The Greatest Pope since the Reformation

Truly, it is hardly possible to describe how great are the evils that flow from divorce. Matrimonial contracts are by it made variable; mutual kindness is weakened; deplorable inducements to unfaithfulness are supplied; harm is done to the education and training of children; occasion is afforded for the breaking up of homes; the seeds of dissension are sown among families; the dignity of womanhood is lessened and brought low, and women run the risk of being deserted after having ministered to the pleasures of men. Since, then, nothing has such power to lay waste families and destroy the mainstay of kingdoms as the corruption of morals, it is easily seen that divorces are in the highest degree hostile to the prosperity of families and States, springing as they do from the depraved morals of the people, and, as experience shows us, opening out a way to every kind of evil-doing in public and in private life.

Further still, if the matter be duly pondered, we shall clearly see these evils to be the more especially dangerous, because, divorce once being tolerated, there will be no restraint powerful enough to keep it within the bounds marked out or presurmised. Great indeed is the force of example, and even greater still the might of passion. With such incitements it must needs follow that the eagerness for divorce, daily spreading by devious ways, will seize upon the minds of many like a virulent contagious disease, or like a flood of water bursting through every barrier.

– Leo XIII, Arcanum (1880)

 

Council of Florence on Divorce

Council of Florence (17^th Ecumenical)

Exultate Deo – 22^nd November 1439

The seventh [sacrament] is the sacrament of matrimony, which is a sign of the union of Christ and the church according to the words of the apostle: This sacrament is a great one, but I speak in Christ and in the church. The efficient cause of matrimony is usually mutual consent expressed in words about the present. A threefold good is attributed to matrimony. The first is the procreation and bringing up of children for the worship of God. The second is the mutual faithfulness of the spouses towards each other. The third is the indissolubility of marriage, since it signifies the indivisible union of Christ and the church. Although separation of bed is lawful on account of fornication, it is not lawful to contract another marriage, since the bond of a legitimately contracted marriage is perpetual.

 

“I don’t believe in Hell for things like that…”

 

Anathemas for October

I recently had occasion to read through the anathemas of the ecumenical councils. It struck me even more forcibly than it had before, that the forthcoming Roman Synod on the family could perform no more pastoral act than to anathematize in due form the principal errors on that topic. And since their Lordships are all busy men, I have made so bold as to compose some anathemas myself; and if anyone of Synodal Fathers should ever happen to see this posting, they would be very welcome to make any use of them that they might see fit.

1. On the indissolubility of marriage

Si quis dixerit, vinculum matrimonii rati et consummati inter baptizatos ob haeresim, adulterium, conhabitationem molestam, absentiam affectatam, sterilitatem aut quamcumque aliam causam, coniugibus ambobus viventibus, dirumpi posse, anathema sit.

{If anyone should say that the bond of a ratified and consummated marriage between baptized persons can be broken on account of heresy, adultery, irksome cohabitation, deliberate absence, sterility or of any other cause whatever while both spouses are still living, let him be anathema.}

2. Same sex ‘marriage’

Si quis eo versaniae pervenerit ut non erubescat affirmare legibus divinis aut humanis sanciri posse ut vir virum in matrimonium ducat vel mulier mulieri nubat, anathema sit.

{If anyone should reach such a degree of madness, that he is not ashamed to affirm that it can be sanctioned by divine or human laws that a man should marry a man, or a woman marry a woman, let him be anathema.}

3. Civil partnerships

Si quis dixerit, licere civitatibus illas coniunctiones seu pacta  viri ad virum aut mulieris ad mulierem legibus sancire, quae matrimonii formam et speciem prae se ferant, immo quae totam matrimonii rationem praeter solum nomen habere simulent, anathema sit.

{If anyone should say that States may establish by laws those partnerships or contracts of a man to a man or of a woman to a woman which have the form and appearance of matrimony, or rather which pretend to have the whole nature of matrimony apart from the name alone, let him be anathema.}

4. ‘Gender theory’

Si quis effutire praesumpserit, aliud esse sexum, aliud sexualitatis genus, sexum quidem singulis hominibus a Deo vel natura plerumque praestitum, sexualitatis vero genus ab ipsis hominibus libere delectum atque amplexum, ita ut civitatibus statuere liceat ut viri se femineos nominantes iurium et officiorum mulieris, mulieres vero se masculinas dicentes iurium et officiorum viri potiantur, anathema sit.

{If anyone should presume to babble about how sex is one thing and gender another, and about how each human being is generally endowed with their sex from God or from nature, whereas gender is freely chosen and embraced by human beings themselves, in such a way that a State may establish by law that a man who identifies himself as feminine may possess the rights and duties of a woman, and that a woman who calls herself masculine may possess the rights and duties of a man, let him be anathema}

I think that should wrap things up for now.

 

When was the sexual revolution?

Not in the 1960’s, according to Mgr Ronald Knox:-

Within the lifetime even of the younger of us, we have seen in England and in many other parts of the world a complete apostasy of the human conscience on matters relating to sex. We have seen an attempt, successful, unfortunately, in many minds, to substitute pleasure for duty as the chief end of the married state. And because the Catholic Church, almost alone now in her protest, obstinately insists that the marriage tie is indissoluble, and that the use of marriage is unlawful when artificial conditions render it unfruitful, the Catholic Church is becoming the object of a fresh attack, destined, I think, to be no less bitter than any of the attacks which have gone before it (“Reboam” in ‘A Retreat for Priests’, first published in 1946).

 

Wisdom from the manualists V: husbands and wives

A husband may, or rather should, correct a wife who is at fault; but such correction should normally consist in words, spoken without anger or enmity.

(Dominic Prummer, Manuale theologiae moralis, II, 591)