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Chapter Two

Back to the Garden

Pius XI, Casti Connubii

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Someone once said that all the sins of the world can be traced back to the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis and the Garden of Eden. Without pondering on the happenings that occurred then, it is difficult to understand the heartbreak of the twentieth century. The century didn’t start out as a century of violence, social upheaval, and heartbreak. In fact, most people woke up on January 1, 1900, with a song in their hearts. Coloring everything was an energy, an optimism, and a feeling of confidence.

The nineteenth century had changed the world beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and there was every expectation that the twentieth century would “prove to be the best this ever-improving planet had ever seen.”⁵⁸ But something went terribly wrong, and the twentieth century would prove to be the bloodiest century in history — fulfilling Pope Leo XIII’s vision in 1884. There were wars and rumors of wars (see Mt 24:6), including the most insidious war of all, the war on the family.

In this chapter, we will skip over the two popes who followed Pope Leo XIII (Popes Pius X and Benedict XV) and move ahead to the pontificate of Pope Pius XI. Pius XI was pope from 1922 to 1939, during the difficult years between World War I and World War II. The people in his hometown of Desio, Italy, always predicted that Achille Ratti would be pope, and indeed it must have been divine providence, for his path to the papacy was certainly a circuitous one.

An academic and a lover of books, Ratti spent the first years of his priesthood as a seminary professor before moving on to spend the next thirty years working as a librarian — first in the historic Ambrosian Library in Milan and then in the Vatican Library in Rome. He was well into his sixties when, in 1918, Pope Benedict XV asked him to change careers and take a diplomatic post in Poland. Within a period of four years, he went from being a diplomat, to a papal nuncio, to an archbishop, and finally a cardinal. In 1922, Cardinal Achille Ratti was elected pope. He took the name Pius, explaining that he was ordained under Pope Pius IX and it was Pope Pius X who called him to Rome to work in the Vatican library. Furthermore, Pius was a name of peace, and he wanted to dedicate his pontificate to promoting peace in a war-torn world. So, he would be Pope Pius XI, and, by all accounts, he was one of the “greats.”

The years following World War I were years of transition and revolution. The sheer loss of life experienced in such a short period of time was something dreadfully new and unprecedented. Consequently, an entire generation was infected with an “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” attitude, which manifested itself in a number of ways.

From the outset, the war had called into question many traditional habits and ways of thinking in Europe and, most especially, in the United States. Sexual themes were increasingly prevalent in media, becoming portrayed more and more regularly in movies, books, and magazines. Sexual behavior changed, and contraception became more technologically sophisticated and socially acceptable. Margaret Sanger was busily promoting “birth control,” a term she popularized beginning in 1914.⁵⁹ Moreover, “the divorce rate doubled between 1910 and 1928, and it was in the 1920s that no-fault (mutual consent) divorce was brought up for the first time.”⁶⁰ In fact, “one of the most striking results of the [moral] revolution was a widely pervasive obsession with sex.”⁶¹ This was the roaring ’20s, after all, the age of speak-easies, dance halls, and a relatively new novelty, the back seat of a car. This “disruption of traditional and conventional customs, manners, and morals left people adrift and struggling to articulate a new code of conduct.”⁶² This is the world and moral climate that Pope Pius XI inherited on February 6, 1922, the day he was elected pope.

As the twentieth century wore on, the devastating effects of these realities on marriage became painfully apparent. Perhaps the most insidious and far-reaching of the changed social norms was the widespread use and acceptance of contraception. Of course, none of this happened overnight. Honestly, to make sense of it, we need to go back to the late 1700s.

Most people credit Reverend Thomas Malthus, an Anglican cleric and scholar from Great Britain, with starting the modern sexual revolution. In his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population,” Malthus created the modern “population explosion” scare, saying that “unless it was checked, the population would outgrow food supplies, which would result in mass starvation.”⁶³ He was a strong advocate for family planning, but only through moral means, such as delaying marriage and using sexual self-control.

His proposal struck a cord, as both men and women were increasingly seeking to limit the number of children in their families. No doubt, this desire was accentuated by the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society. Malthus died in 1834, but his population scare outlived him.

In 1839, a new invention by a chemist named Charles Goodyear changed everything: the vulcanization of rubber, which led to the production of cheaper and more effective condoms. Armed with this manufacturing breakthrough, those who wanted to avoid having children found it easier to use condoms, rather than using self-control.

As a matter of fact, “by the turn of the [twentieth] century, the [average] birth rate among white middle-class women had fallen dramatically to two children or less.”⁶⁴ This was in spite of broad opposition to contraceptives from those in the medical profession, as well as laws banning their sale and distribution. In the United States, Anthony Comstock persuaded Congress in 1873 to legislate against the distribution and sale of contraceptive devices in federal territories. Many states followed suit, and the resulting anti-contraceptive legislation became known as the Comstock laws.⁶⁵

Following closely on the heels of women winning the right to vote in the United States in 1920, Margaret Sanger and others began to wage open war on the Comstock laws. In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, working out of an office provided by the American Eugenics Society.

The eugenics movement had grown out of the Malthusian (Malthus) movement. These two movements had much in common, but they differed in that the Malthusians wanted to decrease the total number of people being born, while the eugenics movement mainly wanted to limit the fertility of the poor and the unfit.⁶⁶ Specifically, “Eugenics is the belief that some people (the ‘unfit’) are genetically inferior and should not perpetuate their ‘subpar’ genes by having children.”⁶⁷ It is an open secret that Margaret Sanger, the mother of the birth control movement, was a eugenicist.

Sanger, born in 1879 in Corning, New York, “was raised in a stridently socialist, feminist, and atheist home. Her father ‘deplored’ the Roman Catholic Church.”⁶⁸ She was the sixth of eleven children, and Margaret believed that so many pregnancies took a toll on her mother’s health, contributing to her early death at the age of forty-two. Margaret became a nurse, and the thing that got her out of bed every morning was her unbridled passion for the availability and use of contraceptives. She had her own reasons for choosing to serve the poor and marginalized, but it is safe to say that her writings never indicate any concern for poor children. In 1914, “she launched her publication The Woman Rebel, under the masthead, ‘No God, No Masters.’ The same year, she popularized the phrase, ‘birth control.’”⁶⁹

For seven years, Margaret kept her office at the American Eugenics Society, years that included the 1929 stock market crash and the worldwide depression that followed. These events placed great economic, social, and psychological strains on the average family. Millions of people lost their savings as numerous banks collapsed in the early 1930s. During this time, Sanger’s ideas became more and more appealing.

Although Sanger had left her original organization over an ideological dispute, the organization eventually reunited in 1939, under the name Birth Control Federation of America. Within a short period of time, the words “birth control” became a public-relations nightmare, and so, in 1942, the organization was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.⁷⁰

No one can deny the tremendous influence Margaret Sanger had on the practices and moral thinking of her day, and even more so today. The pressures she generated were highly influential in removing the legal, religious, and social barriers to contraception and then abortion. The contraceptionists frequently advocated a whole new concept of marriage.

John F. Kippley, founder of the Couple to Couple League, talks about this in his article “Casti Connubii: 60 Years Later, More Relevant Than Ever”: “They denied the divine origin and the permanence of marriage and made efficient contraception the technological cornerstone of ‘companionate’ marriage — a serial polygamy consisting of legal marriage, efficient contraception, divorce when boredom set in, and then remarriage to start the process over.”⁷¹

Eventually, the Comstock law was repealed. Even so, to finally succeed in her march to legalize birth control, Margaret Sanger needed to focus on a larger and more influential enemy. The Catholic Church fit the bill perfectly. In an article entitled “Sanger’s Victory,” Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society confirms this:

Opposition to Catholicism suited Sanger personally. Her father had tutored her on the presumed evils and dangers of Rome. Moreover, her study of and involvement in socialist activities before the war had taught her the value of a clearly identified foe when launching a social-political movement. Already marginalized in American life, Catholics were the obvious choice. In her desire to gain a sacred canopy for birth control, she could easily play on four-century-old [hostilities] between Protestants and Catholics to bring the former to her side.⁷²

Here it is interesting to note that for four hundred years after the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, birth control was never seen as a Catholic versus Protestant issue. As a matter of fact, the Comstock laws were essentially passed by Protestant legislatures for a basically Protestant America.

Few people realize that up until 1930, “all Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning contraception as sinful.”⁷³ However, at its 1930 Lambeth Conference,⁷⁴ the Anglican church, swayed by growing social pressure from Margaret Sanger and others, announced that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances:

Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipleship and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception-control for motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.⁷⁵

The Anglican bishops reluctantly accepted marital contraception as morally licit without even elaborating on what they meant by “Christian principles.” In spite of this, they could not hide from the fact that, in previous years, they had always taught that marital contraception was immoral, as evidenced in this statement from the 1920 Lambeth Conference: “We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers — physical, moral, and religious — thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race.”⁷⁶

These statements from the 1920 and 1930 Lambeth Conferences show how quickly the culture had changed in just ten years. In fact, soon after the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion completely caved in, allowing contraception across the board. “Since then, all other Protestant denominations have followed suit. Today, the Catholic Church alone proclaims the historic Christian position on contraception.”⁷⁷

This sudden change in Anglican teaching was so upsetting to Pope Pius XI that he responded by writing his encyclical letter Casti Connubii (“Of Chaste Marriage”), which was released on December 31, 1930, just four months after the Lambeth Conference. “Those who had thought Pius XI was only a dry historian were surprised to discover that the passionate tone of the encyclical revealed the heart of a true father of peoples, a priest, a human being, full of feeling and love for mankind.”⁷⁸

The document covers a wide range of topics concerning Christian marriage and reproductive rights, and in doing so it gives us an interesting window into the Church’s perception of the social and religious situation surrounding marriage and procreation at the time. Casti Connubii, which describes point by point the characteristics of a Christian marriage, is perhaps the Church’s most complete teaching on the subject of Christian marriage.

Pope Pius XI was a serious man, this was a serious time, and, as we will see, this is a serious document. Responding to the Anglican resolution at Lambeth, Pope Pius spoke forcefully and in no uncertain terms about the Church’s unchanged position on contraception:

Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.⁷⁹

Not only did the pope confirm the Church’s perennial teaching about contraception, he offered a sobering reminder to all of us that it is precisely because of our “human tendency to rationalize our private [choices] that Christ established a teaching Church. It is the Church, and not private judgment, that has been entrusted with revelation regarding faith and morals.”⁸⁰

Casti Connubii

Casti Connubii is the second in a trilogy of three major encyclicals on marriage and family life, used to “restate and strengthen the Church’s teaching.”⁸¹ The first was Pope Leo XIII’s 1880 encyclical, Arcanum, on Christian marriage; the second was Pope Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical on chaste marriage, Casti Connubii; and the third was Pope Paul VI’s 1968 definitive teaching on contraception and human life, Humanae Vitae. All of these documents were written to counter a perceived threat to marriage. “In each of these encyclicals, the Church not only restates its perennial teaching on marriage and family, but also develops aspects of the theology of marriage that had not been fully articulated before.”⁸²

What Is Marriage?

We remember from our review of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Arcanum that he put it in its proper context by asking the question, “What did God intend?” In a similar way, Pope Pius XI began Casti Connubii by symbolically asking, “What is marriage?” It is a fair question, particularly in our day and age. Today, the true meaning of marriage frequently gets lost between the wedding invitations and the parties, so the Church wants to make sure that we know the answer to this question.

Casti Connubii reaffirms the main points found in Arcanum, particularly pertaining to the sacramental nature of marriage and the evils of divorce. Just by asking the question, “What is marriage?” Pius XI expanded his teaching into some other areas. Drawing from the teachings of Saint Augustine, there are three precepts of marriage: the begetting and education of children, the fidelity of the spouses, and the graces of the sacrament.

The encyclical begins by reminding us that marriage is “of its very nature”⁸³ a divine institution. God instituted marriage, but no one is obliged to marry. However, once a couple does enter matrimony, they do it on God’s terms, not their own.⁸⁴ In other words, “a man and a woman can enter into the married state — but they have no freedom as to what that state is. They can do well or ill. But they can’t change what the plan is.”⁸⁵ According to Pope Pius: “This freedom … regards only the question whether the contracting parties really wish to enter upon matrimony or to marry this particular person; but the nature of matrimony is entirely independent of the free will of man, so that if one has once contracted matrimony, he is thereby subject to its divinely made laws and its essential properties.”⁸⁶

Contrary to popular opinion, the “main union of marriage is not the physical. It is, rather, the spiritual union of the hearts and minds of the married couple.”⁸⁷ The fact that marriage goes far beyond the physical relationship of the partners is what separates us from the animals. No union on earth is as intimate as marriage. We see this particularly in times of need, when there is a real demand upon the spiritual resources of the couple, which can only come from a depth of understanding between the husband and wife.

If a marriage is based on passion alone, the risk for failure is great. As we can well appreciate, our passions burn out, and our physical bodies change as the years go by. Spiritual qualities are more enduring than the physical, and it is upon these spiritual qualities that an enduring union must be founded:

By matrimony, therefore, the souls of the contracting parties are joined and knit together more directly and more intimately than are their bodies, and that not by any passing affection of sense of spirit, but by a deliberate and firm act of the will; and from this union of souls by God’s decree, a sacred and inviolable bond arises. Hence the nature of this contract, which is proper and peculiar to it alone, makes it entirely different both from the union of animals entered into by the blind instinct of nature alone in which neither reason nor free will plays a part, and also from the haphazard unions of men, which are far removed from all true and honorable unions of will and enjoy none of the rights of family life.⁸⁸

Christian marriage is a partnership between a husband and wife, with God as the third partner. It should be rooted in unselfish love, which is exactly how God loves us. Since procreation and education of children is the first precept of marriage, married couples are, in fact, co-creators of the universe. Together with God, they keep the human race in existence. Failing in marriage, therefore, means failing God, our partner.

Because marriage was designed specifically for the creation of children, their education must also be the priority in any marriage. We are all created to know, love, and serve God, and parents have the responsibility to help their children along this path. From the beginning, parents must help develop deep faith and virtue in their children:

Thus amongst the blessings of marriage, the child holds the first place. And indeed, the Creator of the human race himself, Who in His goodness wishes to use men as His helpers in the propagation of life, taught this when, instituting marriage in Paradise, He said to our first parents, and through them to all future spouses: “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth.”⁸⁹

The blessing of offspring, however, is not completed by the mere begetting of them, but something else must be added, namely the proper education of the offspring. For no one can fail to see that children are incapable of providing wholly for themselves, even in matters pertaining to their natural life, and much less in those pertaining to the supernatural, but require for many years to be helped, instructed, and educated by others.⁹⁰

To have a marriage that embraces children (the first precept of marriage), there must be fidelity and dedication of the spouses to each other (the second precept). Real fidelity is centered in an abiding “union of mind and heart.”⁹¹ Hence, “if internal union is protected, there will never be any reason for worry about external fidelity.”⁹²

In other words, if a husband and wife strive to be faithful to each other through their thoughts and actions, there is very little chance that either will be unfaithful. (On this point, Pope Pius discouraged both husband and wife from spending too much time with other people of the opposite sex.)

Fidelity is the fruit of mutual love, which is one of the blessings of a Christian marriage. This kind of love puts the needs and cares of the other person first. When a husband loves his wife, he seeks what is good for her, and a wife should do the same for her husband. And the greatest goods are not physical, but spiritual:

The love, then, of which we are speaking is not that based on the passing lust of the moment nor does it consist in pleasing words only, but in the deep attachment of the heart which is expressed in action, since love is proved by deeds. This outward expression of love in the home demands not only mutual help but must go further; must have as its primary purpose that man and wife help each other day by day in forming and perfecting themselves in the interior life, so that through their partnership in life they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love toward God and their neighbor.⁹³

The mutual love of the spouses should prevent either party from dominating the other, for true love is always seeking the good of both:

“For matrimonial faith demands that husband and wife be joined in an especially holy and pure love, not as adulterers love each other, but as Christ loved the Church. This precept the Apostle laid down when he said: ‘Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the Church’ … [which] He embraced with a boundless love not for the sake of His own advantage, but seeking only the good of His Spouse.”⁹⁴

Here Pius XI echoed the words of Leo XIII in dealing with the issues of unity and indissolubility of marriage. When Our Lord said: ‘“Now they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder,’ (Matt 19:6), He was reserving for God alone the power [to dissolve] a marriage, which is a sacrament and has also been perfected by marital intercourse.”⁹⁵ We know from the Church’s teaching that marriage cannot be dissolved by any human being. Consequently, Catholics know that they are with their partners until death, which is motivation enough to do the best they can to make their marriage succeed.

The third precept of marriage is that it is a sacrament, which means it is a source of divine grace. When the spouses utter their marriage vows before a priest or deacon, they are, in fact, ministering the sacrament to each other. In doing so, they are bestowing Christ’s sanctifying grace on one another.⁹⁶

In a sacramental marriage, the spouses are also given special gifts to navigate the ups and downs of life, which might otherwise seem impossible. As the pope expressed it:

By the very fact, therefore, that the faithful with sincere mind give such consent, they open up for themselves a treasure of sacramental grace from which they draw supernatural power for the fulfilling of their rights and duties faithfully, holily, perseveringly even unto death. Hence this sacrament not only increases sanctifying grace … but also adds particular gifts, dispositions, seeds of grace, by elevating and perfecting the natural powers. By these gifts the parties are assisted not only in understanding, but in knowing intimately, in adhering to firmly, in willing effectively, and in successfully putting into practice, those things which pertain to the marriage state.⁹⁷

What Are the Threats to Marriage?

To preserve marriage, it is important to recognize clearly those things that are detrimental to Christian marriage. First among Pope Pius’s concerns were various cultural issues in his time, all of which are still far too familiar to us. The pope was particularly scandalized by the entertainment industry with its salacious anti-marriage propaganda, as seen in books, plays, movies, newspapers, and even in the popular songs of the day.

Moreover, he was troubled that so many people (Catholic and non-Catholic) deny that God is the author of marriage, believing that it is simply another human institution. Other major obstacles to healthy, holy marriages were selfishness, cohabitation, and the humiliation of one spouse by the other. As the pope pointed out, none of this is rooted in mutual love.