Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library
Leo PP. XIII
Arcanum

IntraText CT - Text

Previous - Next

Click here to hide the links to concordance

13. Christ, therefore, having renewed marriage to such and so great excellence, commended and entrusted all the discipline bearing upon these matters to His Church. The Church, always and everywhere, has so used her power with reference to the marriages of Christians that men have seen clearly how it belongs to her as of native right; not being made hers by any human grant, but given divinely to her by the will of her Founder. Her constant and watchful care in guarding marriage, by the preservation of its sanctity, is so well understood as to not need proof. That the judgment of the Council of Jerusalem reprobated licentious and free love,(20) we all know; as also that the incestuous Corinthian was condemned by the authority of blessed Paul.(21) Again, in the very beginning of the Christian Church were repulsed and defeated, with the like unremitting determination, the efforts of many who aimed at the destruction of Christian marriage, such as the Gnostics, Manichaeans, and Montanists; and in our own time Mormons, St. Simonians, phalansterians, and communists.(22)




20. Acts 15:29.



21. 1 Cor. 5:5.



22. Gnostics: common name for several early sects claiming a Christian knowledge (gnosis) higher than faith. Manichaeans: disciples of the Persian Mani (or Manes, c.216-276) who taught that everything goes back to two first principles, light and darkness, or good and evil. Montanises: disciples of Montanus (in Phrygia, last third of the second century), condemned marriage as a sinful institution. Mormons: sect founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, which favored polygamy. Saint-Simonians: disciples of the French philosopher Saint-Simon ( 1760-1825) founder of a "new Christianity" based upon science instead of faith. Phalansterians: members of a phalanstery, that is, of a socialist community after the principles of Charles Fourier (1772-1837). Communists: supporters of a regime in which property belongs to the body politic, each member being supposed to work according to his capacity and to receive according to his wants; communism is usually associated with the name of Karl Marx (1818-1893).






Previous - Next

Table of Contents | Words: Alphabetical - Frequency - Inverse - Length - Statistics | Help | IntraText Library

Best viewed with any browser at 800x600 or 768x1024 on Tablet PC
IntraText® (V89) - Some rights reserved by EuloTech SRL - 1996-2007. Content in this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License