«CASTI CONNUBII». - Encyclical of Pius XI, dated 30 Dec. 1930, on Christian marriage (AAS, 22 [1930], pp. 539–90). The subject, which is always of the most vital and far-reaching importance in every age, assumes a quite particular significance in our own day. On the one hand, divorce is accepted in almost all legal systems and practised with the most reckless abandon; adultery is glorified, or at least treated with a deplorably agnostic attitude in novels, theatres, cinemas, and newspaper reports; on the other, new pseudo-scientific theories are spreading under the pretext of strengthening the race or public health, and a misguided sense of compassion casts into the shade substantial truths, deplorable and fatal consequences, and doctrines unfamiliar to revelation. In reality, everything conspires to depress the family institution, compromising the peace and serenity of the home, the education of children, and ultimately shattering that structure which is the family, the fruit of nature and sanctifying grace, willed by God to be firm and indissoluble.
Such is the subject of the encyclical, which, recalling that of Leo XIII, *Arcanum*, of 10 Feb. 1880, enters into the heart of the issues, dividing its treatment into three parts:
1. The three goods of marriage: the good of the offspring, which constitutes its primary end and gives parents the right and grave duty ‘to receive it lovingly, nourish it kindly, educate it religiously’; the good of fidelity, which constitutes the unity of the spouses, founded upon a holy and pure love, mutual aid—moral and material—and a well-ordered and understood hierarchy, according to which the husband is the head of the family and the wife its heart; the good of the sacrament, which represents the indissoluble union between Christ and the Church, an indissolubility that brings the greatest benefits to the spouses themselves, to their children, and to society.
2. The storm against the sanctity of marriage, unleashed by selfishness and passions, fostered and abetted by pseudo-science: temporary marriages, companionate marriages, trial marriages; birth control; therapeutic abortion, eugenics, sterilisation; difficulties of cohabitation; mixed marriages; the oppression by supposed state authorities. The condemnation of the Church upon all these aberrations is clear and unrelenting, founded upon the unity of God’s will, manifested in revelation, and upon the fatal consequences that flow from them.
3. The restoration of the family, to be achieved by a return to those divine intentions: hence spouses must always bear in mind that their union is the sacrament of Christ and the Church; they must seek to master their passions through the acquisition of self-control and above all through prayer, which brings strength and light. It is also necessary to prepare future spouses for marriage; to assist the poor classes; and for individuals and above all the state to implement those social provisions which ensure for all a tranquil and serene well-being. A useful and desirable means: mutual understanding between state and Church, from which the state need not fear any diminution of its rights; a shining example: the Lateran Pacts.