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”