Christian Marriage by George Hayward Joyce

When in the West the Roman Empire went down before the barbarians, and civilization seemed threatened with complete and permanent dissolution, it is not disputed that the rebuilding of the social order was in chief measure the work of the Catholic Church. The early Middle Ages afford an instance in point. And where the Christian ideal of marriage prevails, the family, strengthened by supernatural sanctions, will hold good through every crisis, and even in the greatest political convulsions provides the principle of eventual recovery.

For in the social organism the true units are not isolated individuals, but families. Where they held sway in mens minds the foundations of society were secure it could never suffer complete ruin. These truths gave to the union a dignity, a purity, and a sanctity hitherto undreamed of. It taught that marriage is sacred, God being the agent Who establishes and ratifies the union between husband and wife that the bond thus divinely blessed is indissoluble until death that the wife is no mere chattel, but a party to a contract between equals and that all sexual relations outside marriage, whether on the part of the husband or the wife, are grievously sinful. The religion of Christ had lifted family life onto a new plane.

CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AN HISTORICAL AND DOCTRINAL STUDY - GEORGE HAYWARD JOYCE - 1933 - INTRODUCTION - THE civilization of Christendom-the civilization of which we are the heirs-was founded on Christian Marriage.

Christian Marriage by George Hayward Joyce