and sacred character given to the conjugal tie by the mysterious power whose intervention in the natural marriage we have already stated, so also the sac- rament arises from the contract. I say more : it is the contract itself, the contract invested by God with the power to produce grace in the same way as all outward signs which He, their supernatural author, has made the instruments of His almighty power. We cannot, then, say : here is the marriage, there the sacrament ; the marriage contracted by the exchange of consent, the sacrament poured out like a beneficent oil on the contracted union. No. It is in the very exchange of consent that 1 Si quis dixerit niatrimonium non esse vere et proprie unum ex septem legis Evangelic* sacramentum a Christo Domino institutum, sed ah hominibus in Ecclesia inventum ; neque gratiam conferre, anathema sit. Sess. 24, De Matrimonio, can. I. 30 The Sanctity of Marriage. the sacramental elements are found, from which there results not only a purely natural tie, as in primitive marriage, but also a supernatural tie, im- pregnated and penetrated with the grace of God. Understand clearly this mystery, husbands who become by your union the stock of the Christian family, and recognize your .dignity. You have received in baptism a participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, a character has been imprinted on your souls, sinking deeply into them as one makes deeper the canals through which shall pass the waters of a great river. This character gave you a right to the bounty and benefits of the divine life, and I have said it was a passive power, by which your regenerated souls became apt to receive sacred things. I ought to add to-day that for one circumstance in the Christian life there is in the baptismal character an active power which makes you resemble more closely the priesthood of Christ : it is the power of giving at the same time that you receive it the sacred thing which transforms mar- riage and makes it more holy than God made it at the beginning of the world. When, standing in front of the altar and under the eyes of the Church, the young persons about to be united give their hands to each other, they are priests, priests like the sublime man whose greatness we lately celebrated, for, like him, they make and give a sacred thing. They say : Will you take me, I give myself. It is the matter of the sacrament. They answer : I receive you for mine. It is the form of the sacrament. And The Sanctity of Marriage. 3 1 when the donation and acceptation are joined on both sides, the supernatural tie is made, grace bursts forth, the sacrament is perfected. This sacrament does not pass away, says a learned theologian; it remains like the ineffable mystery which we adore on our altars and in our tabernacles. Just as the eucharistic species remain after the act which consecrates them, as the symbol of the spiritual food which they contain, so like- wise the ordinary life of Christian husbands and wives, the outward manifestation of the tie which binds them, remains as the symbol of the indissolu- ble union between Christ and His Church, which it imitates. ' This is why St. Paul calls marriage a great sacrament: Sacrajncntmn hoc magnum cst. Further, gentlemen, this sacrament continues in the conjugal tie with all the virtuality which the exchange of oaths has given to it. It is not only before the altar that it produces grace, it retains the power of producing it in all circumstances and whenever the ordinary life of Christian husbands and wives requires it. And what grace ! The holy Council of Trent has described it in a few words which leave nothing unsaid : " It is a grace 1 Est matrimonium simile Eucharistice, quae non solum dum fit, sed etiam dum permanet, sacramentum est. Dum enim conjuges vivunt, semper eorum societas sacramentum est Christ! et Ecclesise. . . . Nam negari non potest ipsos conjuges, simul cohahitantes, sive exter- nam conjugum societatem et conjunctionem, esse materiale symbolum externum Christi et Ecclesioe indissolubilem conjunctionem referens, quemadmodum in sacramento Eucharistire, consecratione peracta, rema- nent species consecratze, quae sunt symbolum sensibile atque exter- num interni alimenti spiritualis. Bellarmin, De Jfatrimonio, cap. vi. 32 The Sanctity of Marriage. which perfects natural love, strengthens the union into an absolute indissolubility, and sanctities the persons married. ' Natural love allows itself to be captivated by those fragile charms which the cruel hand of time never spares. Every day this pitiless ravager of human beauty does its work. It fades the radiant color of youth, deforms the features, wrinkles the forehead, sprinkles the hair with its frost, bends the body, destroys, one after another, the attrac- tions which speak to the eye, and at last there only remains before one a disfigured idol, which causes the foolishly captivated heart only regret of its fond adoration. Natural love, however well founded on respect and esteem, does not always withstand the sudden revelations which place under our eyes the imper- fections, faults, and vices of which we had not dreamt. Our shaken security, our menaced peace, discourage the poor heart, which believed itself so steadfast, and invite it to cease loving. Natural love, in a fallen creature, but little master of his passions, wearies of being attached to the same object. Inconstancy and caprice turn him, alas! too easily towards another, by whose side he for- gets both his duty and his vows. Lamentable weakness, from which marriage has suffered in all ages ! 1 Gratiam vero, qure naturalem ilium amorem perficeret et indisso- lubilem unitatem confirmaret, conjugesque sanctificaret, ipse Christus, venerabilium sacramentorum iustitutoratque perfector, sua nobis passi- one promeruit. Sess. 24, De Matritnoiiio. The Sanctity of Marriage. 33 But since it has been sanctified by Christ, grace perfects love. It renders it wise. It teaches it that nothing is perfect here below ; that the infinite beauty of God is the only ideal capable of satisfying a heart eager for perfection ; that when men have not all that they would wish, they must love what they have. It purifies the natural eye, renders un- comeliness bearable, infirmity touching, and old age and white hairs lovable. Grace makes love patient. It strengthens it against the shock of known faults and against the too sudden revelation of those faults which have escaped its observation. Grace makes love just and merciful. It persuades it easily that, if we have to suffer, we make ourselves suffer, and that in married life more than elsewhere the evangelic- al maxim must be put into practice : " Bear ye one another's burdens." Instead of reproaches, it sug- gests excuses. It changes recrimination into good counsel, wise exhortation, gentle encouragement, amiable correction ; it inclines the hearts, which it softens, to pardon easily. Finally, grace makes love faithful in duty ; it makes it see in a bright dav- light, which the clouds of fancy, caprice, misconcep- tion, and falsehood cannot darken, and makes it find in constancy an honor and joy for which it thanks God, He Who is so faithful even to those who injure Him. True, gentlemen, this perfection of natural love by grace is already a strong guarantee of solidity for the conjugal tie, but the sacramental act con- tributes more to its support. It lays hold of it, 34 The Sanctity of Marriage. transforms it, and so tightens the cords that they can be neither stretched nor broken. By render- ing it more sacred through the permeation of His infinite virtue, God pledges Himself to show no more that indulgence for human weakness which obtained from Him formerly those permissions and dispensations which our perverse nature has so greatly abused. Such is marriage. Twice honored by the inter- vention of God, at the solemn epochs of the crea- tion and the redemption, it demands our respect, and I have the right to say to men : Touch it not, it is a holy thing. Yes, it is a holy thing. You must be deeply imbued with this truth, if you wish to agree with me in the conclusion which 1 shall draw from it. This conclusion can only con- firm the words of St. Paul : This is a great sacra- ment : Sacramentum hoc magnum est. CONFERENCE II. i*. MY LORD' AND GENTLEMEN: While it is re- quired for a perfect marriage that the man and the woman inwardly consent to give themselves to each other, and that their consent be expressed by a verbal contract, yet the essence of marriage is not in the consent so expressed. Nor is it in the mu- tual giving and receiving of their persons. It is in the bond and the obligation which theologians call conjunctio^ and the Roman Catechism, the conjugal tie. That catechism is wholly impregnated with the spirit and doctrine of the holy Council of Trent, and from it I borrow the central idea from which proceed and around which gravitate the truths which I am about to explain. The conjugal tie, made and knotted by the con- currence of two powers, the human will and the divine will, is the very essence of marriage. This tie, sacred in itself and made more sacred by the institution of the Sacrament of Matrimony, is a tie which cannot be divided, a bond that cannot be broken. It is one and indissoluble. These are the qualities of marriage which we must study. There is no need, gentlemen, of asking your 1 Monseigneur Richard, Archbishop of Paris. '* See Latin text in notes of preceding conference. 35 36 The Conjugal Tie. closest attention to this subject. You know well its importance at the present time, and you will, I hope, scrupulously attend to the development of these two propositions: First, The indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie is a divine law. Second, That law is a law of progress and perfection in nature. God, Who is the principle of life, has diffused that principle throughout the world with bound- less liberality, but He has not left it to itself. He has regulated the evolutions and determined the conditions of these prolific unions by which life is propagated. In this God is the absolute Master, and His will is the law of the beings whom He as- sociates in His continued act of creation; but, gentlemen, when God had separated from every living thing the two privileged beings to whom He gave the empire of the world, and who were to be the stock of a race marked. with the seal of the likeness of God, He willed that they should be in- dissolubly united to each other. If He did not express His will in words, as He did with regard to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, He spoke secretly of His design to the heart of the first man, and it was by a divine instinct, says the Church, that the father of humanity pronounced those celebrated words which I have lately quoted to you : " This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh ; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Wherefore a man shall leave The Conjugal Tie. 37 father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife ; and they shall be two in one flesh." You hear, gentlemen, two, and no more. And these two shall cleave to each other as the flesh and bone of Adam, from which the woman is formed, cleaved to his body : Quamobrem ad- hcercbit homo uxori suce. " Such is the will of God," says Tertullian, " manifested in this typical mar- riage, the form of which should be imitated by all men." 2 The law is not yet express and imperative, as it will become, but the generations which have issued from our first parents recognize its implicit authority, and for a long time the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie is the rule of those who found families and multiply the human race. Lamech, the first who violates it to satisfy his passion, is a man of blood and malediction. 3 It is true that after the Deluge polygamy was es- tablished, and the law-giver of the Jewish people permitted, in certain cases, the rupture of the conjugal tie. God tolerated these practices, but the primitive institution of marriage still existed, awaiting better days. But during this expec- 1 Matrimonii perpetuum indissolubilemque nexum primus human! generis parens divini Spiritus instinctu pronuntiavit cum dixit : Hoc mine os, etc. Cone. Trid., sess. 24, Dortrina de Sacramento Matri- monii. 2 Et ideo homo Dei Adam et mulier Dei Eva, unis in terse nuptiis juncti formam hominibus Dei, de originis auctoritate, et prima Dei voluntate sanxerunt. De exhort, cast., cap. 5. 3 Xumerus matrimonii a maledicto viro coepit. Primus Lamech duabus marital us, tres in tinam carnem effecit Tertul., loc. cit. Primus Lamech, sanguinarius et homicida, unnm carnem in duas di- visit uxores. S. Ilieron. lib. Advers. Joviniannm. 38 The Conjugal Tie. tation, God, the author of nature and the law- giver of human life, has entire power to relax the obligations of a law to which He has not yet given its definite form. He knows better than any one else why He tolerates acts which His positive law and the first principles of natural law manifestly forbid. God may have permitted po- lygamy in order to hasten the multiplication of families and nations. He may have wished to re- establish a numerical equilibrium of the sexes, and spare His people the domestic crimes to which the impetuosity of their passions and their hardness of heart exposed them. It may have been His wish to allow the human family to experience the dis- orders of unbridled lust. We know not why He tolerated polygamy, but we do know that His tolerance does not excuse the license which pas- sion takes against the wish of legitimate husband and wife, and for evil ends. It is only the arro- gance which belongs to heresy that can accuse those of crime whom He has not condemned. The tolerance of God towards the generations of anti- quity does not make Him forget His first design in the institution of marriage, and we may say of the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie what St. Paul said of God Himself: Non sine tcstimonio scinetipsum reliquit, " God left not Himself with- out testimony." ' Just as in the midst of the dark- ness of idolatry the existence of the true God is attested by proofs so evident that the reason which does not submit to them is without excuse, 1 Acts xiv. 16. The Conjugal Tie. 39 so also in the universal decay of marriage its unity and indissolubility are affirmed and declared by facts and by teaching which link the Christian restoration to the primitive institution. It is easy to guess from the language of Scripture to which side the law of nature and preference of God in- cline. The historical, lyrical, and prophetic books are full of precious indications in this respect. " We are the children of saints," says young Tobias to her whom he marries ; " we must not be joined to- gether like heathens that know not God. . . . Thou madest Adam of the slime of the earth, and gavest him Eve for a helper. . . . And now, Lord, Thou knowest that not for fleshly lust do I take my sis- ter to wife, but only for the love of posterity, in which Thy name may be blessed forever and ever." And Sara completes this touching prayer : " Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, and let us grow old both together in health." ' She is the only woman and faithful spouse that Wisdom praises. The Canticle of Canticles celebrates the mystical marriage which shall become the type of Christian marriage. Moses permitted the bill of divorce, but this act is surrounded by a crowd of legal precau- tions which can only be considered as so many 1 Filii sanctorum sumus, et non possumus ita conjangi, sicut gentes quce ignorant Deum Domine Deus patrum nostrorum, tu fe- cisti Adam de limo terne, dedistique ei adjutorium Hevam. Et nunc, Domine, tu scU quia non luxurice causa accipio sororem meam conju- gem, sed sola posteritatis dilectione, in qua benedicatur nomen tuum in sxcula sreculorum. Dixit quoque Sara : Miserere nobis, Domine, miserere nobis, et consenescamus ambo pariter sani. Tob viii. 5-10. 4O The Conjugal Tie. protestations of the desire of God in opposition to its indulgence. It is a remarkable fact that those who profit by this indulgence, during the long pe- riod of time which elapses between the exodus and the captivity, are so few, and conceal themselves so well, that sacred history does not mention them. Among the nations where the word of God is nev- er heard, some persistently marry but once ; and barbarians even deserve this praise from a great historian : " Their virgins only marry one man, to make with him one body and one life. Their thought and desire do not reach beyond this, be- cause it is their marriage that they love rather than a husband." 1 An old Indian legislator writes: " Man and woman make but one person Woman is the companion of man in life, in death." 5 In short, at the time when the kingly nation dis- honored itself by the capricious and infamous di- vorces which demoralized Roman society, it did not expunge from its law this beautiful definition of marriage: Divini humanique juris communicatio, consortium ornnis vita, individuamvita consuetudincni rctincns? "A common participation in the same law,divine and human; union for life in the same fate; the condition and habits of two -lives which henceforth make but one." In spite of these protestations, Roman relaxation 1 Virgines accipiunt unum maritum, quomodo unum corpus, unam- que vitam, nee ulla cogitatio ultra, nee longior cupiditas, ne tanquam maritum sed tanquam matrimonium ament.- Tacit., De moribus Ger- manontin, n. 19. 8 Law of Manou. ' Digest., xxiii. The Conjugal Tic. 41 triumphed, even to corruption. It would have triumphed in the long run over the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie, if God, wearied with toler- ance, had not solemnly restored that unity. He speaks no longer by the mouth of inspired men, but by the mouth of His Son. You have seen, gentlemen, this divine Bridegroom of our nature ; you have heard Him when He enacted the institu- tion of the sacrament. Hear Him again ; for to- day it is His word that makes the law. " And there came to Him the Pharisees tempting Him. and saying : Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause ? Who answering, said to them : Have ye not read, that He Who made man from the beginning, made them male and female ? And He said : For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh ; there- fore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. They sav to Him : Why, then, did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away ? He said to them : Because Moses, by reason of the hardness of your heart, permitted you to put- away your wives : but from the begin- ning it was not so. And I say to you, that who- soever shall put away his wife, except it be for for- nication, and shall marry another, committeth adul- tery : and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery. His disciples say unto Him : If the case of a man with his wife be so, it is not expedient to marry. Who said to them : All men 42 The Conjugiil Tie. take not this word, but they to whom it is given." ' It is impossible, gentlemen, to teach more clearly that God, in the primitive institution of marriage, had in view the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie ; that this indissoluble unity is expressly de- sired and commanded by the New Law ; that it permits no more exceptions ; that tolerance is at an end ; that dispensations are abolished forever. Those crimes even which may justify a sepa- ration do not break the tie which binds two lives to each other when they are married ; the wile sent away from the conjugal roof on account of her unfaithfulness can only be replaced by adul- tery. This is hard for carnal man, but it is the law of the new world created by the Redeemer. Such is the law. St. Paul promulgates it in the churches of Rome and of Corinth for the whole universe : " Know you not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), that the law hath domin- ion over a man, as long as it liveth ? For the woman that hath a husband, whilst her husband liveth, is bound to the law : but if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. There- fore, whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with another man : but if her husband be dead, she is delivered from the law of her husband : so that she is not an adulteress if she be with another man." " " But to them that are 1 St. Matt. xix. 3-1 1. * An ignoratis, fratres (scientibus enim legem loquor), quia lex in homine dominatur, quanto tempore vivit ? Nam quse sub viro est mulier, vivente viro, alligata est legi ; si autem mortuus fuerit vir ejus, goluta est a lege viri. Igitur, vivente viro, vocabitur adultera si fuerit The Conjugal Tie. 43 married, not I, but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband : and if she de- part, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife." ' In a word, the divine and invio- lable law for husband and wife is to be bound by a tie which death alone can break. It is the law. In the name of the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie re-established by Christ, the successors of the apostles, the Fathers and the doctors of the Church, drive back before them the last resistance of Judaism and paganism, as well as the edicts and licenses of the princes of the earth. Monogamy, they say, has entered into Christian customs.* No more polygamy, Christ has abol- ished it. 3 One wife or none at all is the motto of the Christian. 4 As long as a man lives, no matter what may be his crimes, he remains the husband cum alio viro; si autem mortuus fuerit vir ejus, liber.ita est a lege viri, ut non sit adultera si fuerit cum alio viro. Rom. vii. 1-3. 1 Us autem, qui matrimonio juncti sunt prtecipio, non ego, sed Do- minus, uxorem a viro non discedere; quod si discesserit, manere innu- ptam, aut viro suo reconciliari, et vir uxorem non dimittat. I. Cor. vii. 10-11. * (ApudChristianos) temperantiaadest, continentia exercetur, mono- gamia servatur, custoditur castitas Hap u\- ffanf6;j.ouq 6 #eo iv rf/ r^iifia ^xsj'vij, dM.d y.a.0' 00$ abrbs e'Orjx-. S. Chrysost, Homil. ii., De Matrimonio. 4 Alioe sunt leges Ctesarum, aliae Christi; aliud Papinianus, aliud Paulus noster praecipit. S. Hieron., Epist. ad Oceanian, n. 3. 5 Audi legem Domini, cui obsequantur etiam qui leges ferunt ; quae Deus, etc. S. Ambros., in cap. vi. Luc., n. 5. The Conjugal Tie. 45 wherever churches are founded. Fifteen centu- ries old, it reigns uncontested at the period when Luther inaugurates the age of moral decay which tends to bring the world regenerated by Christ back to the loose and corrupt manners of anti- quity. Luther, this libertine monk, restless under the yoke of religion, aspires to release himself from the vows which bind him to perpetual chastity. As an apology for the scandal which he is giving to the Christian world he finds nothing better than to deny the qualities of unity and indissolubility which were restored to marriage by Christ. And as if the liberty of divorce were not sufficient to gain for him the favor of the dissolute princes whose protec- tion he covets, he allows them to practise polygamy. Polygamy, says he, is after all but a return to patriarchal customs. ' But this return must be discreet, so as not to affright the people accustomed by the Christian law to conjugal unity. Luther is ashamed of the license which he grants, but the watchful Church sees in it an open door by which corruption of manners is about to enter into the Christian familv. It is time to determine the dogmatic formula of the law and to place it under the protection of anathema. Anathema, then, says the Council of Trent to those who per- mit Christians to have many wives, as if it were not forbidden by any divine law. * Anathema to those 1 Profitebatur Lutherus se "poligamire consuetudinem nee intro- ducere vclle, nee improbare, posse autem quia Patrum exempla adhuc libera sunt." Comment, in cap. xvi. Genes. Cit. Bellarm. * Si quis dixerit liccre christianis plures simul habere uxores, et hoc nulla lege divina esse prohibitum, anathema sit. Sess. xxiv. can. 2. 46 The Conjugal Tie. who pretend that the conjugal tie can be broken. * Anathema to those who accuse of error the infalli- ble authority of the Church when she affirms that not even adultery has power to dissolve the union which God has made. * This is the law, gentlemen. Its origin is not doubtful. God Himself proclaimed it implicitly and prophetically in the beginning of time, and ex- plicitly and definitely at the solemn epoch when the world was redeemed. When the Creator brought the world out of nothing and filled it with life, He gave to that life, with the power of multi- plying itself, the rules and laws of its prolificness. Jesus Christ, the Creator of a moral and religious world, exercised the same power. He gave it a new life, and He certainly had the right to regulate the conditions of the unions from which a holy race was to be born. Christ does nothing extraordinary. He connects the regeneration of humanity with the immaculate creation, passing over all the ages that sin had dishonored. He determines, He limits, He fixes by an absolute law the divine plan which the human race would have originally fol- 1 Si quis dixerit propterhoeresim, aut molestam cohabitationem, aut aflectatam absentiam a conjuge, dissolvi posse matrimonii vinculum, anathema sit. Ibid., can. 5. 2 Si quis dixerit Ecclesiam errare, cum docuit et docet, juxta evan- gelicam et apostolicam doctrinam, propter adulterium alterius conju- gum matrimonii vinculum non posse dissolvi; et utrumque. etiam in- nocentem, qui causam adulterio non dedit, non posse, altero conjuge vivente, aliud matrimonium contrahere ; mrecharique eum, qui dimissa adultera, aliam duxerit, et earn, quae, dimisso adultero, alii nupserit; anathema sit. Ibid., can. 7. The Conjugal Tic. 47 lowed, without hindrance or contradiction, had it preserved its original innocence. It was His right as Creator to do so. It was also Christ's right as Redeemer. In or- der to redeem the world He had humiliated the divine majesty by uniting it with our fallen nature. That union was full of suffering, and should be a source of life and glory for us. Was it not right that the Redeemer should make the human family submit to the unity and indissolubility of marriage as a small return for the fruitful humiliations of His Incarnation? In establishing the unity and indissolubility of marriage Jesus Christ merely exercises His right as Benefactor. In redeeming man, Christ trans- forms him. He puts grace in all the phases of his spiritual life. It is grace which begets him super- naturally. grace which increases and strengthens him, grace which nourishes and restores him, grace which cures him of his faults, and reconciles him to God; it is grace which perfects his purification, and opens to him the gates of eternity ; grace which gives him dignity and divine powers in the priest- hood ; grace which unites him to her whom he has chosen for the companion of his life. In sanctifying the marriage union, has not Christ the right to show Himself exacting? And if the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie demands from husband and wife both effort and sacrifice, can they complain without ingratitude, since the sacrament which ennobles their yoke gives them the courage and strength to bear the sacred bur- 48 The Conjugal Tie. den until death, if they receive it with pure hearts ? Finally, gentlemen, the legislation of the conju- gal tie is the right of Christ in His office as our Great Exemplar. Man is the image and likeness of God ; the Christian is the image and likeness of Christ. He should be so in everything. As an indissoluble unity in perfect love is the condition of the marriage between Christ and His Church, so also is the marriage of the Christian with her whom he marries, in order that, on one side as on the other, we may say, in the words of the Apos- tle, " This is a great mystery : " Mysterium hoc mag. num est. Yes, gentlemen, a great mystery. And in the shadows of this great mystery your Christian souls should submit to the certain law of God, even if you should find in the world of nature no aspiration, no law which justifies its holy austerity. But it is not so. Nature gives to the law of indis- soluble union its full approval, for it is a law of progress and perfection. II. Let us first understand clearly, gentlemen, the meaning of this word Nature. The great major- ity of those who rebel against the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie do not attach the same meaning to it as we do. For them, nature does not go beyond the gloomy and excitable region of the appetites, and definitely, it is the human beast which concerns them more than anything else in the question of marriage. All that prevents the The Conjugal Tie. 49 gratification of the animal man, all that condemns him to obey a nobler power, is regarded with ab- horrence by their materialistic philosophy. To op- pose the beast, is to oppose nature. We do not thus understand the word, gentlemen. For us, nature is the whole man : the carnal man with his appetites and his power of generation ; the spiritual man, with his reason, heart, free activity, knowledge of duty, and capacity for virtue. This man God had created perfect and master of the world. Was it not right that, in order to obey the divine command which desired his reproduction, he should be distinguished from all other crea- tures by the most perfect of unions ? What is this union, gentlemen ? Let us seek in the creation. We look for it in vain where promiscuousness or polygamy are practised. But beyond the re- gions purely animal we find it at the head of all unions. It is the union of one with one alone and forever. It is monogamy, the true marriage, the perfect state, in which are realized all the condi- tions of intimacy and stability indicated by the word union in the highest and fullest sense of the word. It is evident, gentlemen, to any one who has an idea of order, of progress, of perfection, that God responded to a desire of nature and to a call of the royal prerogatives of man, when He imposed on our first parents the law of the indissolubility of the conjugal tie, and made the multiplication of the most perfect of living beings dependent on a most perfect union. 50 The Conjugal Tie. It is also evident that man fell from the height where he governed nature when he began to imi- tate in marriage the unions of inferior beings ; and it is evident that Christ led humanity back into a path of progress and perfection when He restored the primitive institution of marriage, and explicitly and definitely promulgated the law of its indissoluble unity. Let us enter into human life itself and there ap- ply the law of Christian marriage. You will see that I have spoken well in calling it a law of prog- ress and perfection. It is indeed the law which belongs to true love ; it is a school of virtue, the cement of the family, and the honor of human society. We cannot fully explain the entirety of the gift which two human beings make to each other of their persons, without seeking its cause in that deep and powerful sentiment which makes the heart beat, and which we call love. I do not blush to speak of it, for, if men have soiled it, God has purified it. It was noble and great in the young heart of our first father, when he called to his arms the bone of his bones and the flesh of his flesh ; it can be noble and great in the hearts of those who, like our first parents, marry under the eye of God. Do not seek this love in the feverish passion whose throbs are evoked by carnal beauty, a passion strong as a tempest and as fleeting, too strained not to weary the soul, too attached to perishable attractions not to .perish with them. True love knows how to free itself from the senses and to lay hold of that immaterial beauty on which The Conjugal Tie. 51 time and the forces of nature have no power. It does not allow itself to be ensnared, but chooses its object; and the choice made, it says to itself: " Here is my rest forever," Hcec requics in sceculum stzculi. It is union that it desires, union that it seeks ; an intimate, profound, complete union, so energetically expressed in these words of the Sa- cred Scriptures : " Two in one flesh," Duo in carne una. The more extended its rights, the bet- ter it understands its duties ; and if it expects that they shall be given to it in all sincerity and with- out reserve, it gives itself with the same plenitude. By dividing his heart, a man who truly loves would consider himself debased ; he would accuse himself of falsehood had he a thought of taking back what he has given ; and he only fully and will- ingly expresses himself when he can say : " I am yours as you are mine, I am yours entirely and forever. Our lives henceforth are but one from now until death. ' Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain. ' ' But if favor and beauty have been allurements for me, there are other riches which I covet, which I pursue, which I esteem and love. On the ruins of those charms which allure and speak to the senses, these possessions appear to me more beautiful, more desirable, more worthy of at- tachment. Let us leave behind that which is per- ishable and let us love each other always ! " Is it not thus, gentlemen, that you understand and feel real love ? Is it not thus that noble hearts understand and feel it ? Is it not unnecessary to 1 Prov. xxxi. 30. 52 The Conjugal Tie. seek far for the law which is suitable for it in conju- gal union ? It spontaneously precedes it, it is the law of indissoluble union. I say in the second place, gentlemen, that the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie is a school of virtue. However pure and strong true love may be, it needs to be protected by the law of duty, and to be strengthened by the practice of virtue, the most beautiful ornament of human dignity. There is one virtue which indissolubility of mar- riage imposes on true love at its first approach. It is prudence. We do not bind ourselves forever without weighing the chains which we wish to carry ; we do not give ourselves entirely and for- ever without sounding the abyss whither we are going to plunge. The blind passion of the senses is capable of this folly, but true love does not bind itself or give its confidence except in good earnest. Warned by the law which shall bind it, it waits, gets information, seeks under out- ward attractions and advantages those amiable and solid qualities which may assure it peace and happiness. It asks of the present favorable augu- ries for the future. It is possible that true love may be deceived, and then other virtues can re- pair its error, but without doubt it most frequent- ly owes to the austere law which has made it pru- dent the tranquillity and joy of the hearth where its life is mingled with another life. The indissoluble unity of marriage is more than a school of prudence. It is a school of justice. Justice is more or less outraged where the con- Tlie Conjugal Tic. 53 jtigal tie is divided and broken. It is generally the wife who suffers from the outrage. The com- petition of our loves diminishes her share, and she becomes the humiliated slave of a capricious pas- sion. The wife brings into the common life the charms of her sex and the inestimable treasure of her modesty. Who shall give her back her charms if the husband has the power to put her away when he grows tired of her faded beauty and withered flesh ? He would keep all his ad- vantages, and she would lose her best treasures ! If the husband has that power, then God lied when, on the day He completed the work of His creation, He said : " Let us make him a help like unto himself :" Facia mus ei adjutorium simile sibi. If the husband can sever the marriage tie we must believe that woman brought only an inferiority of right and an inferiority of nature into the first marriage union, so mysteriously prepared and so solemnly blessed to serve as a type of all future marriages. Such was not the case, gentlemen. In the design of God woman was the normal com- plement of man, and the tie which unites them must be knotted by justice. It is indissoluble unity which brings into mar- riage this holy justice, suppressing all rivalry of love and assuring an equality of gifts as well as their continuance through life to both ; the hus- band belonging solely, entirely, and forever to his wife, and the wife, solely, entirely, and forever to her husband. But the perpetual double life cannot be to-day 54 The Conjugal Tie, what it might have been if humanity had preserved the privileges of its innocence. Between two fall- en and fatally imperfect natures it is impossible that there should not be unexpected revelations and sad shocks in which souls are wounded. And if wills were free to retract, they might take coun- sel only of bad temper and human weakness to break a union become hard and heavy to bear. But the law of indissolubility restrains and obliges them to practise a virtue in which the greatness of man is revealed. That virtue is fortitude. Fortitude, which combats the defects and faults incidental to married life, and strives to lessen, if it cannot remove them ; fortitude, which bears with patience the sad shocks it is impossible to avoid, and resists the impulses which test the strength of the indestructible marriage tie ; fortitude, which knows how to subdue pride and ask for pardon. This virtue of fortitude is permeated with the unction of a charity that is rich in forethought, in pity, and in the loving exchange of sacrifice. This is not all. Ancient philosophy invited men to moral progress and to perfection by the noble maxim," Bear and forbear: " sustinc, ab- stine. The law of the unity and indissolubility of the marriage tie applies that maxim with sovereign authority to married life. The fortitude which bears with the trials of conjugal life should be completed by the temperance which abstains. One of the ends of marriage is to calm the tur- bulence of the flesh, but there are occasions when it does not attain that end. Those who know not The Conjugal Tic. 55 how to resist the animal promptings of man de- mand other unions ; but the man who is regen- erated by Christ and is obedient to His law knows that the senses have no rights opposed to duty. He knows, too, that it is good and even necessary that the soul should from time to time assert her dignity, and should exercise her dominion over the lower promptings of the senses by keeping from them the pleasures they covet. When the senses are disciplined by temperance, they leave the field open to the pleasures of the heart, the noblest and sweetest that man can taste. You have often heard it said, gentlemen, that we must make a virtue of necessity. Nowhere is that old proverb better applied than to the indis- soluble unity of the conjugal tie. If the divine law does violence to our animal inclinations, it is so far in perfect accord with reason, which wishes the progress and perfection of our moral life. God has not forged the indestructible chain of marriage for the mere purpose of satisfying the wishes of true love and opening for husbands and wives a school of great virtue. He has had care of a feeble and charming being, who will need for some time the double protection of strength and ten- derness. Admirable arrangement of Providence! The more perfect the union of life with life, the slower the growth of its offspring. The being born from the fortuitous and blind meetings of promiscuousness finds at its birth the elements necessary for its development, and it has organs which act without delay in appropriating and 56 The Conjugal Tie. assimilating them. If a more perfect instinct brings the sexes together, life needs for some time the assistance of the beings that gave it existence. But it is only for a season. The animal soon learns all that is necessary to take care of itself. It is alto- gether different where love enlightened by reason makes its choice. It is the privilege of the human being that the child demands for many years the solicitude and care of its parents to succor its help- lessness. How powerful and tenacious are the ties between parents and child ! It is truly said of the father and mother " they are two in one flesh : " duo in carne una. They are one by the blood of their veins, by the love of their hearts, in that flesh taken from their own flesh which re- produces their features and bears the impression of their souls. They are one in that fragile flesh whose life will be extinguished if not sus- tained and guarded with affectionate and untiring care ; in that mysterious flesh in which the dor- mant soul awaits its awakening to thought and will. " Marriage," says an eloquent bishop, " creates between parents and children strong and indissolu- ble ties, and yet some would wish it to be in itself only a fragile tie ! But then the effects would be greater than their cause." Father, mother, should you shut your ears to the voice of God, 1 II matrimonio crea vincoli indissolubili tra i coniugi ed i figli ; e sarebbe esso un vincolo solubile ; sarebbe itiai, che gli effetti fossero maggiori della loro causn. Mgr. Bonomelli, bishop of Cremona, Pas- toral Instruction: Sitl Divorzio. The Conjugal Tie. 57 you can never stifle the voice of nature which bids you remain united. Remain united each to each. Another love would turn you away from your duty and awaken jealous and quarrelsome passions which would disturb the peace of your hearth. ' Remain united ! father, to protect the wife who devotes herself day and night to the little creature to whom you have given life ; mother, to accomplish without uneasiness and without fear your noble task of devotion. 5 Remain united! in order that the light of your reason and the tender- ness of your hearts may penetrate the soul of your child. Remain united ! to cast into this virgin soil the seed of those virtues without which man has no right to live ; remain united ! to cultivate to- gether the sacred germs which you have sown. There must be two persons to cause the dawn of life, two to guide it to its complete development. A father alone is authority too severe, reason too cold, strength to weighty ; a mother all alone is love without restraint, gentleness without guidance, tenderness without correction. Both are need- ful for education. Nature has joined and mingled them together as two elements which complete 1 Non facile potest esse pax in familia ubi uno viro plures uxores junguntur,cum non possit unus vir sufficere ad satisfaciendum pluribus uxoribus ad votum ; et etiam quia communicaiioplurium in unoofficio causat litem. Summ. Theol., supp., qusest. 45, a. I. 8 Matrimonium ex intentione naturae ordinatur ad educationem prolis, non solum ad aliquod tempus, sed per totam vitam prolis. Ideo cum proles sit commune bonum viri et uxoris, oportet societatem eorum perpetuo permanere indivisam, secundum legis naturae dictamen. Ibid , qusest. 47, a. j. 58 The Conjugal Tie. each other, and whence light and heat spring forth in the soul of the child. ' Fathers, mothers, remain, then, united, in order to multiply life around you, and to surround your- selves with a crown of living beings who shall be your glory, because they will reproduce your vir- tues. Remain united ! that your children may re- turn to you, in tender respect and pious help, all the good you shall have done them. Remain united ! that you may see yourselves live again in the offspring of those who are the issue of your generous life. Remain united ! to serve as a pat- tern to those who shall become united after you, and to cement by your unchangeable fidelity the sacred unity of the family. Glorious are those families where the indis- soluble unity of the conjugal tie links the past with the future, and creates th6se peaceful tra- ditions through which each generation seeks its ancestors ! In them are never heard the groans of love betrayed, or complaints of desertion. In them are not found children hatefully disposed, to whom has been transferred the sad heritage of a father's angry passions or a mother's feelings of 1 Abbandonate la tutta (1'educazione) al solo padre : voi generalmente avrete 1'autorita che riesce dura, 1'intelligenza che e fredda e la forza che aggrava; lasciate la in balla della sola madre, e avrete 1'amore senza autorita, la dolcezza e la tenerezza senza il oorrettivo dell' intel- ligenza e della forza. La natura stessa pertanto vuole accoppiati e fusi insieme i due elemenli necessarii alia educazione del figli ; 1'elemento paterno e 1'elernento materno : sono due forze, che per produrre il loro effetto, vogliono essere unite ; sono duo raggi, che si debbono con- centrare sopra di uno punto per ottenerne la luce ed il calore. Mgr. Bonomelli, Sul Divorzio. The Conjugal Tie. 59 rancor. In them gloomy jealousy is not suffered, nor the deep antagonism caused by divided love and the injustice of capricious repudiation. Glori- ous families ! They are respected, and their alli- ance is sought, and by their alliances they cause to radiate around them the honesty, peace, and prosperity of which they are the centres. Glori- ous families ! a perpetual honor to society, where- in they are the elements of a unity indispensable to every people that desires to live. I say no more to-day, gentlemen. The truths you have just heard will be more fully developed when, in the next conference, we shall speak of what is opposed to them. For the moment I think I have attained my end, which was to prove that nature fully acquiesces in the divine law of the in- dissoluble unity of the conjugal tie. This law ennobles love, ennobles the moral life, ennobles the family, ennobles society ; it is, therefore, a law of progress and perfection. We hear certain reformers of conjugal societv say that they willingly dispense with that perfec- tion, and taking the world as it is, they are content to chastise its vices. Miserable failure of Protes- tant cowardice opposing the sublime character which Christ by His law has imprinted on mar- ried life. Who has the right to oppose nature when God pleases to help it become perfect? Who has the right to make humanity go backward when God urges it forward ? Contemptible reformers, you make liars of yourselves, for you are always boasting that you are men of progress. You, men 60 The Conjugal Tie. of progress ! and you mock a law which gives true love its rights, places man in the happy neces- sity of perfecting his moral life, consolidates the family, and assures to society the elements of a glorious existence. You, men of progress ! and you would bring us back to the time when fallen man degraded marriage and lived like a beast. You, men of progress ! and you oppose the divine impulse which tends to raise the married man above his animal nature, and to place him on the royal summit from which he is lord of all nature. False reformers, be silent rather than speak false- hood ! The men of progress are the apostles and faithful observers of the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie. Christ has made them see depraved humanity reduced to the level of the beast through its faithlessness to the primitive institution of mar- riage, and He has said to them : " Go up higher : " Ascende superius. And they, obeying at the same time the noble aspirations of nature and the voice of God, have nobly answered : " Let us ascend : " Ascendamus. CONFERENCE III. MY LORD' AND GENTLEMEN: In our last con- ference I promised to give counter-proofs of the truths explained in it, and I shall do so now. As \ve have already said, the properties of the conjugal tie are its unity and indissolubility. These properties, strengthened by a divine law and by the grace of the sacrament, answer the re- quirements of nature, which demands for man and wife the most perfect union, and which also as- pires to progress and perfection in the individual, in the family, and in society. Your noble souls, I am persuaded, are in full sympathy with this doctrine: still I deem it my duty to show you the \\orthlessness of the arguments of the so-called reformers who would change the character of the conjugal tie. We can say this much to the credit of the oppo- nents of the divine law : They do not want to revive the manners of ancient times, the free practice of which Luther permitted to people of rank. We can also say that they agree with us about the eminently progressive character of mon- ogamy, and the disadvantages and inconveniences of polygamy. 1 Monseigneur Richard, Archbishop of Paris. 61 62 Divorce. In polygamy man abandons himself to the agi- tating pleasures of sensation, to the ruin of his in- tellectual and moral life, and to the degradation of his dignity ; in it the degraded wife becomes the servant one might say the slave of a base pas- sion, and the human family is like a flock divided and troubled by jealousies and quarrels. In a word, polygamy brings the human being to the level of the beast. Eighteen centuries of Christianity have made polygamy so rare and odious that the bitter- est enemies of the Christian law of marriage look with contempt and disgust on the harems of the East and the licentious follies of Mormonism. But it is different when there is question of the indissoluble unity of the marriage tie. There is quite a number of meddlers in philosophy and law who look upon the indissolubility of the conjugal tie as a tyrannical law. They think that modern society should have the right to break a yoke which human nature is unable to bear. Let us first examine, gentlemen, the arguments brought against the divine law. I hope to show you how worthless they are. I shall then show you that divorce, by which it is proposed to replace the divine law, is worse than all the evils for which indissolubility is held responsible, and that it is a principle of decay for human society. When special decrees are made for individuals they are proportioned to their strength. Laws Divorce. 63 have not this narrow character. They look to the general well-being, and are made for the multitude. If by their application to individuals they may be inconvenient, and impose here and there a greater restraint, that is no reason for their abrogation when they are conducting human society forward in the path of progress and perfection. Such is the law of indissolubility. It is a law for a race, ordained, as you have seen, for the per- fection of our nature and for the general well-being of humanity. That the individual should some- times suffer from it, is not astonishing ; to adduce this suffering as a pretext to get rid of the law is absurd. Admit in principle that a law can and should be suppressed because it bears hardly in some of its special applications, and you will ren- der all order and morality impossible. It is, however, in some such fashion that the opponents of the indissolubility of the marriage tie proceed. They tell in bitter language some of the inconveniences of the divine law, and even invent others to enlarge the sum of their grievances. You might make a volume of the reasons for not accepting the law of indissolubility which they ac- cumulate against it. I will not enter in detail on these inconveniences, griefs, and reasons for non- acceptance of the divine law. To deal justly, it will suffice to reduce them to the three following heads : First, the law of indissoluble unity is an out- rage on human liberty, which it binds with the chains of slavery ; 64 Divorce. Secondly, the law of indissoluble unity tends to frustrate the principal intention of marriage ; Thirdly, the law of indissoluble unity exposes those whom it irrevocably unites to being deprived unjustly and hopelessly of the happiness to which they are entitled when they enter into conjugal society ; it exasperates and urges them to crime. Liberty is so great a possession that we must never give it up except in good earnest, and never abdicate our right to take it again. To bind one's self forever, as is done in an indissoluble marriage ; to forge,' in a moment, a chain which can never be broken, this is criminal folly. Are we master of the heart which says to us to-day : " I love you " ? Are we sure of our own hearts? Can we foresee the shortcomings of weakness and the betrayals of inconstancy ? Is it allowable to throw one's self body and soul into the future, as if one were sure of meeting with no deceptions ? Rash young people, who- exchange eternal promises, you will some day regret the heavy and insupportable chain which you have foolishly riveted around your liberty, and you will be condemned to the inevitable shame of either breaking your word or submitting your- selves to an irremediable slavery. You will lament your misfortune. You will blame yourselves for your fault. Tears and re- proaches, all will be useless. No, no, you cannot, you should not expose yourselves to these humili- ations and misfortunes. Become united, if you love each other, but keep your liberty as a guar- antee against the surprises of the future. And if Divorce. 65 there is a la\v which demands this sacrifice from you, reply to it with all the strength of your out- raged dignity : Non licet ! It is not lawful. Gentlemen, I agree with the apologists of liberty on this point : that liberty is a great possession, and that it is a criminal folly to give it up forever with- out forethought for the future and without pro- vision for the consequences of this delicate and terrible sacrifice. But listen : If liberty is a pos- session, it belongs to me. I am its master and can dispose of it as I will, to-day, to-morrow, in the future, forever, provided I dispose of it wisely and usefully. I know what is meant by indissoluble union ; I have contracted one with the holy religion of which I wear the habit ; and in spite of the dis- appointments and sorrows I may have found in it, and which I had foreseen, I do not at all regret the sacrifice I made to it of my liberty, for it has been repaid with inestimable goods. It is the good in a work that \ve ought to look at, and when this good deserves a great sacrifice, we should make it. Now, gentlemen, you know the good of the conjugal union strengthened by indissolubility : it ennobles love, it ennobles the moral life, it ennobles the family, it ennobles soci- ety. For this it is well worth while to bind your- selves forever. The man who is timid and selfishly careful of his well-being will only take account of the evils possible in the future in a life united with another life ; the generous and wise man takes into account the certain benefits, the noble sincerity and constancy which true love should experience 66 Divorce. in becoming united to another love ; the sacred equality of gifts commanded by justice ; the im- mense advantages which result from the persever- ing union of two hearts and two lives for the edu- cation of children, the strengthening and uniting of the family ; the honor that all society receives by incorporating into it those elements of stability supplied by families where traditions unite the past with the future, where the indissoluble unity of the conjugal tie causes peace and honesty to flourish. The wise man is not blind to the adverse chances which may cause him to regret having bound himself. As far as is possible for human prudence, he prepares against them. But his pre- cautions taken, he places above the evils he may fear the great good he hopes and desires to obtain, and even if he has to struggle and suffer, he binds himself forever. Let it not be said that this is not permitted. Then all noble enterprises to which generous and bold souls unite their lives would be condemned. I maintain that it is a most beautiful and praiseworthy act of liberty to bind one's self forever to a good which benefits the whole world. To be bound in that way, gentlemen, is not to be a slave. Indissolubility is not intended to weigh as a dishonorable yoke, but to direct and lead on the road of moral progress that liberty which she binds. By making itself respected, indissolubility imposes upon a man courageous efforts, which re- strain his passions, correct his vices, lessen his faults, perfect his good qualities, strengthen his virtues, and multiply his good actions. Man does Divorce. 67 not lower and degrade himself by submitting to and obeying the divine law of the indissoluble unity of the marriage tie, but by revolting against it. Besides, the opponents of indissolubility have no right to show themselves so delicate and modest with regard to the pretended outrage done to liberty by the perpetual engagement which binds the two lives of those who marry each to the other. There are among them a great number to whom we might retort the reproach of criminal folly which they make against us. In attacking the indissolubility of marriage they attack religion and hope to wound it mortally. But in this they only obey the word of command given by the pitiless sects of which they are the sworn slaves. They themselves are tied by the sinister promises which have bound them in a dark conspiracy of evil against all that is holy and just. If they wished to break their chains, could they do it with impunity ? No. The secret marriages of perverse souls are too surely sealed for a divorce to be permitted them. And it is these slaves of iniquity who reproach most bitterly honest and Christian souls for the eternal oaths by which they bind themselves to obtain the greater good from conjugal society, at the risk of suffering. Let them wash away the opprobrium which binds their liberty before con- cerning themselves with ours. We do not accept either their advice or their censure ; for honest men and Christians only sacrifice for good reasons the liberty they have a right to dispose of for well doing ; it is liberty itself which accomplishes 68 Divorce. this sacrifice, and it is one of her noblest actions. Granted, will some one say to me. Let liberty bind itself. But still it ought to be sure of attain- ing the end it has in view when so doing. Among the benefits by which marriage is honored, theol- ogy, agreeing with the instincts of nature, places children in the first rank : Primum bonum matri- monii est proles. It is in order to see themselves live again in these charming beings that man and woman exchange their oaths of love. The child is their honor, for in him they participate in the paternity of God ; the child is their happiness, for in him their hearts meet to love each other still more. Happy the homes where the husband, regarding with a tender eye the dear offspring of his life, can say : " I shall not die entirely ! " Non omnis moriar ! Happy the homes where conju- gal love reposes and refreshes itself in another holy and legitimate love. But alas ! there are homes not blessed with the presence of children, where the husband and wife, in sad tete a tete, await in vain the offspring they desire and which should rejoice their lives. If only they might leave each other, and seek else- where a fertile union. But no ; indissolubility rivets them to perpetual sterility, interminably pro- longs their disappointment, and in their persons outrages marriage itself in depriving it hopelessly of its chief benefit. Have we not reason to revolt against such a law ? Yes, gentlemen, the opponents of indissolubility would have a right to revolt if sterility in mar- Divorce. 69 riage were the rule, and fecundity the exception. But you are aware that it is precisely the contrary. We should return here to the principle which served us as a starting-point ; namely, that in the general application of a law individuals may suffer, but that that is not a sufficient reason for abrogating the law. From the lowest depth to the summit of living nature, everywhere the great law of repro- duction suffers from exceptions. In blessing th e germs with which fertile virtue should people the universe, God did not bind Himself to guarantee them from all the accidents which might limit their power. How many lives are lost in this way in the immense germination of life which takes place every day ! If you ask me, Why? I reply, It is a secret of the providence of God. Those who believe in Providence should adore its decrees and leave its laws to fulfil themselves. As to the law with which we are now concerned, no one can assure us that the rupture of the conjugal tie would al- ways remedy sterile unions ; everybody knows that, if left to himself, man is capable of criminal fraud in order to free himself from a salutary and ben- eficent yoke as soon as he finds it too hard to bear. Besides, for husbands and wives who know how to submit to the holy will of God their united life is not without its compensations. They have not to dread those domestic catastrophes which deso- late the hearth, nor the terrible blows which bruise the hearts of parents when they lose by death the dear little ones in whom they had placed all their affections and hopes ; not having to diffuse their yo Divorce. love over other lives, they become more attached to the one which is united to them. They love each other so much the more as they feel them- selves necessary to one another. If their love needs other effusion than in their intimate union, they know how to make for themselves a family of those who shall benefit by their deeds of char- ity. I heard it said one day of a noble and virtuous couple, to whom God had denied the happiness of a family : " What a misfortune they have no chil- dren ! " An old priest who knew them replied : " They have no children ! Go and say that to the un- fortunate creatures whom they help, to the afflicted whom they console, to the poor little ones who owe to them their daily bread, clothing, instruction, and what is better still, the principles of faith and the holy love of God. Do not pity them, for they are happy : happy in emulating each other in good works, happy in relating in private their deeds of charity, happ}^ in hearing around them the bless- ings of the unfortunate, blessings which shall fol- low them to the place of their eternal rest. In this blessed home there is a great privation, but no misfortune." But the opponents of the indissolubility of the marriage tie will say : Granted, but still it is need- ful that souls should understand one another, that lives should be blended, and that all the benefits summed up by your theologians in this one word, fides, that is to say, harmony of disposition, gentle forethought, loving support, mutual confidence, Divorce. Jt inviolable fidelity, should be the reward of an eter- nal engagement. To count upon it, is to illy understand the caprices, the weaknesses, and, let us say it frankly, the perverse inclinations of human nature. If there are people happy together, let them remain united, we have no intention of disturbing their happiness. But for a few well assorted couples, how many unsuitable ones are there, whose conjugal happiness has lasted no longer than the time of their honey-moon ; and this honey-moon has been succeeded by a period of bitter regret. It is impossible to describe the innumerable evils that afflict the home where man and wife are bound together forever ; there is no end to them. Here, it is the unexpected revelation of repug- nant infirmity or of dishonor that has been kept secret ; there, the sudden explosion of passions and vices hitherto cleverly restrained ; here, faults which bristle up at the least contradiction and discourage the most enduring patience ; there, degrading habits which cannot be concealed, and sometimes public infamy which the law chastises ; here, venomous hatred incessantly plotting ; there, rage which bursts forth like thunder ; here, in- sults, threats, quarrels, brutality, violence ; there, abominable perfidy ; here, infidelity enveloped in cunning and falsehood ; there, treasonable love insolently installed at the domestic hearth. All, in short, that can divide spirits, rend and make hearts desperate, and kill love forever. Is not this what is found in a number of households? And in these 72 Divorce. prisons of moral misery and crime you would keep a man and wife chained to each other like two convicts bearing the same burden? Both guilty, sometimes, because they have only met with deception each in the other, and oftener the innocent is chained to the guilty. But this is as absurd as it is odious. Does not reason itself say, set these miserable creatures at liberty instead of prolonging their torture ; break the barbarous tie of indissolubility which condemns them to a per- petual privation of the happiness they had dreamed of, and which they had a right to expect when they entered into conjugal society. If you hold them bound, you are responsible for the passions which swell in the depths of their exasperated souls, and which give utterance to the ferocious cry : kill him, kill her ! This is, gentlemen, the hardest blow of the op- ponents of the divine law. I am not affected by it, and I still preserve sufficient presence of mind to remark to my opponents that they abuse the use of sombre tints, and that to generalize and exaggerate evil in order that it may serve as an argument, is more clever than manly. Statis- tics do not portray marriage in such black colors in those countries where the indissolubility of the conjugal tie is still religiously respected. I do not deny the imperfections of poor human nature. When these imperfections marry, it is not astonishing that they vex one another, and that those who have united them experience some inconveniences, but this does not lead reg- Divorce. 73 ularly to catastrophe or even to unhappiness. Most marriages resemble those temperate re- gions where the barometer oscillates between storm and settled fine weather. These oscillations may be disagreeable, but not so disagreeable as to make us wish to leave our happy climates, and to take refuge at the poles, the tropics, or the equator. Strained and violent conditions in marriage are the exception, and it is not the law which is re- sponsible for them, but those who criminally or imprudently create them. An author too fond of these paradoxical theses, and who has made for himself a name in the question of divorce, has lately written thus: " There is generally but little pity for the griefs and misadventures of a married man, because they are only the disappointments he might easily have foreseen. All misfortunes are more or less voluntary ones. One has desired to be more happy than he was, and he is deceived, and then another complains of fate, of circum- stances, of others, but never of himself, and yet at the bottom self is the only guilty person. This is why with the help of natural selfishness we weary all to whom we relate our misfortunes. ' You will understand better, gentlemen, the share of responsibility which belongs to unhappy married persons when I shall have spoken to you about the profanation of marriage. This profanation is the cause of the greater part of the evils com- plained of, which render the yoke of indissolubility 1 Letter from Monsieur Alexanclre Dumas to Monsieur Adrien Marx, quoted by DUnivcrs, October, 1 886. 74 Divorce. insupportable. If this yoke presses with too heavy a weight on guilty shoulders, is it right to call it barbarous? No its rigor is justice. The law turns against those who have defied it, and be- comes their chastiser. If they revolt against their chastiser, if they yield to temptation and end in crime, the law of indissolubility is no more re- sponsible for this crime than is the law against theft for the assassination committed by a thief when he cannot take a purse without taking life. Remark, I pray you, that in order to defy the law, it is not necessary to enter upon marriage with formally criminal intentions. It is sufficient that, blinded either by interest or passion, one should forget the grave duties which should be fulfilled with generous and holy resolutions. In this respect, I do not fear to say, there are but few to be found innocent among unhappy married couples. And even if there are some innocent ones among them, the law is not com- pelled to bend before their misfortune ; for it is a general law, a law of great forethought, of superior interest, of individual perfection, do- mestic and social. It asks from the innocent the sacrifice of that happiness for which they had hoped. It is the hour for them to accomplish a great act of self-abnegation and devotion, just as it is the hour for the soldier to die on the battle- field when the safety of his country is at stake. Do not refuse them this honor, do not break by sacrilegious license the great law of sacrifice on which the glory, and even the existence, of society Divorce. 75 depends. The law of sacrifice, no doubt, is hard to nature, and the innocent may ask why the law immolates them. But it is an element that must be remembered in this critical situation, it is the grace which God adds to this law to pre- vent the falling away of human nature. The Christian can bear the yoke of indissolubility ; he is not crushed by it ; for the more unhappy he is, the more active and efficacious becomes the grace of the Sacrament of Matrimony. It strengthens, sustains, consoles him, and teaches him the divine art of making his sufferings beneficial even to those who cause him to suffer. And on the ruins of all the happiness 'for which the poor heart had hoped, it makes him taste the severe and noble en- joyment of an immolation glorious before God and more useful to society than bloody sacrifices. As to those who will make no account of grace, we shall see, gentlemen, if it would be well to accept for them the remedy proposed to us by the oppo- nents of the divine law. n. We have said that divorce is worse than all the evils for which men desire to make indissolubility responsible, and that it is, therefore, a principle of decay. No one has shown this truth more strikingly than the infallible doctoj who governs the Church to-day, the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII., in his Encyclical on Christian Marriage. I desire only to be here the humble commentator on his word. Listen to it. 76 Divorce. "One can hardly enumerate the great evils of which divorce is the source. The conjugal tie thereby losing its indissolubility, you must expect to see kindness and affection between husband and wife destroyed, an encouragement given to un- faithfulness, the protection and education of chil- dren rendered more difficult, germs of discord sown among families, the dignity of the wife ig- nored, the danger of her seeing herself deserted after having served as an instrument of the passions of man. And because nothing ruins families and destroys the most powerful kingdoms more than corruption of manners, it is easily to be seen that divorce, which is born only of the depraved cus- toms of nations, is the most formidable enemy of families and of States, and, as experience affirms, it opens the door to the most vicious habits, both in private and in public life." 1 Thus, then, gentlemen, according to the august words you have just heard, everything suffers 1 At vero quanti materi;im mail in se divortia contineant, vix at. tinet clicere. Eorum enim causa fiunt maritalia foedera mutabilia ; extenuatur mutua benevolentia ; infidelitati perniciosa incitamenta sup- peditnntur ; tuition! atque institution! liberomm nocetur; dissuendis societatibus domesticis prsebetur occasio ; discoi diarum inter familias semina sparguntur; minuitur ac deprimitur dignitas mulierum, quoc in periculum veniunt ne, cum libidini virorum inservierint, pro dere- lictis habenntur. Et quoniam ad perdendas familias, frangendasque regnorum opes nihil tam valet, quam corruptela morum facile perspicitur, prosperitati familiarum ac civitatum maxime inimica esse divortia; quce a depra- vatis populorum moribus nascuntnr ac, teste rerum usu, ad vitiosiores vitse privatoe et publicre consuetudines aditum januamque patefaciunt. Encyclic. Arcanum divina sapiential. Divorce. 77 from divorce ; marriage itself, those who marry, children, families, the whole of society. Marriage as a contract that may be cancelled is no longer surrounded by those salutary precau- tions which should assure its peace and duration. In fact, it is no longer a question of establishing something, but of trying a venture in which rein may be given to every rashness and audacity. Of what use are all the searchings of delicacy and pru- dence, as it is no longer a question of settling one's self for life? If the ground on which we make the engagement is not solid, we will leave it to go elsewhere. It is useless to appeal to that deep and tender sentiment which unites hearts together and seeks and promises eternity ; the appetite of sense is sufficient for him who only wishes to be bound for a time. Marriage is no longer the bringing together of two lives which confide in each other, complete and perfect each other in a permanent union ; it is a terminable society, in which mistrust keeps all its rights, and, as it has been stronglv remarked, it is a kind of legal pros- titution to which man and woman give themselves up to become debased and degraded. In short, whilst indissolubility elevates moral life, by obliging man to generous effort, to correct his nature and to bravely bear the annoyances of married life, divorce lowers him, because it binds him to nothing and gives full license to selfishness and caprice. We must make sacrifices if we would be amiable, gentle, kind, and obliging. But why should we do so ? We need not fear to displease 78 Divorce. those of whose company we can rid ourselves. This prospect makes all restraint unnecessary, and leaves defects uncorrected. We clash, hurt, and lacerate ourselves until we can only say : life has become unbearable, let us separate. In order to weary the husband or wife who is no longer desired contradictions and ill usage will be perfidiously exaggerated. What becomes of holy conjugal fidelity agitated by the constant desire of a rupture? The indissolubility of the marriage tie protects it against the temptations which allure love to another object. To the man tormented by an unlawful passion it says : " Take care, you no longer belong to yourself." Divorce, on the contrary, encourages the faithless heart and says to it : " Go where love calls you, you can resume your liberty." Since unfaithfulness is one of the chief causes of divorce, it is made a regular trade. Adultery is studied, plotted, and committed, in the damnable hope of securing a legal rupture of the conjugal tie. It is thus man and woman, who might be so great and so noble under the law of indissolubility, are lowered and degraded under the law of di- vorce. Especially woman ; woman, whose dignity Christianity has raised, and whom our fathers as- sociated with their respect to their God and their king. Cursed, said they, be he who betrays his God, his king, or his wife ! Woman is more than man the victim of the degradation which divorce entails. Man can withdraw from conjugal society with all the advantages of his strength and his au- Divorce. 79 thority in order to enter upon new ties; woman cannot withdraw from it with all her dignity. She leaves behind her best possessions, her maiden beauty and the charms of her youth, and only re- gains with difficulty the money she had brought. Who shall seek this withered plant, whose freshness is gone, and who is cast out from the family she has born, when she can no longer hope to found an- other? And if the woman is still young and full of life, and has herself provoked, under the influ- ence of passion, the rupture of the tie that bound her to one love, what can she be in the eyes of the world ? She is despised as an ungovernable wo- man, whose shame and disgrace are increased by each new union. But the married couple are not the only suffer- ers from the dishonor and injustice of their separa- tion. Divroce is an evil that exercises a sad and lamentable influence on the family and on society. It outrages the tie of blood which unites the child to its parents, and when it cannot break what nature has made indissoluble, it repudiates the most sacred obligations. It generally interrupts the important work of education at the very time when authority and persuasion, firmness and gen- tleness, should be closely united to perfect it. It snatches children from the place of their birth, transports them to strange places, and exposes them to the dislikes, rebuffs, and ill-treatment of new fathers and new mothers on whom they have no claim. It sows the seeds of contempt, and hatred in young hearts where only respect and 8o Divorce. love should germinate, one taking the part of a mother unjustly abandoned, another the part of a betrayed father. It arms against each other whole families who espouse the cause of their blood; these exaggerate the faults of the guilty, those look for faults in the innocent. It provokes com- plaints, recriminations, and reproaches, multiplies discord, quarrels, and lawsuits. ' Divorce disturbs public order and corrupts society. It corrupts society because it ruins the conservative and reg- ulating principle of all social energy, the prin- ciple of authority. In submitting to the judgment of children the conduct of their father and mother, it lessens the value of the primitive power of the family, of which public power is only an imita- tion, a participation, a general application. It forms, little by little, generations impatient of every form of restraint, because they have learned to despise their parents and have had nothing be- fore their eyes at the domestic hearth but the spectacle of license falsely labelled liberty. It cor- 1 The happiness of the State lies in the peace and concord of citizens, in the good understanding between different families. Marriage, by uniting two persons, draws together parents, friends; by rendering two persons happy, it makes twenty friends. Divorce comes; it makes twenty mortal enemies. It excites the relatives, the friends of the wife against the husbnnd, against his family' and his friends. Mar- riage had mingled their interests, strengthened their fortunes. Di- vorce comes to divide these interests, overturn their fortunes, raise discussions, provoke lawsuits, break testaments, and the courts of justice resound only with complaints against the husband who leaves his wife after having spent her fortune, and against the wife who leaves her husband, asking back what she has already wasted. Barruel, Let- ters on Divorce to a Deputy of the National Assembly, \ 788. Divorce. 8 1 rupts society because it is the practical triumph of this execrable maxim : that in marriage it is permitted to consider less the stability of families than the liberty of pleasure, less the promises of love than the calculations of interest, less what is duty than what is passion. Gentlemen, the conclusion from what you have just heard is self-evident. Divorce takes away from marriage its guarantee of delicacy, of pru- dence, and of love. Divorce crushes effort and progress in married life, and makes woman fall from the dignity to which eighteen centuries of Christianity have raised her. Divorce outrages the tie of blood and violates the rights of children. It disorganizes and divides families, disturbs public order, and corrupts society. Divorce is a prin- ciple of decay. To those who may accuse me of making a mere- ly hypothetical case, 1 reply : Take up history ; you will read in it that same conclusion written in ill-omened letters in the life and in the death of every nation that violated the law of the indissolu- bility of the marriage tie. You will there see women crushed and degraded by the tyrannical power which man assumes when the right of re- pudiation is introduced into marriage. You will hear this piteous cry resounding on the stage of antiquity : " Of all the beings who live and have intelligence we women are the most miserable race." l 1 Omnium autem qurecumque sunt animata et mentem habent, nos mulieres sumus misenima propago. Euripides, Medea. 82 Divorce. History will show you that the grave Romans made wonderful progress as long as they put in practice this definition of conjugal society: "A community of divine and human law : " Juris di- vini et humani communicatio. You will' remark that decay is hurried on by the fissure of divorce, which they had forgotten to close, and which the edicts of emperors widened. Divorce triumphs. There is an end of the respect with which the august matron was surrounded. This ornament of Roman society disappears. The matron is re- placed by bad women, who reckon their years not by the number of the consuls, but by the number of their husbands, ' who change households eight times in five years, 2 and are buried after having had twenty-two husbands. 3 The two sexes rival each other in inconstancy. Man only obeys his caprice and his passion. He sends away his wife, as one casts off a shoe that hurts the foot. " " Three wrinkles on the forehead, teeth whose enamel is tarnished, sunken eyes, a cold which remains too long, these suffice to separate him from the com- panion of his life and from the mother of his chil- dren. He does not even take the trouble to inform her of her repudiation ; he sends her her bill of di- 1 Numquid jam ulla repuclio erubescit, postquam illustres quxdam ac nobiles foeminse, non consulum numero sed maritoi urn. annos suos computant. Senec., De Beneficiis, lib. iii., cap. xvi. 2 Si crescit numerus, sic fiunt octo mariti, Quinqueper autumnos: titulo res dignasepulcri. Juvenal, Sat. VI., v. 229, 230. 3 St. Jerome affirms having been witness of this fact. 4 So said Paul Emilius, when sending away his wife Papyi ia. Divorce. 83 vorce. Madam, pack up your goods and go. We can no longer tolerate you, you blow your nose too often ! Make haste, the time is short. We are expecting another wife, who is not subject to cold in the head. ' The Roman patricians make exchanges among themselves ; Cato gives up his wife to Hortensius ; " it is the custom among noble people," * says a historian. They only marry with the hope of di- vorcing ; divorce is, as it were, a fruit of mar- riage." ' The law is altered many times without its being able to be made anything but an adulterous law. 4 Modesty has fled with religious marriage, and the same men and women who astonished the world by their chastitv, now astound it by their laxity. 6 These debaucheries, fleeting unions, all either for pleasure or interest, disgust one with marriage and 1 Cur desiderio Bibulae Sertorius ardet ? Si verum excutias, facies non uxor amatur. Tres rugre subeant, et se cutis arida laxet, Fiant obscuri denies, oculique minores: Collige sarcinulas, dicet libertus, et exi; Jam gravis es nobis, et snepe emungeris. Exi Ocius, et propera; sicco venit altera naso. Juvenal, Sat. VI. v. 142-148. * Qure consuetude vulgaris fuit. Strabo, Geograph., lib. vii. Ter- tullian (Afologft.) relates that Socrates gave up his wife Xanthippe to Alcibiades. In certain parts of Greece the husbands bartered with one another their wives. Cf. Potter, Archaolog, gr t non nubit; adultera lege est. Martial, Epig., vi. 7. s Proudhon, On Justice in the Revolution and in thf Church, x. 19. &4 Divorce. exhaust life. The population decreases, and Rome has not enough sturdy soldiers to defend her against the invasions of the barbarians. She borrows their forces and takes them into her pay. Vain precaution ! Those whom she employs become enervated by contact with her corruption, and those who arrive newly from the frontiers of the empire end by stifling it. Barbarians have conquered the world which di- vorce has corrupted. A new world is formed. The divine law of the indissolubility of marriage permeates it, fashions it, and creates the European society, which to-day is so full of life and power. But beware, gentlemen ; Protestantism has re- opened the terrible fissure of divorce through which decay is precipitated. Scarcely half a cen- tury after its appearance Germany complains of divorce as a premium of encouragement given to conjugal dissension. ' Never, says a Protestant author, has one seen so many married people sep- arated as in this extravagantcentury, decayed and approaching the end of the world, .... in which fools teach publicly the legitimacy and necessity of a plurality of wives." 2 1 I consider that never since the first ages of Christianity have sep- arations and divorces been so common as in our day, since, after the example of Moses, we have thought to find therein a remedy for licen- tiousness It is greatly to be feared that in permitting divorce we have only given a premium of encouragement to conjugal dissension. Schwenkfeld, Epist. ii. I. (1538.) Cf- Dollinger, The Reformation, Its Development, and the. Results il has produced in Lutheran Society, vol. ii. * Monner, De Matrimonio. (1561.) Divorce. 85 England, converted at the Reformation by a lasci- vious king, is no happier. Divorce there multiplies domestic crimes to such a pitch that at the begin- ning of this century a prelate of the Anglican hier- archy is obliged to confess in open Parliament that, thanks to the law of divorce, unfaithfulness is become a kind of commerce, carried on for the benefit of discontented husbands and seducers. ' No doubt, gentlemen, in our Christian society decay is less rapid than in pagan society, and people have some modesty, which restrains them in the descent towards too great license. No thanks to their dispositions for this modesty and tardiness, but rather to the sacred law of indissolu- bility which protects them, and which no one shall abrogate so long as there are in this world a Church and Christian families. Nevertheless, we are not safe from the catastro- phes which corruption of manners infallibly brings. Hear the word of the Father of the faithful : " The greatness of the evils engendered by divorce will be better understood when it is borne in mind that the faculty of divorce once granted, no rein, however strong, can restrain it within just limits, not even within those which have been already fixed. The force of example is great ; much great- 1 In the discussions which took place not long ago in the English Parliament, the Bishop of Rochester, replying to Lord Mulgrave, as- serted that out of ten demands for divorce on account of unfaithfulness, there were nine in which the seducer had agreed beforehand with the husband to furnish him with the proofs of his wife's unfaithfulness. De Bonald, Divorce in the Nineteenth Century, etc., chnp. xi. 86 Divorce. er still is the force of passion. Then it must come to pass that, similar to a sickness propagated by contagion, or to a mass of water which has over- flown its banks and spreads everywhere, this rage of divorce shall increase from day to day, and shall obtain influence over the majority of minds." ' That is the danger, gentlemen. If the children of God, weary of bearing the yoke of indissoluble union, permit themselves to be tempted by the too numerous examples of repudiation in which passion seeks its liberty; if human laws triumph over the divine law; if divorce becomes the custom of our society, there is an end to all : our decay is certain, more profound, and more shameful than any decay in history, because we shall have fallen from a great- er height. l Divorce gives license to human lust, which is insatiable. After restraint of liberty, it desires unbounded liberty; after legal union, union at its own pleasure, and in this union polygamy, and after polygamy, promiscuousness. The do- 1 Multoque esse gravioria lisec mala constabit; si consideretar, frenos nullos futures tantos, qui concessam semel divortiorum faculta- tem valeant intra certos aut ante provisos limites coercere. Magna prorsus est vis exemplorum, major cupiditatum: hisce incitamentis fieri debet, ut divortiorum libido latius quotidie serpens plurimorum animos invadat, quasi morbus contagione vulgalus, aut agmen aqua- rum, superatis aggeribus, exundans. Encyclic.. Arcanum divime sa- 2 Ideoque nisi consil : a mutentur, perpetuo sibi metuere familia et societas debebunt, ne miserrime conficiantur in illud rerum omnium certamen atque discrimen, quod est socialistarum ac communistarum flagitiosis gregibus jam diu nropositum. Unde liquet quam absonum et absurdum sit publicam salutem a divortiis expectare, qua; potius in certain societatis perniciem sunt evasura. Ibid. Divorce. 87 mestic hearths will become only court-yards and kennels ; and in the race formed by the decay in- augurated by divorce marriage will only be defined as the union of male and female for the propaga- tion of animals formerly called the human species. We have not come to this, gentlemen, thank God, and I hope we never shall. But to prevent it, all true Christians and sensible men must unite reso- lutely and make their choice between the principle of decay and the law of progress and perfection. In short, they must proclaim, by their lives more than by their discourse, that they will not separate what God has joined together: Quod Deus con- junxit Jiomo non separet. CONFERENCE IV. f nishttion on JHitrriitgc. MY LORD ' AND GENTLEMEN : If the unfortu- nate were the only persons to complain of the rigor of the divine law on the indissolubility of the mar- riage tie they might be induced to listen to reason ; but the libertines and the impious are more numer- ous. They are not content with complaining, they appeal to the secular power and call upon the State to modify the divine law of marriage, which they impiously call criminal and barbarous. And they do this as is well known in favor of their passions, and not in the interest of that civilization and humanity about which they make such a noise. It is not necessary that the summons to the State should be very threatening. The secular power has for a long time lent a willing ear to those pro- tests which flatter its dormant ambition, and serve as an excuse to extend its dominion and power of legislation. Casuists and court theologians have materially helped the State to invade the domain of religion and conscience, and the sophists of natur- alism have succeeded in persuading the State that it possesses all rights, and is the supreme power on earth. 1 Monseigneur Richard, Archbishop of Paris. Legislation on Marriage. 89 There is nothing easier than to grant the demands of the impious and the libertines on the subject of marriage. Legislation is all that is needed. Mar- riage is simply " a contract for the benefit of the State and the good of society," 1 and consequently it is the business of the State to ratify that contract, to regulate and modify its conditions according to the exigencies of the times and the conditions of the persons who make the contract. The State has the first right, the prior claim, to regulate marriage. The right of any religion or any Church to meddle is secondary. Those who marry are free to have the union which " the State regulates and effects" * blessed and sanctified by a religious ceremony, but they must expect the intervention of the State. And even after their union has been consecrated, they can always have recourse to State interven- tion, and make the laws and regulations of the reli- gious society to which they belong bow before the laws and regulations of the State. Behold, gentlemen, the pretensions of the secular power. It has thrust itself forward with so much audacity and persistency, it has been supported by so much sophistry, that it has ended by disturbing the public mind ; and I would not be astonished if it had produced even in your Christian souls the strangest confusion with regard to legislation on marriage. Allow me to enlighten your consciences 1 Portalis in f Expose des Motifs, presented to the French " Corps Legislatif " on the fifth title of the civil code and law on " Marriage." 4 Ibid. 90 Legislation on Marriage. and to set in order your ideas on this important and delicate subject. In opposition to the preten- sions of the secular power, I maintain that legisla- tion on marriage, as to its very essence and essential properties, belongs to God and to His Church. This truth proved, I shall show you with what wis- dom and with what power the Church proceeds in her legislation on matrimony. Let us retrace our steps, gentlemen, and place ourselves in the presence of the principle enunciated in our preceding conferences ; that is to say, that all the power, all the reason of marriage, lies in the tie formed between man and woman by the mutual giving and accepting of their persons. " This tie," says St. Thomas, "is marriage itself, and it is al- ways God Who makes it : " Et talis relatio est semper a Deo. 1 I ask myself how a human power can have the pretension to seize and to regulate this matter, so internal, so spiritual, so divine. That the State forget its nature is possible ; but this forget- fulness gives it no right to intermeddle in a sacred action in which God is present as supreme master of the persons and lives which He binds to each other. I know very well that people wish to see in marriage only a simple contract, similar to the con- tracts by which men exchange, transmit, engage their goods, their services, the fruits of their labor and their industry : all things in which the secular 1 Summ. Theol., suppl., qusest. 48., a. 2. ad. 2. Legislation en Marriage. 91 power may have a right of inspection and regula- tion, in the interests of order and public property : but this is a radically false idea, which vitiates all the practical consequences which may be drawn from it for the exercise of legislative power. " If marriage is a contract," says Moser, ' it is totally different both in its nature and substance from all other contracts : " Quod naturam ac stib- stantiam suam a reliquiscontractibns toto ccelo diffcrt. Studv its origin and what it is in itself, and you are obliged to confess that this truly singular contract has been instituted immediately by God Himself ; that He has prescribed its rules, which no human power can either change or relax, and that He has taken the trouble to define in the Sacred Books the conditions which may render it valid or invalid. This is why St. Thomas calls it a spiritual con- tract ; and from this it follows that the secular power, which can annul other perfectly valid con- tracts, and supplement, under certain conditions, the consent of the contractors, can do nothing and shall never be able to do any such thing when it is a question of marriage.' 1 Matrimonialis contractus, abstractione etiam facta a ratione sacra- menti, quoad naturam et substantiam suam a reliquis contractibus toto ccelo differt Qui matrimonii naturam atque originem attenta mente consideraverit. statim fateri cogetur contractual esse vere sin- gularem, non ab hominibus sed a Deo ipso immediate institutum, circa quern varias quoque ipse pra?scripsit regulas a nulla potestate humana immutandas aut relaxandas : v. g. circa ejus unitatem, indis- solubilitatem aliasque proprietates ; item circa personas, qure ad hunc contractum valide ineundum habiles aut inhabiles non existerent. Gen. ii 28; Levit. xvii.. xx. ; Deut. xx., 22, 26. Hinc matrimonium a St. Thoma contractus spiritualis appellatur 92 Legislation on Marriage. In fact, gentlemen, the secular power has no right over that which gives itself in marriage. Our fortunes, our fields, our houses, our labors, our services, border on other houses, other labors, other services ; our temporal interests are combined with other interests, and we conceive that for pub- lic order, for the public good, the exterior acts, engagements, and contracts, by which all things enter into relationship, should be regulated by the secular power. But when man and woman, in taking hands, say to each other : I am thine, thou art mine, it is their person, their life, their liberty, their heart which they mutually give; sacred possessions bound together in the sacred intimacy of indissoluble union of marriage. By what right does a human power come and say to them, you shall not give yourselves, or you shall only give yourselves in such and such a manner ? My soul, my body, my person, is mine ; my life, with all the energy with which God has endowed it, is mine ; my liberty, which I bind, is mine ; my heart, which I give to another heart, is mine. Yes, mine and God's. I wish to submit myself to His supreme jurisdiction in disposing of the posses- sions He has given to me ; but I do not recognize, I will not recognize, any other jurisdiction. My sacred possessions, I do not place them in circula- hinc quoque fit, quod publica potestas, qus; alios contractus, etsi valide initos, quandoque rescindere, item requisitum in contra- hentibus consensum certis in conditionibus supplere valet, nihil tamen horum circa contractual matrimonialem pracsiare possit, nee unquam potuerit. De impedim. tnatrim., cap. xxiii., 8, 9, 10, n. Legislation on Marriage. 93 tion in the social life where the secular power makes laws and governs. I keep them for myself ; for, in giving them to him or her whom I love, they are still mine, because God has said : " we are two in one flesh : " ct erunt duo in carnc nna. The secular power has, then, nothing to look after when a man is giving himself in marriage ; it has nothing to look after, either, in what he does when giving himself. What does he do? He makes a tie which binds his person, his life, his liberty, his heart to another person, another life, another liber- ty, another heart. Besides, this tie is an interior and spiritual bond which concerns only his con- science, and conscience is a sanctuary on whose gates is read : " Let the profane keep far from here ! " Procnl hinc prof ant! The domicile which only shelters the body is already a sacred spot which the secular power cannot violate without drawing on itself the indignation and contempt of honest people, and yet it is desired that the State may enter into the conscience to see what is passing there, to fasten or unfasten at its fancy the tie which love makes. The marriage tie is protected against the inter- ference of the secular power by the facts that it is made by the joint wills of the man and the woman, and that, having made it, thev cannot sever it. The ancients, as we remarked in our conference on the sanctity of marriage, called religion to the wed- ding, thus recognizing the intervention of a myste- rious and supernatural power in the union of hus- band and wife. We see in the true history of the 94 Legislation on Marriage. human family this supernatural power sealing with a solemn benediction the alliance of the couple who were the first parents of all families and all societies. Where were you, the State and the secular power, when God instituted marriage, and gave it the seal of His sovereign power? God, by determining the essence and fundamental qualities of marriage, wished to signify to you that the intimate union which should represent the marriage of His Word, and the multiplication of the race which should people His heaven with the elect, were things that concerned Him, and with which you have nothing to do. The family pre- ceded you ; it was constituted, united, and estab- lished by God, before men had thought of de- livering to you the commission to govern in public matters, in order to teach you that marriage, in so far as it is a union, does not need your concur- rence ; that its essence is impenetrable and invio- lable ; that no human power can prevent the wills of man and woman from joining with the divine power, so as to form the conjugal tie ; and that this tie once made, no human power can place it in the grasp of its legislation. It follows from this, gentlemen, that marriage outside the Christian ordinance is what it can be, as to its essence and fundamental properties ; this we have not to examine here ; it is sufficient for us to know that, subject to the law of nature and to the law of God, it is independent of all civil law. The incompetency of the secular power is still more manifest, if we enter upon the Christian or- Legislation on Marriage. 95 dinance, because we find ourselves face to face with a sacred thing, which cannot spring from any profane jurisdiction. Marriage is a sacrament. This sacrament has been the torment of jurists, whose jealous ambition cannot suffer near the secular power any independent power, even when it is God Who has constituted it. Their tendency to secularize religious things, in the question which now occupies us, has been encouraged by certain theologians of bad counsel, for whom the contract and the sacrament in marriage are two distinct things : the sacrament, a supernatural condition, added to the contract as to a thing finished and perfect of its kind. If it should be thus, gentlemen, the victory would not be gained by the secular power, because we have proved to it that the matrimonial con- tract differs, as heaven from earth, from the other contracts on which it legislates. On the other side, if the secular power avows with some of its jurists that the contract of which the conditions are made by human laws can become the matter of a sacrament, ' we reply that the matter of a sacrament is a sacred thing, of which a sacred power alone can determine the conditions. But we have no concessions to make on this point. The separability of the contract and of the sacra- ment is a grave error, against which the very na- 1 This is the leg-il theology which is found in Pothier, Conlrat Je Mar., t. i., chap. iii. : " The civil contract being the matter of the sacrament of marriage, there can be no sacrament of marriage when the civil contract is void." 96 Legislation on Marriage. ture of marriage, its divine institution, and the constant doctrine of the Church protest. I have- expressed the fear that this error may have tar- nished the opinion you yourselves have of mar- riage. It is time to give you the true doctrine on this subject. It is impossible, gentlemen, to separate in prac- tice two things which spring from one and the same cause as one and the same effect. Now, such are in marriage the contract and the sacra- ment. Christians who unite themselves are, as I have lately taught you, ' invested by baptism with the power of making and giving a sacred thing. Their mutual tradition, their mutual acceptation, are joined and perfected like the matter and form in the other sacraments, and at the very instant that the conjugal tie is formed, grace springs forth, the sacrament is consummated. There are not here two causes, but one alone ; not two acts, but one single act ; and by the virtue of this single act the contract and the sacrament subsist ns one single and indivisible thing. Even should you ac- cept the opinion of those who despoil the con- tractors of their ministerial power to the advan- tage of the priest charged by the Church to bless and ratify their union, the things cannot be di- vided. You can no more separate the contract from the sacrament than you can separate civil contracts from the legal formalities on which their validity depends. The contract, powerless and in- formal matter, is incapable of effecting a union and 1 Conference I., The Sanctity of Marriage, part ii. Legislation en Marriage. 97 of forming a tie, if it is not laid hold of by the sa- cred words which sanctify it. By itself, it can only be the incomplete element of an indivisible action, and it is identified with the sacrament in this one and only thing which is called Christian marriage. This is what Christ desired when He sanctified by grace what God had blessed in the beginning of time. The efficacious sign of this grace is no new rite which He invents and adds to the matri- monial contract ; it is the contract itself raised to the dignity of a sacrament, and so strong in this supernatural dignity, that no human power can anv more break it : Quod Dens conjunxit Jiouio non separet. Has not the Apostle St. Paul, explaining this mystery, said : " Man and woman shall be united by the exchange of their consent, and after that they shall be sanctified by a great sacrament," but then : " A man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh : Here is a great sacrament : Sacranicntniii hoc inaqnuin cst " ? Let all tradition be explored, there will not be found in it the smallest trace of the distinction imagined by canonists and court theologians for the use of jurists who flatter the ambition of the secular power. Depositary of a teaching which has never varied, the Church has condensed it in these few words, Matrimonium cst sacrauicntum : " Mar- riage is a sacrament." I have explained to you, gentlemen, the sense of this brief and significant affirmation. It means, not that there is a sacra- ment above the contract or mixed with the con- 98 Legislation on Marriage. tract, but that the sacrament is the contract itself ; the contract invested by God with the power to produce grace, after the manner of all the sensible signs which He, as the supernatural Author, has made instruments of His power. Besides, the Church has clearly expressed her- self by the mouth of the Sovereign Pontiffs, every time she has had to pronounce on the doctrine of separation. " No Catholic," she says, "is ignorant, nor can be ignorant, that marriage is truly and properly one of the seven sacraments of the evan- gelical law instituted by Christ, and that there can be no marriage between the faithful without there being, immediately and at the same mo- ment, a sacrament." ' And again : " That is false doctrine, and worthy of condemnation, which as- serts that the sacrament of marriage is only an accessory to the contract that can be separated from it, and that it consists simply of the nuptial benediction. 2 Jurists have in vain attacked Christian marriage : they shall not snatch from it the contract, to make 1 Cum nemo e catholicis ignoret, aut ignorare possit, matrimonium esse vere et proprie unum ex septem evangelicte legis sacramentis a Christo Domino institutum, ac propterea inter fideles matrimonium clari non posse, quin uno eodemque tempore sit sacramentum. Allo- cut. Pii IX. acl Patres Cardinales, die 27 Sept. 1852. * Plura de matrimonio falsa asse. untur : Nulla ratione fieri posse Christum erexisse matrimonium ad dignitatem sacramenti: matrimonii sacramentum non esse nisi quid contractui accessorium, ab eoque separahile, ipsnmque sacramenlum in una tantum nuptiali henedictione situm esse. ' ius IX., In Damnat. et Prohib. operis Joan. Nefom. Nttytz, Profess. Tciurinensis, cui titiilns : Juris Ecclesiastic! Institu- liones. J. N. Nnytz, etc. Legislation on Marriage. 99 it a creature of the secular power ; they shall not extract from it the grace of the sacrament, to re- duce it to the condition of a purely civil agreement. Finally, between the contract and the sacrament there is more than a juxtaposition, more than a soldering, more than a penetration, there is iden- tity : the cause of the contract being the cause of the sacrament ; the obligation, the tie formed by the contract being what remains of the sacrament, that which theology calls the thing itself of the sacrament : res ipsa sacramenti. ' And now, gentlemen, listen to the conclusions drawn from this doctrine of inseparability and iden- tity ; they are serious and deserve to be remem- bered. Christian marriage is a sacred thing ; hence, its essence and its fundamental properties cannot be subject to legislative power of a purely human au- thority : hence, the efforts of the secular power to prevent the union of Christians would be useless: it can hinder nothing ; hence, in vain it says to them : I unite you, in the depths of their con- sciences it unites nothing ; hence, it would endeav- or in vain to break the sacred tie after they have united themselves : it can break nothing ; hence, the sentences it pronounces in the cases which concern the essence and properties of marriage decide nothing ; hence, should it meet with any of the faithful so forgetful of their baptism as to be 1 Hujus procul dubio sacramenti res est ut mas et foemina connubio copulati, quamdiu vivunt, inseparabiliter perseverent. S. Aug., Lib. De niipliis, cap. x., no. n. roo Legislation on Marriage. satisfied with the prohibitions, the consent, and the judgments of the secular power, whatever consi- deration they may enjoy among men, they shall not escape the opprobrium of hearing themselves called before the tribunal of God fornicators and adulterers. ' Do not exaggerate these conclusions. I am far from wishing to deprive the State of the power, and to forbid it every act of authority with regard to marriage. It has duties to fulfil and rights to exercise with regard to this venerable institution. " Those who govern, " says St. Augustine, " can- not serve the Lord except by forbidding and chastis- ing with religious severity all that is contrary to His law."* A public power which understands its high mission should never lose sight of natural and divine law, in order to make its legislation agree with them. All respectable institutions, marriage among the rest, can only gain by this agreement. But this noble use of the secular power with regard to natural and divine law does not prevent its asserting its rights over marriage, and it cannot be denied that it has them. St. Thomas states them with his customary precision. " Marriage, " he says, " so far as it is a function of nature, arises from natural law ;. in so far as it creates a commu- 1 Quamlibet aliam inter Christianos viri et mulieris, przeter sacra- mentum, conjunctionem, cujuscumque etiam civilis legis vi factam, nihil aliud esse, nisi turpem atque exitialem concubinatum. Allocut. Pius. IX. sup. cit. 2 Quomodo ergo, reges Domino serviunt in timore, nisi ea qure con- tra jussa Domini fiunt, religiosa severitate prnhibendo atque plectendo. Epist. clxxxv. ad Bonifac., c. x., no. 7. Legislation on Marriage. roi nity, it is ruled by civil law ; in so far as it is a sacred thing, it belongs to divine law." ' It is on the side of nature and of the sacrament that we have met with the essence, the intrinsic properties, and the tie of marriage ; we have placed all these things under protection from the assaults of the civil pow- er. But the conjugal community entering into civil society, where it may be an element of trouble or of prosperity, it is impossible to withdraw it from the authority of those who have the mission to provide for public order, for the public welfare ; and first, it is necessary to state its existence, and consequently to receive the declaration of the act which constitutes it. It is necessary, besides, to put in order the civil consequences dependent on this act, and the relations which it creates. To prevent the decay and exhaustion of the physical strength of a nation, to avoid family troub- les, scandals, and the sad consequences of capricious and immoral unions, to assure the performance of the public service, on which the security and pre- servation of a people depend, it may be necessarv to create capabilities or incapabilities resulting from certain conditions of age, state, or consent. Hence questions of legal authenticity, of dowry, inheritance, succession, guardianship, admission to public functions, of civil legitimacy or illegitimacy, which might be the subject of a harassing, vexa- 1 Matrimonium, in quantum est in officium natune. statuitur lege nnturre; in quantum est in officium communitatis, statuitur lege civili; in quantum est sacramentum, statuitur jure divino. In IV. Sent. Dist. 34. a. 2. q. I. ad. 4; Cf. Lib. iv. Conlr-i gentes., cap. Ixxviii. IO2 Legislation on Marriage. tious, unjust, tyrannical, and impious legislation, but also of a legislation both reasonable and salu- tary. Now, to this reasonable and salutary legis- lation the Christian should conscientiously submit. He incurs, at his own risk and peril, all its penalties, immediately that knowingly and voluntarily, in contempt of the law, he contracts a sacred engage- ment, over which the civil law has no hold and which it cannot invalidate. ' But you will remark, gentlemen, that in the sphere where the legislative authority of the secular power is exercised, there can only be question of the civil condition and the civil consequences of marriage. The civil power legislates not on marriage itself, but around mar- riage ; not on that which is essential and principal in marriage, but on its accessories. The essence, the intrinsic properties, the tie of marriage trans- formed and elevated by Christ, are sacred things, which can only spring from a sacred authority. 1 Formerly, in France, the marriages of the sons of a family con- tracted without the consent of their parents were void as to their civil consequences; that is to say, the contractors might be disinherited, the parents could legally compel them to restore the gifts which they had received before the marriage. Those who had assisted at the marriage were punished according to the will of the judge; the lives of the notary and the witnesses were in jeopardy. "After the dissolution of these marriages," says d'He'ricourt (Eccles. Laws, part iii., chap. 5i On Marriage, 76), " wid >ws had neither dowry, nor recovery, nor any other matrimonial agreement; and the children who were born of this marriage, or who had been legitimatized by their means, were treated as illegitimate with regard to succession. " To-day, from a civil point of view, are considered illegitimate the unions of children made without the consent of their parents, of mili- tary men without the consent of their chiefs, and the unions of those who have not yet attained the age prescribed by law. Legislation on Marriage. 103 This authority, you have named it, gentlemen : it is the Church. ' The secular power has desired to dispossess it ; therefore it has imagined the doc- trine of the separability of the contract and the sacrament. This ingenious discovery has made it bold ; when rights are taken away, there is no hesitation about taking away too much. Having taken possession of the contract, the civil power desires to be its absolute master. Its hired theo- logians have not feared to define the strange dogma of the dependence of the Church on the consider- ation of the State in all matrimonial matters. This scaffolding of ambitious affirmations crumbles under the blows of the exposition you have just heard. We remain in the presence of a sacred thing, consequently in presence of the undivided power of the Church. It is Jesus Christ Himself Who has invested her with this power, for He has not in any respect separated marriage from the other sacraments of which He confided the dispen- sation to her. All divine mysteries must pass through her hands ; she therein represents Christ Himself : Sic nos exist imct homo ut ministros Christi, ei dispcnsatoj es niysteriorum Dei. a If the ministry of the Church is not immediate 1 A conjugal! foedere sacramentum separi nunquam posse, et omnino spectare ad Ecclesice potestatem ea omnia decernere, qua? ad idem matrimonium quovis modo possunt pertinere. Allocut., Pius IX. supra cit. Cum matrimonium sit sua vi, sua natura, sua sponte sacrum, con. sentaneum est, ut regatur ac temperetur, non principum imperio, sed (Hvina auctoritate Ecclesine, quoe rerum sacrarum sola habet magis- terium. Leo XIII. Encyclic. Arcanum divina sapiftitue. * I. Cor. iv. I. IO4 Legislation on Marriage. in marriage, as in the other sacraments, it is cer- tain that the contractors who act belong to her by baptism, and are subject to her sovereign authority. In keeping them, she keeps the entire sacrament ; nothing can be done with it except according to her law. She binds, she looses, the contracting wills. Their consent cannot unite them if she prevents it ; there are no further obstacles the moment she has .said : speak. Where the tie is doubtful, she alone has the right to pronounce on its validity. If she decides that all is done well, they must remain united. They are free, if she says : it is ill done. Her penetrating authority can go to the very root of the conjugal union, heal the canonical vice of consent, and give it back all its efficacy. The sacred tie which cannot be broken either by the retractation of the act which made it or by the sentence of human justice, can be broken by her for the greater glory of God, or for the well-being of Christian society, when it has not yet been definitely established by the carnal union of husband and wife. And when she can do nothing with the very substance of the obliga- tion contracted, she finds means to alleviate its rigor for the unfortunate, in suspending, by separa- tion, the exercise of rights and the fulfilment of duties which have become an intolerable burden to them. You see, gentlemen, that, unlike human legislation, which moves around marriage, the leg- islation of the Church penetrates to its very essence, because marriage is a sacred thing, and the Church alone possesses a sacred power in the world. Legislation on Marriage. 105 This power the Church has exercised with supreme independence in those Christian societies which were formed under the jealous eye of pagan powers ; she has maintained it in spite of all contra- dictions ; she has defined it in those solemn articles of which I have not the time to explain to you the purport. 1 Spare me from quotations. I think I 1 We add the following to the two definitions we have given above of the general power of the Church with regard to marriage: First, the Canons of the Council of Trent, Sess. xxiv. Can. III. Si quis dixerit eos tantum consanguinitatis et affmilatis gradus, qui Levitico exprimuntur, posse impedire matrimonium con- trahendum ct derimere contiac urn ; nee posse Ecclesiam in nonnullis illorum dispensare, aut consiituere ut plures impediant et dirimant ; anathema sit. Can. IV. Si quis dixerit Ecclesiam non potuisse constituere impedi- menta matrimoniuin cliriinentia, vel in iis constituendis errasse; ana- thema sit. Can. VI. Si quis dixerit matrimonium ratum non consummating, per solemnem religionis professionem alterius conjugum non derimi; anathema sit. Can. VIII. Si quis dixerit Ecclesiam errare, cum ob multas causas separationem inter conjuges, quoad thorum seu quoad cohabitationem, ad certum incertumque tempus fieri posse decernit ; anathema sit. Can. XII. Si quis dixerit causas matrimoniales non spectaread judi- ces ecclesiasticos ; anathema sit. Secondly, the contradictions of the propositions condemned by the Syllabus. Prop. LXVIII. Ecclesia non habet potestatem impedimenta matri- monium dirimentia inducere, sed ea potestas civili auctoritali competit, a qua impedimenta existentia tollenda sunt Lilt, apost. Mulliplices inter, 10 Junii 1851.) Prop. LXIX. Ecclesia sequioribus sieculis dirimentia impedimenta inducere ccepit, non jure proprio, sed illo jure usa, quod a civili po- testate mutuata erat. Litt. apost. Ad apostolic^, 22 August, 1851. Prop. LXX. Tridentini Canones qui anathematis censuram illis inferunt qui facultatem impedimenta dirimentia inducendi Ecclesise 106 Legislation on Marriage. have sufficiently proved that the intimate legisla- tion on marriage belongs to the Church. I hasten to tell you with what wisdom and power the Church proceeds in her legislation on matrimony. II. You do not expect me, gentlemen, to enter into the details of the Church's legislation on matri- mony, nor that I should draw from it practical applications. This study belongs to canon law and to casuistry. It is long, dry, complicated, neces- sary for those who should govern consciences ; you do not need it. It is sufficient, in order to increase in your Christian souls respect for the sacred power with which the Church is invested, to show you that, after the manner of those legislators truly worthy of the name, she knows how to unite wis- dom and power in the preventive, merciful, and punitive measures which she takes to protect and strengthen the venerable institution of marriage. You may settle your life in it, but you cannot enter upon it as you will. There are on the road a succession of barriers which cannot be passed negare audeant, vel non sunt dogmatic!, vel de hac mutuata potestate intelligendi sunL Ibid. Prop. LXXI. Tridenti forma sub infirmitatis pcena non obligat, ubi lex civilis aliam formam prsestituat, et velit hac nova forma interveni- ente matrimonium valere. Ibid. Prop. LXXIV. Causae mntrimoniales et sponsalia suapte natura ad forum civile pertinent. Ibid., Alice. Acfrbissimttm, 27 Sept. 1852. As to the power of the Sovereign Pontiff to dissolve a marriage ratified but not consummated, there is no other definition but the practice of the Holy See. We refer to the Index on this question. Legislation on Marriage. 107 without examination and permission. They are called impediments. Superficial or evil-minded persons only see in these impediments a kind of toll by which the Church makes profit for the increase of her financ- es. The formidable multiplication of fiscal laws from which they suffer in civil life persuades them, no doubt, that one can scarcely have any power, even spiritual, without seeking to make money by it. Foolish prejudice, against which it is useless to argue ; you are too reasonable not to estimate it rightly. Your serious minds seek in the measures taken by the most respected of all authorities the highest motives which can induce her to use her legislative power ; and in company with all grave thinkers you believe that legislation on a sacred thing cannot be lightly made, nor from base motives, and that the impediments to marriage must have their philosophy. You are right, gentlemen, the Church has multi- plied the preventive measures of her matrimoni- al legislation only in the interests of those who marry, of the family, and of society. To the im- pediments imposed by the strength of natural law, she had added those which she believed to be necessary to assure the peace and holiness of the con- jugal union, together with its liberty and its end. 1 ! To help the memory, rather than to satisfy literary taste, the fifteen diriment impediments are enumerated in the following lines: " Error, conditio, votum. cognatio, crimen, Cultus disparitas, vis, ordo, ligamen, honestas, Amens, amnis, si clandestinus et impos, Si mulier sit rapta, loco nee reddita tuto." io8 Legislation on Marriage. Marriage being of all the engagements which man contracts with his fellow-creature the most elevated, most delicate, most intimate, most irrevo- cable, nature desires that in it the will shall be per- fectly free. Insanity or imbecility, which envelop it in darkness ; error, which leads astray its choice ; violence and rape, which falsify and constrain its resolutions, are so many obstacles which it is im- possible to overleap before arriving at the union of consent and at the formation of the conjugal tie. The Church does not create them, she is satis- fied to point them out. But her wisdom, profound- ly respecting liberty, goes much further ; she eliminates from marriage the servile condition which places a man in the power of another man. It does not satisfy her that those who marry should give themselves to each other, they must possess each other freely, and no stranger will can tyranni- cally oppose itself to the exercise of their respective rights. It is thanks to this wise character of its law that the Church has obtained from Christian masters the greater part of the emancipations which have destroyed slavery little by little, and have created our free society, in which the impediment of condition no longer exists. The liberty of marriage being assured, it must be able to attain its humanitarian and social design : the propagation of the human species and the fusion of families into that great society which is called a people. For this reason, after having for- bidden marriage to the unfortunate whose nature is incomplete, or whose energies lie dormant, the Legislation on Marriage. 109 Church further debars those from marrying who are too nearly related to each other. She says, as well as physiologists, that two bloods too nearly related in their source are with difficulty prolific ; that their similarity predisposes them to pathologic inheritance, that is to say, to the sad transmission of the infirmities and maladies which afflict a family ; that, like two poles of electricity, two bloods com- ing from afar combine more easily, and cause the spark of life to spring forth more vigorously ; and, definitely, that man should not have less solicitude for the health and beauty of his noble race than he has for the health and beauty of the animal races which he makes use of for his nourishment and service. She forbids, then, not only those unions which are repugnant to nature, but she extends her prohibitions to those inferior degrees of relation- ship where she perceives a danger, should it be only that of the great concentration of families among themselves, of creating in society a kind of caste, in which the affections remain entrenched, or where possessions are amassed while life is im- poverished. The foreseeing wisdom of the Church, according to the thought so beautifully expressed by St. Thomas, desires that marriage, pursuing its design to the end, may attain these two great social blessings: the confederation of men and the multi- plication of friendships. It is with this design that she extends her prohibitions of consanguinity to affinity, in order that social union may result from the double diffusion of life and love. To these guarantees from without are added 1 1 o Legislation on Marriage. the guarantees of security and domestic peace, which permit husband and wife to live together without fear and trouble. The Church does not wish a man or woman to profit by a crime in order to be united to the accomplice of their pas- sion. By shutting the doors of conjugal society to homicide and adultery, she takes from them all hope of obtaining their vile designs, and stifles in the germ many bold undertakings which would compromise the security of the domestic hearth. But the Church's greatest anxiety is for the peace of souls. Love, so ardent in early days, grows luke- warm with time, and disparity of worship, forgotten for a moment, may, with its desires, its exactions, its susceptibilities, become a source of interminable discussion, bitter reproaches, and perhaps of incur- able hatred. The Christian hearth is a sanctuary where before all else religious peace should reign ; and for that there must be but one faith, one God, one altar, one worship, as there is but one Baptism. Do not forget, gentlemen, that marriage is holy, and already the Church watches over its holiness, by proscribing a disparity of worship. But still more severe and more pure are her exactions with regard to this characteristic property of Christian marriage. It ceases to be holy and becomes sacri- lege if it is made to the detriment of a right acquired by God. Also the Church considers that the sacerdotal character and solemn vows of religion are on the part of man gifts, on the part of God an entering into possession which does not permit other engagements. Legislation on Marriage. \ 1 1 More than that, gentlemen; the Church does not suffer the rights acquired by man to be violated. Not only does she arrest at the doors of the sanc- tuary those who would marry a second time be- fore the tie which binds them be broken by death, but also those who, having given their word in solemn espousals, dare to brave public honesty by a kind of perjury. To such a degree is the Church jealous for the sanctity of marriage, that she does not permit that the union of her children should be suspected of any infamy, nor that se- crecy should be abused to beguile their good faith and to extract from them a consent for which they would blush. Therefore she compels them, under pain of only producing powerless consent, to come out from clandestine shades, and in broad daylight to pronounce before her their oaths, and to receive her benediction. Gentlemen, be the Church accused as much as may be of annoying those who marry in spite of her impediments, it is not less true, as you have just seen, that all her legislation is made in the in- terests of liberty, of the multiplication and health of human generations, of social unity, of the secur- ity and peace of the domestic hearth, of purity of faith, of the laws of God, of the laws of man, of the honor and good reputation of marriage it- self. If it pleases the Church to moderate as much as she can the rigor of her legislation, she has certainly the right to exact some compensation. It is more than thanklessness and ill humor : it is folly, ingratitude, injustice, to profit by the dispen- 1 1 2 Legislation on Marriage. sations which her merciful kindness grants to our weakness and our needs, while we attack her wis- dom. The wisdom of the Church, however, with all her preventive measures, would not have saved marriage from the attempts made by passion during eighteen centuries to deprave it, if she had not brought all her strength to the aid of her legis- lation. You have heard her protest with a loud voice against the unholy laws Sy which the em- perors endeavored to prolong the immoral liberties of paganism, and you have heard her proclaim that the decrees of Caesar are struck powerless by the decrees of God. Her courageous resistance has made yield around her those codes and customs contrary to her sacred laws, and she has arrived at combining in her law the matrimonial law of those nations who receive her Baptism. But after having triumphed over the opposition of laws, it was necessary to combat the licentious- ness of the great. For them, relationship and en- gagements made counted for nothing, directly there was a question of serving some interest or gratifying some passion. Publicly wicked, they would quickly have brought the Christian world back to the licentious manners which before them dishonored marriage, if the Church had not cried out to them, as John the Baptist did to Herod : Non licet, " It is not lawful," and if she had not crushed with the thunder of her censures their proud pretension to place themselves above laws. Only in our own land, how many kings and Legislation en Marriage. 1 1 3 princes the Church has had to solemnly warn and strike without pity, when they revolted against her maternal admonitions. Theodbert, the grand- son of Clovis, Clotaire I., Caribert, Dagobert, Childeric d'Austrasie, Pepin d'Heristal, Charle- magne himself, Lothaire, Robert the Pious, Philip I., Louis VII., Philip Augustus, and many princes and lords of less power. Not only among us, but all around us, the Church has had to make war with wickedness and divorce among crowned heads. To excommunicate the guilty, brave their anger, place their kingdoms under interdict, shut the temples and cemeteries, absolve the people from their oath of allegiance, provoke their murmurs and cause their tears to flow, no cost was too great to obtain the victory over the scandal. In these struggles between the divine law and human pas- sions a good number of bishops have sacrificed their lives, and the Church herself has preferred to have her bosom torn and her members cut off, rather than compromise by concession the holy cause of marriage. Railers have laughed at her excommunications, and the wise of the world have exclaimed at the scandal. Strange scandals are these repeated acts of spiritual vigor, which chas- tise crime and stifle it before it becomes conta- gious. Without the courage and power which the Church has displayed in maintaining her legislation on marriage, the licentiousness of monarchs would have been imitated by their courts; from the court 1 14 Legislation on Marriage. it would have passed to the people, and the public manners of Christian nations, like those of an- tiquity, would have offered to-day to our eyes only the repugnant spectacle of a universal putre- faction. For, be well persuaded, gentlemen, the holy laws of marriage are not violated with im- punity: God is always ready to avenge them. We have seen sovereign races become extinct in the offspring whose birth the people had greeted with enthusiasm, and hope deceived has sought for the cause of these providential extinctions. There was perhaps no other cause but that of unions contracted in contempt of the laws of God and of the Church. Nations will become extinct like families in the day when they no longer respect these laws, in the day when the Church shall have no power to make their corrupt heart understand this holy precept of the Apostle, in which is summed up all her legislation on matrimony : " Marriage honorable in all, and the bed undefiled : " Honorabilc connubium in omnibus, et thorns immacu- latus. ' 1 I. Heb. xiii. 4. CONFERENCE V. fcg> be firofimation 0f *K> MY LORD' AND GENTLEMEN : The conclusions of our last conference completely overthrow the calculations of those who count on the civil power to reform the indissolubility of the marriage tie. The civil power can do nothing, for the question is not about a civil act but about an essential prop- erty of marriage. The Church is invested with divine authority, and she alone has the right to legislate on marriage. The Church, as the supreme teacher, is the only power that can pronounce practically on the value of the conjugal tie. If the tie is made as it should be, she has no authority, no commission from God to undo it, and those who complain of rigor must be satisfied with the answer contained in these words of the Saviour : Quod Dfiis conjunxit lioino 11011 separct : " What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Gentlemen : I have not forgotten the bitter plead- ings with which the adversaries of the divine law on the indissolubility of the marriage tie have wearied us. I repeat their complaints for the ex- press purpose of proving to you that the greater number suffer from the law because they have 1 Monseigneur Richard, Archbishop of Paris. 115 1 1 6 The Profanation of Marriage. outraged it, and because they have made it in their own cases the chastisement of a profanation. Marriage, according to its primitive destination, should be an honorable and happy union : but into it, as into everything, sin has entered. St. Paul, who calls it " a great mystery," does not fail to tell us that we must expect to meet with tribula- tions therein : Tribulationem habebunt. ' The imper- fections and vices of our fallen nature can render these tribulations so numerous and so strong that it would be folly to confront them under an indis- soluble yoke, if God had not prepared compensa- tions for those who marry, in the three great blessings which theology calls: Proles, fides, sacra- mentum. " Proles" that is to say, the honor and happiness of living again in one's children, enriching the world with new beings, and of preparing an elect race for heaven. " Fides" that is to say, the sweetness, the conso- lations of a faithful intimacy into which one retires to make life's joys more real, or to withstand the blows of evil fortune. " Sacr amentum" that is to say, the grace of the sacrament which strengthens the conjugal tie, heals the infirmities, or repairs the follies of nature. " There must be nothing less than these three great blessings," says St. Thomas, " in order to ex- cuse marriage, and to make it honorable : " Hac 1 I. Cor. vii. 28. The Profanation of Marriage. 1 1 7 sunt bona qucz matrimonium excusant et honestum reddunt. 1 Now, gentlemen, who are they who with candor, sincerity, and a spirit of faith seek the three great blessings of marriage ? They are few. And when they have been deceived, when they suffer, they do not complain, believe me, because they cannot begin again their matrimonial experience by a new deception. As to those who ask for themselves or others this experience, I maintain that they do not deserve that the law should bend before their misfortune ; for they suffer by their own fault, be- cause they have all some dishonesty to reproach themselves with on account of one of the blessings of marriage, perhaps with regard to them all at the same time. We shall make a study of modern marriages. It will be more useful and more convincing than all arguments, as a reply to those who meddle with the reformation of marriage, instead of con- demning those who profane it. I. The fecundity of living beings is, in nature, the accomplishment of a precept of God, and it is the fruit of His benediction. The Lord said, " Increase and multiply:" Crescite, multiplica mini; and life spread through the whole universe, of which it is the ornament and the glory. Wherever it is absent, nature is cheerless and desolate ; every- 1 Sitmm.Theol., suppl. qurest. 49. a. I. 1 1 8 The Profanation of Marriage. where that it abounds, we recognize and bless the paternal hand of God. But in the little world of the human family, more than in the great world of nature, fecundity is a blessing. God has promised it to those whom He loves. He showed to His servant Abra- ham the stars of the firmament, which the children of his race were to equal in number. 1 He has in- spired His prophets to sing the happiness of the man who fears the Lord : All prospers in his industrious hands. His wife beside him is like the fertile vine on the sides of his house, and his numerous children surround his table, joyful and full of hope, like the young shoots of the olive tree. He shall see his childrens' children : it is thus that God gives His blessing : Ecce sic bene- dicitur homo? Yes, it is thus that God blesses ; and when He wishes to curse, He denies posterity or destroys it. The posterity of the sinner be cut off, He says ; in one generation may his name be blotted out : Fiant nati cjus in interitmn : in generatione una dcleatur nonicn y'us. 3 How beautiful is the smile of childhood ! It is like a ray of sunshine at the hearth, and the more smiles there are, the more resplendent is the hearth. Multiply, charming beings, fill the house where 1 Eduxitque eum foras, et ait illi : Suspice ccelum, et numera Stellas, si potcs. Et clixit ei : Sic erit semen tuum. Gen. xv. 5. 2 Labores manuum tuarum quia minclucabis, beatus es et bene tibi erit. Uxor tua sicut vitis abundnns, in lateribus domus tu?e. Filii tui, sicut novelke olivarum, in circuitu mensse tuce. Et videas filios filiorum tuorum. Psalm cxxvii. 2-6. 8 1'salm cviii. 13. The Profanation of Marriage. \ 19 you are born with your shouts and joyous anima- tion ; God loves to- see you and to hear you. The Providence of little birds and of the lilies of the field. He desires especially to be the God of large families. He keeps in reserve for them His best blessings, and gives them inexpressible charms, which draw towards them the sympathy, the pity, and the generosity of benevolent hearts. There you will find none of that dull silence which sad- dens empty hearths ; there, the hearts of parents are not exposed to that foolish idolatrv which is seen growing around an only child ; the number does not divide the love, it multiplies it ; there are no irreparable absences, no mourning that cannot be consoled ; the flower that God gathers leaves behind it lovable sisters, who are loved the more, as if to avenge the treason of death ; there, work, devotion, sacrifice, are imposed and perpetuated in glorious and sacred tradition ; there, are elect to people heaven ; soldiers, to serve the country ; pioneers, to take possession of the world. The em- pire of the earth belongs to large families: Crcs- cite, innltiplicaniini et replete terrain. A Christian who understands this, and who knows how to enter into the designs of God, pre- pares with a deep respect for himself for the honor of paternity, and when the hour is come for him, he says to God, like the young Tobias: "Lord, Thou knowest that not for fleshly lust do I take my sister to wife, but only for the love of pos- terity, in which Thy name shall be blessed for- ever and ever." And he rejoices to hear fall on the I2O The Profanation of Marringc. head of her whom he has taken for a companion this blessing of the Church : " May she be fertile in children : " Sit foecunda in sobole? And is it to be expected that God will bestow His blessing on sinfully restricted families as upon those where fecundity obeys the laws of nature ? That cannot be ; against the violators of His law God prepares a terrible revenge. He allows those who have deceived Him to enjoy for a time the fruit of their parsimonious fecundity. And when their heart is engrossed, when they have centred all their hopes with all their love in the only son or in the two little creatures to whom they have re- stricted their family, death, the sad messenger of Divine Justice, comes to knock at the door of their home, and carries off, in spite of their cries and their prayers, those who leave behind them neither brothers nor sisters to console for their loss. Again, it is better for God to punish quickly, for His vengeance delayed would become perhaps more terrible. The only child, the object of an idolatrous worship, opens its soul to all the pas- sions bound together by a monstrous selfishness. Allow him to grow up ; neither the warnings, nor the tears, nor the threats of those who have too fondly loved him can arrest his unbridled course on the road to perdition, at the end of which, vic- tim of debauchery or of some shameful catastrophe, he will leave to his unfortunate parents a cursed 1 Et nunc. Doaiine, tu scis quia n MY LORD ' AND GENTLEMEN : The first and principal end of marriage is the propagation of the human race. God declared His designs in this respect by the commandment He gave to our first parents : " Increase and multiply, and fill the earth : " Crescite, multiplicamini, et replete terrain. How would this law have worked in a state of innocence and immortality ? We do not know, and there is no need of our knowing. Let us be con- tent to learn from St. Thomas that it is unreason- able to believe with certain teachers that God, out of respect for the purity of our first parents, would have renewed in each, member of humanity the great act of creation. In every state of existence it is an honor to give life and thus resemble the Principle of all life. In the state of innocence this honor would have been without peril and without stain. If our first parents had not sinned, they would have seen in the flesh the beauty with which God originally adorned it. Their upright nature, ignorant of the rebelliousness of the flesh, would have multiplied at the same time grace and life. In our fallen nature it is no longer thus. The honor of parentage remains, but it is accompanied 1 Monseigneur Richard, Archbishop of Paris. 138 Celibacy and Virginity. \ 39 with so many inconveniences and dangers that one asks whether it is allowable to renounce it. Never, reply certain interpreters, too fervent and perhaps too interested in the law of population. This law is obligatory on all human beings. It is a reproach not to be able to fulfil it ; it is a crime voluntarily to withdraw from it. With such reasoning, we must acknowledge that God has shown Himself very prodigal in reproaches of our poor race, and that there is in Christian humanity a number of very interesting and perfect criminals. It is of these last that I am about to speak to you, not to excuse, but to defend them. Against the general pretensions of the advocates of marriage at all costs, I wish to prove that celibacy and vir- ginity may become a condition of choice : first, because this condition is desired by God ; secondly, because it is one of the most beautiful and most useful ornaments of Christian societv. We have seen God acting progressively in the institution of marriage. His will is manifested in the typical nuptials of our first parents ; neverthe- less, it is not yet expressly, imperatively, and def- initely established, so as to forbid it every kind of indulgence towards the imperfections and failings of nature. The indissoluble unity of marriage is decreed, but God dispenses with it for reasons worthy of His infinite wisdom and His compassion- ate kindness. But His toleration does not make Him forget His original design, and to hinder the 140 Celibacy and Virginity. infirmity and perversity of man from prescribing against the unity and indissolubility of marriage, which He desires to be definitely established, He causes to be heard in the facts of history and in the teaching of Scripture protestations which bear witness to His preferences and show to which side the law of nature inclines. These protestations, we have seen, converge in a formal declaration by Christ, Who by virtue of His rights as Creator, Redeemer, Reformer, and Exemplar, brings back marriage to its primitive institution, and decrees for regenerate humanity the indispensable unity and indissolubility of the conjugal tie : Et crunt duo in carne una. Quod Deus conjunxit homo non scparet. ' This slow and progressive march of God in the determination of the matrimonial law is re- marked in the preparation of the evangelical counsel which requires of certain privileged souls a state nobler and more perfect than that of marriage. God desires this state, but before solemnly declar- ing His will He allows the human race to form this common opinion of celibacy and virginity which a great thinker voices in these words : " that it belongs to all ages, all places, all religions, and it sees in continence something celestial, which exalts man and renders him pleasing to the Divinity." a If the Jewish people, infatuated and proud of the oracles which promise it a deliverer" born of its blood, esteems marriage above all other states, and regards sterility as a reproach, it never- 1 Conference II., The Conjugal Tie, part i. 2 Joseph de Maistre: The Pope, book iii., chap. 3. Celibacy and Virginity. 141 theless demands continence from its priests at the periods when their sacred functions bring them into intercourse with God. It admires the holy reserve of women who in a way shroud themselves in their widowhood. Because you have loved chastity, said the High Priest Joachim to Judith, because you have not taken another husband, the hand of the Lord has strengthened you, you shall be blessed forever. ' The heathen themselves recognize the beauty of a state which protests against the corruption of their manners. They praise by the mouth of their poets and orators "the priests who always keep their chastity." 3 They call celibacy and virginity into the service of gods and goddesses. Isis, Mi- nerva, Ceres, Vesta, are surrounded by virgins. * Virgins alone are worthy to watch the sacred fire and to receive the oracles of heaven ; * virgins are venerable and holy. ' Virgins deserve the greatest honors ; the fasces bow before them ; the first places are reserved for them at all the festivals where the majesty of the Senate and the Roman 1 Eo quod castitatem amaveris, et post virum tuum alterum nescie- ris: ideo et manus Domini confortavit te, et ideo eris benedicta in seternum. Judith xv. n. 4 Quique sacerdotes ca