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Chapter One

The Times, They Are a-Changing

Leo XIII, Arcanum Divinae

Man, Machine, and the Manifesto

On the morning of Monday, October 13, 1884, Pope Leo XIII had a vision that would surely haunt him for the rest of his days. He had just finished celebrating Mass in one of the Vatican’s private chapels for a few cardinals and members of his household staff. After the Mass, he stopped at the foot of the altar and stayed there for about ten minutes, as if in a trance, his face ashen white. Then, suddenly, he collapsed from what appeared to be a heart attack or a stroke. Shortly thereafter, however, he arose, immediately went to his office, and composed the prayer to Saint Michael. Later, the pope gave instructions to all the faithful to recite this prayer after all low Masses. God had shown him the future of the Church that he loved so much, and there was more than enough reason to be alarmed.¹²

Pope Leo later explained that he had heard two voices — one kind and gentle, the other guttural and harsh. He recalled the prideful voice of Satan boasting to Our Lord:

“I can destroy your Church.” To which the gentle voice of Our Lord replied, “You can? Then go ahead and do so.” Satan answered, “To do so, I need more time and more power.” The Lord said, “How much time? How much power?” “75 to 100 years, and a greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service,” was Satan’s reply. Mysteriously our Lord said, “You have the time, you have the power. Do with them what you will.”¹³

Today, we know that this short exchange prophesied a time of darkness and evil. The twentieth century would see much darkness, in the form of wars, immorality, genocide, and all out apostasy. It would be a century of martyrs.

Prior to the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, the Catholic Church of the nineteenth century had been under siege and on the defensive. However, under Leo XIII, the Church would rally and boldly respond to the challenges of the day, gaining the moral high ground “where she had [previously] lost physical territory and political support.”¹⁴ During his nearly twenty-six years in office, he wrote a record eighty-five encyclicals. Arcanum (on Christian marriage) was the fourth.

Gioacchino Pecci, the future Pope Leo XIII, was born in 1810, in the midst of the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. His was an era of extremes. From the moment of his birth, it was clear that the world was already changing in monumental ways. Never before had the lives of so many men and women changed more dramatically in the course of only a century.

The invention of railroads, telephones, the telegraph, electricity, mass production, forged steel, automobiles, and countless other modern discoveries transformed the world at a dizzying pace and well beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. What began in Great Britain quickly spread to North America, Japan, and Western Europe, as well as other parts of the world. As Walter Carroll writes in his book The Crisis of Christendom, “The Industrial Revolution transformed the world forever … it led to the Age of Enterprise, which created wealth and raised the standard of living to a degree unheard of in human history.”¹⁵

However, change did not come easy. For better and for worse, the Industrial Revolution had a profound impact on the family. It altered traditional values, roles, and behaviors, influencing all aspects of life and culture:

The Industrial Revolution, with its influx of workers from the farms into the cities to find work in the factories, raised new economic problems, and made possible a new sort of poverty. The worker, who on the farm would never have been absolutely without, was now dependent entirely upon the wages he earned. He had at his disposal no land to cultivate, no livestock; he had no investments, because he had nothing to invest. All his earthly needs had to be met from the wages he received in exchange for his labor. The poor man scratching out a living on his tiny plot of land was replaced by the poor man who had only his labor to sell. His very existence depended upon his finding work and receiving a just wage for his labor.¹⁶

With improved forms of transportation, people were able to move from one place to another. Consequently, laborers migrated from rural areas to towns in order to be closer to the factories in which they worked. They frequently left their families behind. The family-centered focus of economic life changed to a focus on each separate individual. The hours were long and the work was grueling; for many, working conditions were deplorable. Not surprisingly, marriages suffered, birth rates declined, and year after year divorce rates increased. These harsh and seemingly hopeless realities led to a decrease in faith, which resulted in a decrease in church attendance.

As all this was happening, an unknown political theorist named Karl Marx was living in exile¹⁷ in Brussels writing one of history’s most influential texts. In 1848, together with his financier and fellow author, Friedrich Engels, Marx released his ideas in the form of a pamphlet called The Communist Manifesto.¹⁸ With this small booklet, the father of communism set in motion a tidal wave of social change. His ideology would have far-reaching consequences, affecting the lives of millions of people around the world throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and still today.

The Communist Manifesto was written to propose solutions to the problems created by industrialization. Based on the idea that the “history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles,”¹⁹ the Manifesto provided a narrative for how the “capitalist society of the time would eventually be replaced by Socialism, and then eventually Communism.”²⁰

Marx intended to provide a foundation for practical answers to the miseries of the working class that had been created by the Industrial Revolution. His solution to these problems was to establish a society in which the state owns and operates everything and gives to all its citizens according to their predetermined need. In a society such as this, competition in economic endeavors simply does not exist. There is no private property, no free market, and, most especially, no God.

Leo XIII used strong words to describe the negative consequences of these beliefs. He even went so far as to call Marx’s socialist ideas a “deadly plague that is creeping into the very fibers of human society and leading it on to the verge of destruction.”²¹ Pope Leo warned that this kind of socialism seeks to destroy the institution of marriage and the sacredness of the family. He asserted that the “foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law.”²² Yet, the “doctrines of Socialism strive almost completely to dissolve this union.”²³

In Karl Marx’s very design, the state usurps the rights and functions of the family, “shattering society into tiny atoms whirling around a single nucleus: the federal government.”²⁴ While socialists such as Marx thought in only two categories — the individual and the state — our Catholic faith teaches us that “society and the state exist for the family.”²⁵ Arcanum Divinae was the first document of its kind, in that it “single-handedly inaugurated modern Catholic teaching on marriage and family.”²⁶

Arcanum Divinae

Blessed John Henry Newman once paid Pope Leo XIII the ultimate compliment by saying that he had the “virtue of humanity.”²⁷ For a century, Pope Leo guided human hearts, soothed their pain and sorrow, all while pointing “his finger upward to the higher places of the better life.”²⁸ He was known for his firmness, his gentleness, his frugality, and his broad generosity, all at the same time. Indeed, these are the characteristics that stand out in his encyclical letter that focused on Christian marriage. As he crafted it, he was well aware of the suffering and desperation that had overcome so many people, particularly those in the working class. When they bled, he bled. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the truth really does set us free.

In writing this document, Pope Leo’s main concern was the secularization of marriage. He attributed this to: (1) the separation of the secular marriage contract from the Catholic Church’s Sacrament of Matrimony; (2) the rise in the number of lawful divorces; and (3) a society that was becoming totally degraded by its abandonment of God.²⁹ Pope Leo laid all of these negative consequences at the feet of socialism (the “state”), which he had renounced in another document two years earlier. He positively rejected Marx and his socialist ideas because of their adverse effects on the family. He argued that the family has priority over the state; that, in fact, there would be no state without the family.

Leo used Arcanum to clarify the lines between the Church and the state, particularly related to marriage and family. “Since family life is the germ of society, and marriage is the basis of family life, the healthy condition of civil no less than of religious society depends on the inviolability of the marriage contract.”³⁰

Pope Leo was “ever at pains to show that the Church does for the state what the state cannot well do for itself: she makes citizens of the city of God, citizens who make for something like a just city here below.”³¹ He warned against those who would remove marriage from the sovereignty of God by withdrawing it from the jurisdiction of the Church and turning it into a simple civil contract. This, he taught, strips marriage of its sacredness and reduces it to a “common secular thing.”³² He wrote repeatedly that marriage is part of God’s natural law, and as such the state cannot claim what rightly belongs to God.

“What Did God Intend?”

Pope Leo introduced this encyclical on Christian marriage by placing it in its proper context, by asking the question, “What did God intend?” Since marriage is part of God’s creative design for humanity, we can be sure that he had a plan, one that is very familiar to us. Looking back to the very beginning of humanity, the pope reflected:

The true origin of marriage is … well-known to all.… We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race.³³

Even from the beginning, God’s creative design for humanity came in the form of marriage between a man and a woman. This divinely inspired companionship manifests itself in “two most excellent properties — deeply sealed, as it were, and signed upon it — namely, unity and perpetuity.”³⁴ In other words, God intended marriage to be exclusive and until the death of one spouse.

Yet the pope well understood that in a fallen world hearts are easily hardened. He recognized all too well that, through human weakness and willfulness, marriage became corrupted; Scripture and ancient history reveal all too plainly how polygamy destroyed marriage’s unity, and divorce its perpetuity:³⁵

This form of marriage, however, so excellent and so preeminent, began to be corrupted by degrees, and to disappear among the heathen; and became even among the Jewish race clouded in a measure and obscured. For in their midst a common custom was gradually introduced, by which it was accounted as lawful for a man to have more than one wife; and eventually when “by reason of the hardness of their heart” [Mt 19:8], Moses indulgently permitted them to put away their wives, [and then] the way was open to divorce.³⁶

We as Christians thus have so much to be thankful for, because through the mercy of God and in the fullness of time our Savior, Jesus Christ, came to restore “the world, which was sinking, as it were, with length of years into decline.”³⁷ Indeed, Christ came to make “all things new” (Rv 21:5):

Christ our Lord, setting himself to fulfill the commandment, which His Father had given Him, straightway imparted a new form and fresh beauty to all things, taking away the effects of their time-worn age. For He healed the wounds which the sin of our first father had inflicted on the human race; He brought all men, by nature children of wrath, into favor with God; He led to the light of truth men wearied out by long-standing errors; He renewed to every virtue those who were weakened by lawlessness of every kind; and, giving them again an inheritance of never ending bliss, He added a sure hope that their mortal and perishable bodies should one day be partakers of immortality and of the glory of heaven. In order that these unparalleled benefits might last as long as men should be found on earth, He entrusted to His Church the continuance of His work; and, looking to future times, He commanded her to set in order whatever might have become deranged in human society, and to restore whatever might have fallen into ruin.³⁸

In his saving work, Christ restored the original design of human marriage and then, to sanctify more thoroughly this institution, “Christ our Lord raised the marriage contract to the dignity of a sacrament.”³⁹ In light of this, by way of “tradition and the written word [coming] through the Apostles,”⁴⁰ the Church has always maintained that in order to uphold the dignity of marriage as a sacrament, we must think of the marriage contract and the Sacrament of Matrimony as one and the same thing. Consequently, there cannot be a marriage contract among Christians that is not a sacrament.

In a sacramental marriage, husband and wife are “to cherish always a very great mutual love, to be ever faithful to their marriage vow, and to give one another unfailing and unselfish help.”⁴¹ In a similar way, children are to submit to their parents and obey them, “while parents are bound to give all care and watchful thought to the education of their offspring.”⁴² Continuing this line of thinking, Pope Leo wrote:

Not only … was marriage instituted for the propagation of the human race, but also that the lives of husbands and wives might be made better and happier. This comes about in many ways: by their lightening each other’s burdens through mutual help; by constant and faithful love; by having all their possessions in common; and by the heavenly grace, which flows from the sacrament.⁴³

The purpose of a Christian marriage is the welfare of each of the spouses, and the ultimate goal is to bring each other to heaven. It is sacred. Beyond their focus on each other, the husband and wife must be open to new life and willing to bring “forth children for the Church, ‘fellow citizens with the saints’ … so that ‘a people might be born and brought up for the worship and religion of the true God and our Savior Jesus Christ.’”⁴⁴

Because Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament, the Church has always claimed exclusive authority over it while allowing civil authorities to regulate the civil concerns and consequences of marriage. If we look at marriage through the lens of history, we see that for centuries the Church exercised that authority, and civil authorities submitted to it.

By the nineteenth century, however, human frailty and downright disobedience, as reflected in relaxed divorce laws, became more common and more acceptable. The reins of Christian restraint in family life began to loosen. This opened the door to a power grab by civil authorities, who were poised to dismiss the Church’s authority over the marriage contract. These same authorities began to sow seeds of discontent by suggesting that the marriage contract was not a sacrament at all, and that the civil contract and the sacrament were two separate and distinct things.

Thus we see that the dissolubility of marriage and the relaxed view of divorce trampled upon the unity and integrity of the marriage relationship. As part of this process, the state began to restrict the rights of the Church in the area of marriage. What looked like the “separation of Church and state” was actually, in practice, the “removal of the Church from the state” and any influence she might have in the public square. In effect, the Church was gradually excluded from any civil role in decision-making, where she is both competent and wise due to her divine authority.

As the state began to exercise more power over marriage, it also assumed the right to define it, and, “ignoring its fundamental nature, it allowed such corruptions to enter into the positive laws of marriage, such as divorce and remarriage, and serial polygamy.”⁴⁵ This is the mindset that led to what we now call “civil” marriages. A civil marriage is a marriage performed, recorded, and recognized by a government official. In other words, it is a marriage performed outside of the Church and without the benefit of the grace of the sacrament.

According to Pope Leo, the fundamental change from marital “indissolubility” to “dissolubility” opened the way to the sensitive topic of separation and divorce. He correctly predicted that once divorce was accepted, further moral decline would surely follow. Eventually, it would darken the conscience of society, causing — and spreading — a moral numbness:

There will be no restraint powerful enough to keep it within the bounds marked out…. 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.… So soon as the road to divorce began to be made smooth by law, at once quarrels, jealousies, and judicial separations largely increased; and such shamelessness of life followed that men who had been in favor of these divorces repented of what they had done, and feared that, if they did not carefully seek a remedy by repealing the law, the State itself might come to ruin.⁴⁶

Continuing to reflect on the harmfulness of divorce, Pope Leo highlighted its often-forgotten victims: the children. He also underscored the need to protect the “dignity of womanhood,”⁴⁷ which through divorce is frequently compromised. In the world of divorce, women are at risk of being used for the personal pleasures of men and then left behind to fend for themselves, frequently with a child or more in tow. Hence, from the question “What did God intend?” we must move on to ask, when we don’t follow God’s plan, “What are the consequences?”

What Are the Consequences?

Pope Leo wrote prophetically of the harsh consequences and raw pain for all involved when we deviate from the plan of God as it pertains to marriage. He recognized that there is no end to the painful ramifications of divorce:

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 a way to every kind of evil-doing in public and in private life.⁴⁸

As Pope Leo correctly predicted, one of the consequences of the disillusionment caused by the breakup of the family was cohabitation. Rather than commit to one another for a lifetime, couples choose to live together for as long as it lasts. For this reason, the pope commended to his brother bishops and priests “those unhappy persons who, carried away by the heat of passion, and being utterly indifferent to their salvation, live wickedly together without the bond of lawful marriage.”⁴⁹

As for those couples who are struggling in their marriages, and who are seriously contemplating separation? In a post-Christian world such as ours, Pope Leo’s advice may seem rather simplistic. It may even offend our modern sensibilities. Even so, his counsel was to rely on faith in the Lord, the One who never disappoints, trusting in the words of Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans: “We know that in everything God works for good [for] those who love him” (8:28). The pope wrote:

To sum up all in a few words, there would be a calm and quiet constancy in marriage if married people would gather strength and life from the virtue of religion alone, which imparts to us resolution and fortitude; for religion would enable them to bear tranquilly and even gladly the trials of their state, such as, for instance, the faults that they discover in one another, the difference of temper and character, the weight of a mother’s cares, the wearing anxiety about the education of children, reverses of fortune, and the sorrows of life.⁵⁰

The virtue of religion is basically giving God his due. As such it falls under the virtue of justice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “Adoration is the first act of the virtue of religion. To adore God is to acknowledge him as God, as the Creator and Savior, the Lord and Master of everything that exists, as infinite and merciful Love.”⁵¹ Without being trite, what Leo is saying here is that instead of looking at one another, married people in difficult situations should shift their gaze to God.

Granted, there are some marriages that appear to be beyond repair. While the Church always encourages healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation, she does allow for such situations: “When, indeed, matters have come to such a pitch that it seems impossible for them to live together any longer, then the Church allows them to live apart, and strives at the same time to soften the evils of this separation by such remedies and helps as are suited to their condition; yet she never ceases to endeavor to bring about a reconciliation, and never despairs of doing so.”⁵²

While Pope Leo did not address them in this letter, there are some serious situations that can call into question the validity of a sacramental marriage, even if the couple was married in the Catholic Church by a priest or a deacon. In some cases, a supposed valid marriage may be, in fact, invalid for some serious reason. If a major impediment — for example, mental illness; sexual abuse; trauma; addiction to drugs, alcohol, or sex; etc. — was present at the time of the wedding, then the sacramental marriage may be invalid. In circumstances such as this, one or both spouses may start the process to obtain a declaration of nullity, commonly referred to as an annulment. An annulment is not a Catholic divorce. The annulment process is about determining whether a valid marriage occurred on the wedding day. If it is determined that the marriage was invalid, both parties are free to marry again, as if for the first time.

We cannot overlook the important fact that sacramental marriage is good for both the state and all of society. The Church is not the enemy; she is the best friend of the civil power and the guardian of civil society:⁵³

Marriage also can do much for the good of families, for, so long as it is conformable to nature and in accordance with the counsels of God, it has power to strengthen union of heart in the parents; to secure the holy education of children; to temper the authority of the father by the example of the divine authority; to render children obedient to their parents and servants obedient to their masters. From such marriages as these, the State may rightly expect a race of citizens animated by a good spirit and filled with reverence and love for God, recognizing it their duty to obey those who rule justly and lawfully, to love all, and to injure no one.⁵⁴

In concluding this heartfelt letter, Pope Leo offered some additional fatherly advice. Again, his words may fly in the face of our politically correct culture, but many married couples would attest to the fact that there is wisdom here. Leo wrote:

Care also must be taken [not] to easily enter into marriage with those who are not Catholics; for, when minds do not agree as to the observances of religion, it is scarcely possible to hope for agreement in other things. Other reasons also proving that persons should turn with dread from such marriages are chiefly these: that they give occasion to forbidden association and communion in religious matters; endanger the faith of the Catholic partner; are a hindrance to the proper education of the children; and often lead to a mixing up of truth and falsehood, and to the belief that all religions are equally good.⁵⁵

This was not meant to be uncharitable. Rather, it came from a place of experience from one who had studied the human condition nearly all his life and took seriously his obligation to pastor the people of God. That being said, “with God all things are possible” (Mt. 19:26). This may be the perfect opportunity for the Catholic spouse to delve deeper into the Faith, and in doing so to fall ever more in love with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, so that when and if the time comes, he will be prepared to defend the hope that is within him with gentleness and reverence.

Pope Leo XIII’s foretelling of the pain and personal destruction that would surely come with relaxed divorce laws was truly prophetic. Today we live in a culture where divorce has become a common tragedy. In his book Defending Marriage, Anthony Esolen captures it all too well:

Whole networks of human relations [have been] torn asunder; husband from wife, parents from children, aunts and uncles from their nieces and nephews … all of that web of meaning and belonging, extending far into the past and future, untimely ripped, battered, or severed forever, to satisfy the “needs” (… nearly always selfish) of the divorcing adults.

[Divorce] has touched every family in the nation. Who does not know at least one family whose children require an essay merely to describe who under their roof is related to whom and how?⁵⁶

The tragedy of divorce is not just what it does to marriages, but what it does to all of society. If the family, the cornerstone of society, is not solid, then nothing is solid. Things that were once enduring have become transient, and all relationships are merely temporary. If a spouse cannot be trusted, everyone (and everything) is suspect.

Marriages suffer today not because modern society listened to the Church. Instead, marriages are suffering precisely because society did not listen to the Church. Now, nearly 140 years after this encyclical, we are living with the consequences of not heeding the Church’s warnings about marriage.

Despite this, we are a people of hope. We believe in tomorrow, and we know that our God is a merciful God. In fact, Pope Francis never tires of speaking about the mercy of God. In his book The Church of Mercy, he reminds us, once again, that God is always waiting for us to come back and start again:

Maybe someone among us here is thinking, my sin is so great, I am as far from God as the younger son in the parable, my unbelief is like that of Thomas; I don’t have the courage to go back, to believe that God can welcome me and that he is waiting for me, of all people. But God is indeed waiting for you. He asks of you the courage to go to him.

How many times in my pastoral ministry have I heard it said, “Father, I have many sins”; and I have always pleaded: “Don’t be afraid, go to him, he is waiting for you, he will take care of everything.” We hear many offers from the world around us, but let us take up God’s offer instead: his is a caress of love.⁵⁷

Chapter One Reflection Questions

“Socialism” has broad and powerful appeal still today, yet, under socialist regimes in the past century, millions of people have lost both their rights and their lives. What is the reason for its appeal? Why has it not worked in practice?

How were families affected by the Industrial Revolution, for better and for worse?

Pope Leo XIII positively rejected Marx and his socialist ideas because of their adverse effects on the family. In fact, in 1878 he wrote an entire encyclical entitled Quod Apostolici Muneris (on socialism) about this. In what ways does Marx’s ideology harm the family?

How has divorce affected your life or your family’s life? Have you sought healing for any wounds you have suffered or caused?

Alone, the individual is not the bedrock of society. Rather, it is the family that is the foundation of all of society. Why is this so?

With the legalization of same-sex “marriages,” we can no longer look at civil and religious marriages as a single entity; the ties between the two have almost completely unraveled. Today, some are calling for a separation of sacramental marriage from civil marriage, as is the practice in Mexico and much of Europe. Others protest this idea, claiming that if Church weddings are separated from the civil sphere, they are worthless. So, where does the Church go from here?