ARCANUM DIVINAE SAPIENTIAE CONSILIUM. - Opening words of the encyclical with which Leo XIII (18 Feb. 1880: Acta Leonis XIII, II, Rome 1880, pp. 10-40) deals with the question of marriage and defends Catholic doctrine on it against the persistent and well-armed snares of the naturalists and the regalists.
After recalling the nature of marriage, its unity and indissolubility, which have been altered over the centuries by the deviations of polygamy, polyandry and divorce, which have degraded the dignity of woman, the Pontiff calls to mind the work of Jesus Christ, who raised the natural bond, already of itself sacred, to the dignity of a sacrament, restoring woman and transforming the family into a society of dignified and harmonious hierarchy. Against this divine institution rise the fallacies of its adversaries, whether by separating the marriage contract (which they say belongs to the State) from the sacrament (which would belong to the Church), or by insinuating the usefulness and necessity of a law permitting divorce. Leo XIII warns Catholics against these erroneous conceptions, and demonstrates the harms that would follow from them, were they to be applied. The moral situation, in fact, of the various nations in which they are in force is the most convincing proof of this. v. DIVORZIO; MATRIMONIO.