Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 4:
The Catholic Church does not want to control domestic society. Families must control themselves. But they must do so according to Christian principles, and the Catholic Church, as our God-given guide in matters of faith and morals, declares what those Christian principle are and the obligation of her members to observe them. She would be failing in her duty if she did not do this.
The Catholic Church teaches what is obviously the order of nature itself in this matter. The family, man, wife and children, is the initial society. Families unite to form civil society or the State. Domestic society is therefore prior both in nature and in time to civil society. It follows that the rights of the family are not derived from the State, nor has the State the right to control domestic life. It has the right to check abuses which could be destructive of the common good, making polygamy illegal, and making it a crime for parents to neglect fitting provision of food, clothing and education for their children." But it has no right to interfere with the positive administration of the normal home. The State did not give birth to the children. The parents did. The parents, therefore, have the right and the duty to bring up their children - fostering and preserving the lives for which they are responsible, and seeing to their spiritual, intellectual and physical development. That of course, means education; and the education of the children belong, primarily to the parents, not to the State. The parents may entrust part of the education of their children to others; but those others have only a delegated right in such a case. The basic right always remains that of the parents. The State, of course, has the right to demand a certain standard of proficiency in secular subjects; but it has not the right to say hov or where the child will be brought to that standard. That decision belongs to the parents. The family is the most ancient and necessary form of society, having its immediate origin in the natural law itself, and deriving its rights from no other and subsequent types of society.
Yes. It was not a Sacrament in the Christian sense of the word, but it was undoubtedly a sacred contract, appointed, sanctioned and blessed by God. And it was intended by God to be the permanent union of one man and one woman for the duration of their lives in this world. The marital union of human beings was on quite a different and almost infinitely higher level than the promiscuity of sex-relationships amongst lower and irrational animals. God's primitive law made no allowance whatever for divorce. The Book of Genesis records Adam's words in reference to Eve "This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . . wherefore man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh." Gen., II, 23-24. A man was therefore to regard his wife as identified with himself; and divorce, dividing his wife from him, was to be as unthinkable as hacking himself to pieces with a sword. Christ Himself showed that God's primitive law intended marriage to be unbreakable. When the Pharisees interrogated Him as to whether divorce was lawful, He replied by quoting the words of Adam which I have just given, adding: "Therefore they are not two, but one flesh. What God therefore hath joined together, let no man put asunder." Matt., XIX, 6. And when the Pharisees urged that Moses had permitted divorce, Christ declared that that was not a law, but merely a dispensation from the law owing to the bad dispositions of men. And He declared also that He was abolishing that dispensation, saying: "From the beginning it was not so." Matt., XIX, 8. It is evident, then, that marriage was a sacred permanent union as originally instituted by God.
It is even higher, for Christ gave marriage an additional religious value as one of the Christian Sacraments. Christian marriage is defined as a Sacrament, in the reception of which two Christians, who are hindered by no impediments, give themselves to each other permanently, for the sake of children, life-long companionship, and mutual edification in religious and spiritual duties. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, V, 23-33, St. Paul stresses the ideal by likening Christian marriage to the union existing between Christ and the Church. As there can never be a divorce between Christ and the Church with which He promised to remain all days till the end of time, so there can never be a divorce between Christian husband and wife. As Christ has ever protected His Church, so husbands should love and protect their wives. As the Church has ever been true to Christ, so wives should be true to their husbands. Finally, as the Church is fruitful by the grace of Christ, bringing us forth to spiritual and eternal life, so the Christian wife brings forth the children God sends to her as the result of her marriage.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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