Pope Leo XIII on Marriage, Family, and Society

Back in the late 1800s Pope Leo XIII had a few things to say about marriage, family, and society.  His words are still relevant today.

During the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2025 National Marriage Week, (Feb. 7-14) I decided to re-read Arcanum, the 1880 encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII on Christian Marriage.  Eleven years after Arcanum, that same pope authored Rerum Novarum, inaugurating modern Catholic Social Teaching.

While I frequently hear or read about “Catholic Social Teaching,” few seem familiar with the content of the Vatican’s magnificent Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.  As I noted here at CS, a couple years ago,

“God invented the greatest social program for His people – the family! . . . A man and woman united in marriage form a family, the very basis of society, and are entrusted to cooperate in God’s continuing work of creation. Jesus raised marriage to a sacrament.”

Hmm.  Marriage, family, and the just ordering of society – might there be connections?

Marriage

Right at the start of the Bible, God made clear His plan for marriage!

“The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. When he brought her to the man, the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken.”

“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.

“This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken” (Genesis 2:22-24).

Jesus affirms this in Mathew 19:5-6:

“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

Via the family springing from His great mold for marriage, God planned to continue His work of creation for human society.

Essential to Society

Pope Leo XIII knew that God’s great gift of marriage was essential to the preservation of society!  A century and a half later, that common sense has somehow eluded numerous minds.

As Brad Wilcox writes in the preface of his book, “Get Married,”

“[H]aving the benefit of a family headed by stably married parents, where both parents are on hand to love you day in, day out, share life’s joys and frustrations, and devote their combined financial resources to your home, your extracurriculars, and your schooling ends up being the ultimate privilege for the millions of today’s boys and girls across America who are fortunate enough to grow up in an intact family” (pg. 9).

Divorce

Arcanum does not get soft and mushy about any supposed necessity for a divorce escape hatch:

“29. 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, springing as they do from the depraved morals of the people, and, as experience shows us, opening out a way to every kind of evil-doing in public and in private life” [emphasis added].

And he writes later (par. 32), “we see most clearly how foolish and senseless it is to expect any public good from divorce, when, on the contrary, it tends to the certain destruction of society.”

Reminiscent of a pep rally, Pope Leo XIII writes of popes who faced down powerful rulers to defend marriage in paragraph 34.  Nary a namby-pamby among those holy fathers:

• Pope Nicholas I v. Lothair
• Popes Urban II and Paschal II v. Philip I
• Popes Celestine III and Innocent III v. Alphonsus and Philip II
• Popes Clement VII and Paul III v. Henry VIII
• Pope Pius VII v. Napoleon I

We continue to need our Holy Father, bishops, and all clergy to defend the basic unit of society!

Conclusion

The Church must courageously hold fast to what has been entrusted to her concerning marriage.  As Pope Leo also writes,

“41 . . . no power can dissolve the bond of Christian marriage whenever this has been ratified and consummated.  . . .  When, indeed, matters have come to such a pitch that it seems impossible for them to live together any longer, then the Church allows them to live apart . . . yet she never ceases to endeavor to bring about a reconciliation, and never despairs of doing so. But these are extreme cases….

“45 . . . 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.

In 1880, the world saw the election of U.S. President James Garfield and the start of the First Boer War.  It also say the births of General Douglas MacArthur, W.C. Fields, and Helen Keller.  In some ways, 1880 is a long time ago, but in other ways it is not so long ago at all!

In a rapidly changing world, Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum resoundingly reaffirmed the importance and holiness of marriage – the source and foundation of family – in God’s plan for our happiness.  Arcanum also made clear the forbidden (but for the gravest of reasons and with the hope of reconciliation) nature of society-destroying divorce.  And, of course marriage, after divorce, to another man or woman was unthinkable!

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