Thursday, July 01, 2004
Papal Wisdom: Pius XI on Christian Marriage (Casti Conubii)
Part 3, the Attack on Marriage by Modern Society
After outlining the blessings of marriage, the Pontiff then goes on to outline the attack on marriage itself by modern society. We can think about this today. In America, married people are hit with a huge tax for being married. It's a lot cheaper just to engage in cohabitiation ("shacking up") hence the State actively promotes people not to marry. While this attack was beginning under Leo XIII, Pius XI witnessed a far stronger attack, and many of the things he saw in his time, were the roots of the problems we face today with modern societies warped view of marriage.
"For now, alas, not secretly nor under cover, but openly, with all sense of shame put aside, now by word again by writings, by theatrical productions of every kind, by romantic fiction, by amorous and frivolous novels, by cinematographs portraying in vivid scene, in addresses broadcast by radio telephony, in short by all the inventions of modern science, the sanctity of marriage is trampled upon and derided; divorce, adultery, all the basest vices either are extolled or at least are depicted in such colors as to appear to be free of all reproach and infamy. "
Kevin Tierney: We notice that before, the attacks on marriage were rather covert. With the influence of the Church in society, while not as strong as before, but still existent, the enemies of society had a hard time pressing their views. When Rome began to lose her temporal power, and governments began to increase in their size, these views could be far more easily expressed. The way to best portray something evil in a positive light is to have prominent people promote it, or inject it into everyday situations, to where people constantly see it. One way to project those views(And I would argue the most powerful way) is through the media, which in those days consisted mainly of books, newspapers, and radio. The advent of televsion was not on the horizon yet of course, and this problem still existed. The media began to portray marriage as some archaic institution, slavery for women, and in place of that, called upon women to take a more active role, "liberating" themselves, by which they meant to be free from all moral guidelines. When enough people began doing this, people began to accept it as commonplace. Think of this today when advertising something, one always wants to hire a celebrity to endorse what they are selling. The celebrity is looked up to, admired, what he is promoting must be right afterall!
"Not all the sponsors of these new doctrines are carried to the extremes of unbridled lust; there are those who, striving as it were to ride a middle course, believe nevertheless that something should be conceded in our times as regards certain precepts of the divine and natural law. But these likewise, more or less wittingly, are emissaries of the great enemy who is ever seeking to sow cockle among the wheat."
Kevin Tierney: Here Pius XI outlines what may be the greatest danger of them all. The most dangerous enemy is not one who is an extremist, but one who believes that based on times and circumstances, the divine laws must be changed. The only problem is these laws cannot be changed, as they are the laws pertaining to God alone. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and hence so are His laws. We see this as a common example today, even in Catholic publications. Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis Magazine, stated that while Kerry should be denied communion for his stand on abortion, he should not be for gay marriage, and only Kerry should be denied communion. He reasons that nobody would be able to receive communion under these circumstances, because of modern times and what people believe. Is this not the attitude we see towards divorce and gay marriage today? The "it will happen anyway, so we might as well let it happen" approach. The Pontiff rightly points out this is a tactic of the devil himself. The only problem with this approach is, as history has proven, the Adversary is never satisfied. First it was allowance of divorce. Then it was acceptance of divorce. Then it was allowance of contraception, then acceptance. Then the slaughter of unborn children under the guise of choice. After giving all these things up, we are then told that we need to give a Constitutional right to a sin that cries to heaven for vengance in Soddomy, and then we have to bless their "Marriages." These passed only because of those willing to "Concede to modern times."
"To begin at the very source of these evils, their basic principle lies in this, that matrimony is repeatedly declared to be not instituted by the Author of nature nor raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a true sacrament, but invented by man. Some confidently assert that they have found no evidence of the existence of matrimony in nature or in her laws, but regard it merely as the means of producing life and of gratifying in one way or another a vehement impulse; on the other hand, others recognize that certain beginnings or, as it were, seeds of true wedlock are found in the nature of man since, unless men were bound together by some form of permanent tie, the dignity of husband and wife or the natural end of propagating and rearing the offspring would not receive satisfactory provision. At the same time they maintain that in all beyond this germinal idea matrimony, through various concurrent causes, is invented solely by the mind of man, established solely by his will. "
Kevin Tierney: One of the biggest problems facing those who advance the idea of "God is dead" in the Secular Culture of Death is that they need to explain that without God, where did certain things come from? It was always understood, even by early pagans, that God(or in the pagans case the gods) instituted the union of husband and wife. Since if there is no God, God cannot be the creator of marriage, the only logical choice becomes man, and those institutions man erects. Since they have removed the divine law from the sphere of the equation, they now attempt to prove so from the natural law(or common sense) that marriage is a man-invented institution.
"How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony -- hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife. "
Kevin Tierney: As Leo XIII noted in his encyclical on the nature of Civil Power, if there is no God, then all rights by neccesity come, and most importantly can be taken away, by the State. Likewise, since modern man believes marriage to be purely a human invention, logically the human may do with the institution what he wants, including redefining the aspects and roles of such. Hence, it is no longer a popular idea to believe that the begetting of children is suitable only to the married state, as man believes that since matrimony is of our creation, we can remove the child part from the equation, to where sex becomes a "right" of absolutely everyone. (And with contraception and abortion, so does the freedom from the responsibility of one's actions.) This is why I have stated time and time again, one cannot find an answer to the problems plauging our culture today in the secular world. God's interaction with human life must be taught. There are those who believe we cannot cover this from a religious perspective. Yet when the other side does not have the answer, certainly we must. We must outline the principles of the Gospel and how they apply to everyday life. The idea that the Gospel is only concerned with the eternal sphere, as if it does not give advice on how to achieve that state, is Protestantism, yet that is the mindset of many Catholics today.
In our next installment, we shall outline these specific attacks in-depth, starting with the attack on the blessing of children.
Part 3, the Attack on Marriage by Modern Society
After outlining the blessings of marriage, the Pontiff then goes on to outline the attack on marriage itself by modern society. We can think about this today. In America, married people are hit with a huge tax for being married. It's a lot cheaper just to engage in cohabitiation ("shacking up") hence the State actively promotes people not to marry. While this attack was beginning under Leo XIII, Pius XI witnessed a far stronger attack, and many of the things he saw in his time, were the roots of the problems we face today with modern societies warped view of marriage.
"For now, alas, not secretly nor under cover, but openly, with all sense of shame put aside, now by word again by writings, by theatrical productions of every kind, by romantic fiction, by amorous and frivolous novels, by cinematographs portraying in vivid scene, in addresses broadcast by radio telephony, in short by all the inventions of modern science, the sanctity of marriage is trampled upon and derided; divorce, adultery, all the basest vices either are extolled or at least are depicted in such colors as to appear to be free of all reproach and infamy. "
Kevin Tierney: We notice that before, the attacks on marriage were rather covert. With the influence of the Church in society, while not as strong as before, but still existent, the enemies of society had a hard time pressing their views. When Rome began to lose her temporal power, and governments began to increase in their size, these views could be far more easily expressed. The way to best portray something evil in a positive light is to have prominent people promote it, or inject it into everyday situations, to where people constantly see it. One way to project those views(And I would argue the most powerful way) is through the media, which in those days consisted mainly of books, newspapers, and radio. The advent of televsion was not on the horizon yet of course, and this problem still existed. The media began to portray marriage as some archaic institution, slavery for women, and in place of that, called upon women to take a more active role, "liberating" themselves, by which they meant to be free from all moral guidelines. When enough people began doing this, people began to accept it as commonplace. Think of this today when advertising something, one always wants to hire a celebrity to endorse what they are selling. The celebrity is looked up to, admired, what he is promoting must be right afterall!
"Not all the sponsors of these new doctrines are carried to the extremes of unbridled lust; there are those who, striving as it were to ride a middle course, believe nevertheless that something should be conceded in our times as regards certain precepts of the divine and natural law. But these likewise, more or less wittingly, are emissaries of the great enemy who is ever seeking to sow cockle among the wheat."
Kevin Tierney: Here Pius XI outlines what may be the greatest danger of them all. The most dangerous enemy is not one who is an extremist, but one who believes that based on times and circumstances, the divine laws must be changed. The only problem is these laws cannot be changed, as they are the laws pertaining to God alone. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and hence so are His laws. We see this as a common example today, even in Catholic publications. Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis Magazine, stated that while Kerry should be denied communion for his stand on abortion, he should not be for gay marriage, and only Kerry should be denied communion. He reasons that nobody would be able to receive communion under these circumstances, because of modern times and what people believe. Is this not the attitude we see towards divorce and gay marriage today? The "it will happen anyway, so we might as well let it happen" approach. The Pontiff rightly points out this is a tactic of the devil himself. The only problem with this approach is, as history has proven, the Adversary is never satisfied. First it was allowance of divorce. Then it was acceptance of divorce. Then it was allowance of contraception, then acceptance. Then the slaughter of unborn children under the guise of choice. After giving all these things up, we are then told that we need to give a Constitutional right to a sin that cries to heaven for vengance in Soddomy, and then we have to bless their "Marriages." These passed only because of those willing to "Concede to modern times."
"To begin at the very source of these evils, their basic principle lies in this, that matrimony is repeatedly declared to be not instituted by the Author of nature nor raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a true sacrament, but invented by man. Some confidently assert that they have found no evidence of the existence of matrimony in nature or in her laws, but regard it merely as the means of producing life and of gratifying in one way or another a vehement impulse; on the other hand, others recognize that certain beginnings or, as it were, seeds of true wedlock are found in the nature of man since, unless men were bound together by some form of permanent tie, the dignity of husband and wife or the natural end of propagating and rearing the offspring would not receive satisfactory provision. At the same time they maintain that in all beyond this germinal idea matrimony, through various concurrent causes, is invented solely by the mind of man, established solely by his will. "
Kevin Tierney: One of the biggest problems facing those who advance the idea of "God is dead" in the Secular Culture of Death is that they need to explain that without God, where did certain things come from? It was always understood, even by early pagans, that God(or in the pagans case the gods) instituted the union of husband and wife. Since if there is no God, God cannot be the creator of marriage, the only logical choice becomes man, and those institutions man erects. Since they have removed the divine law from the sphere of the equation, they now attempt to prove so from the natural law(or common sense) that marriage is a man-invented institution.
"How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony -- hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife. "
Kevin Tierney: As Leo XIII noted in his encyclical on the nature of Civil Power, if there is no God, then all rights by neccesity come, and most importantly can be taken away, by the State. Likewise, since modern man believes marriage to be purely a human invention, logically the human may do with the institution what he wants, including redefining the aspects and roles of such. Hence, it is no longer a popular idea to believe that the begetting of children is suitable only to the married state, as man believes that since matrimony is of our creation, we can remove the child part from the equation, to where sex becomes a "right" of absolutely everyone. (And with contraception and abortion, so does the freedom from the responsibility of one's actions.) This is why I have stated time and time again, one cannot find an answer to the problems plauging our culture today in the secular world. God's interaction with human life must be taught. There are those who believe we cannot cover this from a religious perspective. Yet when the other side does not have the answer, certainly we must. We must outline the principles of the Gospel and how they apply to everyday life. The idea that the Gospel is only concerned with the eternal sphere, as if it does not give advice on how to achieve that state, is Protestantism, yet that is the mindset of many Catholics today.
In our next installment, we shall outline these specific attacks in-depth, starting with the attack on the blessing of children.
