DIOCESE OF AUCKLAND

New Zealand Tablet, 22 February 1912, Page 25

DIOCESE OF AUCKLAND

CATHOLIC MARRIAGE LAWS A PASTORAL INSTRUCTION IN THREE PARTS PART I.—Things more or less Fundamental. I. The Family in Relation to Society. 11. The Family Duty in the Home. Grounds of such Duty—(l) As furnished by pagan Greece and Rome; (2) as furnished by modern ’ Philosophies; (3) ‘parasitic’ Morality; (4) grounds of Duty in the Home, as furnished by Religion. 111. Religion and the Family—(l) The Church: her Mission and Authority in regard to the Family and Society. (A) Why the Church . was founded. (B) The Church’s Teaching Authority. (0) The Church’s Authority: Legislative, Judicial, Executive. (D) The - Church s Independence in the Exercise' of , her Authority. (E) The Church’s Continuity, < (P) Summary of Part I. HENRY WILLIAM, by the Grace of God and the favor of the Holy Apostolic See, Bishop of Auckland: To the Clergy, Secular and Regular, and to the Laity, of the said Diocese, Health and Blessing in the Lord. I. THE FAMILY IN RELATION TO SOCIETY. In the divinely established human order, the isolated individual is an exception. Society, although formed for the purpose of securing the well-being of individuals, is, before all else, composed of individuals gathered around the domestic hearth, and united into families, and these, in their turn, into connected groups. I. 16 family is the basis, the primitive cell,’ of society, the life-source from which our race derives its continuity It is the first school of the child, the place where character is mainly formed, the centre, and the most essential, of human institutions. ... The family is. built up on marriage, and its constituent elements are father, mother, and child or children The living magnetism which draws, and holds them together and makes for the unity, the stability, and the blessedness of the home, is their reciprocal affection and devotion. This, in turn, is broad-based upon duty— duty perceived as moral truth and upon duty willed and carried out as ordered moral conduct conformable to right reason, and in ** accordance with the laws, the foundations, the organisation on which the family is, by its nature, based. How- I ever they may differ as to the basis of duty, moralists o every faith and un-faith hold that morality (another name for duty) is the highest function of .man without it, men, even with the physical strength of a bain son or with the intellectual acumen of a Newton would be condemned as falling downwards when they should rise upwards— false to the ideals of humannature as we feel that it should be. Known duty is sacred and supreme. It presses sternly as a debt upon * eacli. it shows no quarter to the indolence or the passion or the pleasure or the. seeming self-interest that stands m its royal way. Through the voice of conscience it speaks not less peremptorily, when long years of domestic association, when the play of divergent temperaments, when the struggle of life and the /nfiVZ f 111 u P- brin g in g of children, have ns too often happens) brought into activity in the home le moie selfish and less lovable qualities of fallen T; B / ecaus . e . 6f these and other-such domestic tiials the duty (or rightly ordered conduct) required for the physical, mental, and moral well-being of • the home, commonly involves, courage, .discipline, restraint, self-sacnfice; it means control of appetites, devotion •Y ? thers > daily conquest of the selfish natural instincts which clamor to make our individual interests - the rule of conduct and to subordinate the convenience and well-being of others to our own. Without this

spirit of unselfishness and self-restraint, the home—the seat of domestic life and interests—would be a scene of . tyranny and disorganisation. For selfishness is a peculiarly anti-social vice, and renunciation has been well described as 'the foundation of social order. Where it is wanting, men become a herd, each member of which tries to satisfy his hunger without care for, and often at the expense of, his neighbor.' l Renunciation is, therefore, necessary as a means of promoting and preserving the well-being of the family and of society at large. It requires a moral law strong enough to impose upon us a real obligation an obligation beyond all criticism and sufficient for the conduct of life. The disinterestedness and self-restraint thus required within the domestic circle is equally necessary for the wellbeing of the State or nation. For the family is the original germ-cell of the State. However complex the State may have become, it is, substantially, .an ordered aggregate of families, a mosaic-mirror of . the home, an edifice in which each household is, so to speak, a brick or stone, a transom or beam.

The struggle of health against disease is carried on in the cells of our bodily structure by antidotes (antitoxins) evolved by friendly organisms, for the purpose of counteracting the poisons (toxins) which are given off by harmful bacteria that, in varying force, are ever present and active within us. The well-being of our bodily frame is, indeed, dependent upon the health of the individual cells of which it is composed. In an analogous way, the health of the body corporate— the State or nation—depends in a very great measure upon that of the family-cells of which it is in substance, made up. Social well-being depends practically upon domestic well-being: the moral complexion of a nation will, substantially, be that of the families within it borders. Hence we may say of the domestic circle what Humboldt said of the school: that whatever we wish to see introduced into the life of a nation, must first be introduced into the home. God has implanted in man the social instinct. It draws people-into ordered groups; and, through these, ideas and feelings (the evil as well as the good) spread as healthy or unhealthy blood circulates in our bodies, scattering vigor or disease along its sinuous path. The family is the supreme medium of this never-ceasing circulation of thoughts and feelings. It is thus set, in an altogether special way, for the rise or fall of many: the home may become a seminary of saints, or it may become (so to speak) a slaughterhouse of souls —such as (in regard to the bodies of little ones) was the Topheth or place of abominations where children were sacrificed to Moloch, the false'god of this world, in the long ago. Guilds of poisoners plagued the social life of parts of Europe in the seventeenth century. And, in our own time, a' coarsely materialistic philosophy—which has been incorporated with one phase of the social movementhas been slowly inoculating society, through the family, with the toxins or poisons of low ideals of personal , and domestic life and duty. 2 The unity, .1- Lugan, ‘ L’Enseignement Social de Jesus,’ p, cxxix. - 2. Extreme Socialists of the Marxian type look to universal atheism, free love,’ and the destruction of the family, as the future earthly . paradise. See, for instance, Jules Guesde (the French Socialist leader), in his Le Catechisme ’ (no. 72-79), and Gabriel Deville (another prominent French Socialist writer), quoted by Lecky, Democracy and Liberty (cabinet ed., vol. ii., pp. 348-9). The conditions desired by that school of writers are not unfairly described as ‘ lower than those now prevalent among the lowest race of savages, and lower even than amongst those animals where the male parent joins the female in the protection of their offspring.’ There is no logical alternative between ‘ free love ’ and the Catholic ideal of the wedded union of one man and one woman till death doth them part. Many rationalistic and other non-Christian or anti-Christian philosophers condemn polygamy and other matrimonial disorderson principles borrowed from the Christianity which they reject. They steal the weapons of Christians to combat what they cannot combat with principles that are all their own.

sanctity, and stability of the family material and moral welfare—are likewise menaced by the decadent principles which have found expression in the Statutebooks of various countries in our. day. Such, for instance, are the various forms of divorce legislation, which -with the tendency to easier and ever easier methods -play so evil a part in the breaking up of families, in the encouragement of rash unions, in the rise and spread of laxer views of the obligation of conjugal fidelity, and, generally, in .the process of social disintegration and national decay. Human laws should be, as it were, a dim vision of the eternal laws; but here we have enactments which are acts of rebellion against the eternal principles of righteousness; for the rights of the organised State and of its governing body are limited by the fundamental rights of the family, which, logically and historically, comes before the civil power. These are of the ‘ crown rights’ of the Creator and Preserver of human society. They were not conferred by the civil power; by the civil power they cannot be taken away. (To be continued.)