From Pope Leo’s Arcanum to 2013 – Part 1

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13: 8).

A contemporary recently reminded me how some clergy and religious actually made fun of the Council of Trent (1545 AD to 1563 AD) during our 1970s high school days. Years later, we realize that they were displaying an ignorance of which they hopefully outgrew.  The constant teaching of Jesus’ Church simply cannot change.

As Pope Francis stated in 2016:

Marriage is the most beautiful thing that God has created. The Bible tells us that God created man and woman, created them in his own image (cf. Genesis 1:27). That is to say, the man and woman who become one flesh, are the image of God….when ‘one flesh’ is divided, the image of God is soiled. And the children pay. You do not know, dear brothers and sisters, you do not know how much children suffer….Everything should be done to save a marriage….a great enemy to marriage today: [is] the theory of gender. Today there is a world war to destroy marriage. Today there are ideological colonisations which destroy, not with weapons, but with ideas. (Pope Francis, 10/1/16)

Over the past decade, we have witnessed this “world war”, this attempted “ideological colonization”. Tremendous confusion has been sprouting about marriage / family / human sexuality. Instead of forthrightly announcing God’s truth, some well-known American clergy, such as James Martin, SJ and Edward Beck, CP (with whom I went to high school), make odd statements but ones that somehow remain open to plausible deniability.

Pushing the envelope further than Father Martin or Father Beck is a layman, New Ways Ministry’s executive director Frank DeBernardo.  Like Father Beck and myself, DeBernardo is a 63-year-old Brooklyn native, as well as a friend from my youth.

Whether through ignorance or failure to appreciate authentic Catholic teaching, all of them, including the layman, are displaying a type of “clericalism” that fails to proclaim God’s magnificent message about marriage / family / human sexuality.

“What is Truth?” (Pontius Pilate, ca. 30 AD)

The truth is not relative. Marriage is the lifelong, open-to-life, commitment between one man and one woman.  Incredibly demanding and magnificently rewarding, husbands and wives are called to sacrificial love for each other and their offspring.  Symbolizing God and His church, husbands and wives are called to cooperate in His continuing work of creation!

The incredible nobility of sexual relations between husbands and wives calls all married couples to approach their marital relations with awe, always open to life and absolutely foregoing contraceptives.  It calls non-married people to complete continence, absolutely refraining from sexual relations. While these may seem like tall orders in a promiscuous society, we have the graces of the sacraments – particularly reconciliation – to aid us.

While I do not believe that any bishop or cleric would openly object to what I am writing, marriage is not being promoted by the clergy as the absolutely magnificent vocation that it is. Let us recall what the Church has always authentically proclaimed about marriage / family / human sexuality.

Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum (2/10/1880)

Whenever Catholic Social Teaching is reviewed, it is customary to start with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891).  While there may be justification for this label, we did not just begin to learn how to relate with others in society in the nineteenth century.  I will follow suit by starting a review of teaching on marriage / family / human sexuality somewhat arbitrarily with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicals Arcanum. His insights are applicable to our situation day:

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….

And

The doctrine and precepts in relation to Christian marriage…tend no less to the preservation of civil society than to the everlasting salvation of souls.

Recognizing that marriage must be preserved for the particular family and the wider society, Pope Leo XIII’s insistence on the preservation of marriage was quite pastoral.

Pope Pius XI’s Casti Connubii (12/31/1930)

Pope Pius XI did not hesitate to condemn cohabitation, contraceptives, and divorce while calling for sufficient remuneration to a husband that his wife would not need to work outside the home. Here are some insights from this magnificent encyclical:

How great is the dignity of chaste wedlock… Christ Our Lord, Son of the Eternal Father…ordained it in an especial manner as the principle and foundation of domestic society and therefore of all human intercourse,…raised it to the rank of a truly and great sacrament of the New Law, restored it to the original purity of its divine institution, and accordingly entrusted all its discipline and care to His spouse the Church….

If any confessor or pastor of souls, which may God forbid, lead the faithful entrusted to him into these errors [regarding birth control] or should at least confirm them by approval or by guilty silence, let him be mindful of the fact that he must render a strict account to God, the Supreme Judge, for the betrayal of his sacred trust….

In the State such economic and social methods should be adopted as will enable every head of a family to earn as much as, according to his station in life, is necessary for himself, his wife, and for the rearing of his children….To deny this, or to make light of what is equitable, is a grave injustice and is placed among the greatest sins by Holy Writ; nor is it lawful to fix such a scanty wage as will be insufficient.

At the Lambeth Conference of 1930, Anglicans (i.e., Episcopalians in the U.S.) took a very different direction, wrongly opening the door for contraceptive use by married couples.

Saint Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (7/25/1968)

Though revisionists may act as though Pope Paul VI pulled Humanae Vitae out of a hat, its condemnation of contraceptives followed what Pius XI said a generation and a half earlier. The wisdom of this encyclical is ageless:

The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator ….

Husband and wife, through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone, develop that union of two persons in which they perfect one another, cooperating with God in the generation and rearing of new lives.

The marriage of those who have been baptized is, in addition, invested with the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace, for it represents the union of Christ and His Church….

Each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life….

If…there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile….

The family is the primary unit in the state; do not tolerate any legislation which would introduce into the family those practices which are opposed to the natural law of God….

Beloved and venerable brothers in the episcopate….devote yourselves with all zeal and without delay to safeguarding the holiness of marriage….life together in human society will be enriched with fraternal charity and made more stable with true peace when God’s design which He conceived for the world is faithfully followed.

The Catholic Catechism

The Catechism and its Compendium reiterated the Church’s beautiful teaching on marriage / family / human sexuality, while making it more accessible and easier to reference. Please see the following references:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1993 (cf, # 889, 890, 891, 1610, 1611, 1615, 1643, 1644, 1645, 1647, 2035, 2051, 2364) and The Compendium of the Catechism (2005)

Theology of the Body

References: Saint Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” (9/5/1979 to 11/28/1984) and Familiaris Consortio (1981)

Pope St. John Paul II has been called the “Pope of the Family”.  He clearly articulated the beautiful truth of marriage / family / human sexuality in his addresses on the “Theology of the Body”.

Pope John Paul II called humanity back to true appreciation of human sexuality and love…. he declared that sexual relations were the very ‘language of the body,’ by which husbands and wives present themselves as ‘gifts’ and participate in God’s very work of creation! He spoke of marriage as the ‘primordial sacrament’–a mysterious symbol of God’s love and a means of growing in closeness to the Divine. Of necessity, such a phenomenal relationship is to be monogamous and indissoluble; each act of sexual relations–each participation in God’s creation–is to be open to life!

John Paul II used the Wednesday afternoon audiences of his early pontificate to teach the Theology of the Body. Addresses to the Roman Rota of this same period were of a general nature, compared to those of his later pontificate. Addresses of this period reflect a hopefulness, perhaps directly related to those Wednesday audiences and his apostolic exhortation, Familiaris consortio – as well as the coming into force of the new Code of Canon Law….

[As per the 1999 address]: ‘We can discern a widespread deterioration of the natural and religious meaning of marriage….we cannot ignore, in this regard, the growing phenomenon of mere de facto unions…, and the unrelenting public opinion campaigns to gain the dignity of marriage even for unions between persons of the same sex….’ (cf, The Companion to JP II and the Theology of the Body…a Quarter Century of Annual Addresses to the Roman Rota, Catholic Insight, 2006).

More to Follow

In Part 2, I will discuss Pope St. John Paul II’s Addresses to the Roman Rota, a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a document from the Pontifical Council for the Family, Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est and his Addresses to the Roman Rota.