Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/24

18 of a sacrament the contract of matrimony, in which He would have His Own union with the Church typified, not only made the marriage-tie more holy, but in addition provided efficacious sources of aid for parents and children alike, so that, by the discharge of their duties one to another, they might with greater ease attain to happiness both in time and in eternity. But when impious laws, setting at naught the sanctity of this great sacrament, put it on the same footing with mere civil contracts, the lamentable result followed, that, outraging the dignity of Christian matrimony, citizens made use of legalized concubinage in place of marriage; husband and wife neglected their bounden duty to each other; children refused obedience and reverence to their parents; the bonds of domestic love were loosened; and, alas! the worst scandal and of all the most ruinous to public morality, very frequently an unholy passion opened the door to disastrous and fatal separations. These most unhappy and painful consequences, Venerable Brothers, cannot fail to arouse your zeal and move you constantly and earnestly to warn the faithful committed to your charge, to listen with docility to your teaching regarding the holiness of Christian marriage, and to obey the laws by which the Church controls the duties of married people and of their offspring.

Then, indeed, will that most desirable result come about, that the character and conduct of individuals also will be reformed; for just as from a rotten stock are produced healthless branches or worthless fruits, so do the ravages of a pestilence which ruins the household spread wide their cruel infection to the hurt and injury of individual citizens. On the other hand, when domestic society is fashioned in the mould of Christian life, each member will gradually grow accustomed to the love of religion and piety, to the abhorrence of false and harmful teaching, to the pursuit of virtue, to obedience to elders, and to the restraint of that insatiable seeking after self-interest alone, which so spoils and weakens the character of men. To