Pope Pius XII on Conjugal Love and the Family

God has given woman the sacred, painful mission of maternity which is also a fountain of pure joy, and the mother, above all others, has been entrusted with the early upbringing of the child....

Certainly a woman can do more than a man to contribute to the happiness of home life. The husband’s first duty is to assure the subsistence and the future of the family.... Woman must apply vigilant diligence to caring for those thousand particulars, those intangible daily attentions which create the elements of the internal family atmosphere. And ac cording to whether her diligence is correctly ap plied, or misdirected, or lacking, the atmosphere is rendered salutary, fresh, and bracing, or oppressive, spoiled, unbreathable. The ac tions of the wife in the home should always be like the work of the valiant woman exalted in Holy Scriptures: a woman in whom the heart of her husband trusteth, a woman who will render him good and not evil for all the days of his life.

From the viewpoint of Pius XII, as from that of the popes, saints, and theologians of the previous nineteen centuries, men and women are not interchangeable. Their respective roles, while at times overlapping, were in principle quite distinct and complementary. In no other sphere of life was this so pronounced as within the family. While husbands and fathers had, before God, the primary obligation in the leadership role and economic responsibility, it was the wife and mother who reigned in her own realm of the hearth and home. This is the sphere in which she was to work out the salvation of her soul in providing for the emotional and physical needs of her husband and children. In no other aspect of life would she derive so much fulfillment and emotional satisfaction. And yet the consequences of being faithful to God’s plan for the family were even more significant for the good of society and the psychological well-being of all members of the family. Until the present century this truth was considered as axiomatic as the existence of natural law. It was the nineteenth-century writer, Henri Amiel, who declared, “The ideal which the wife and mother makes for herself, the manner in which she understands duty and life, contain the fate of the community .... Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.” Pius XII could not have agreed more:

... The woman makes the home and cares for it, and... the man can never supplant her in this. Is it not the destiny which nature and her union with man have imposed on her for the good of society? Draw her away from her family with one of the many lures employed to win and bind her, and you will see the woman neglect her hearth; without this fire her home will become cold; in practice her hearth will cease to exist, and be changed into the precarious refuge of a few hours; the center of daily life will shift elsewhere for her husband, for her, and for her children.

The edifice of happiness can be raised only on the solid foundation of family life. But where can there be true family life without a visible center, a genuine meeting-place, where the family may gather, collect, put down roots, maintain itself, deepen, unfold, and flower?

Who .... little by little, day by day, will create the true home, if not the woman who has be come the “mistress of the house?” whether the husband is a work man, farmer, professional work er, man of letters ... or executive, it is inevitable that he spend the major part of his day away ... from the life of the family. The domestic hearth will become for him the place where at the end of the day’s labor he will be re stored physically and morally in repose, calm, and intimate joy. However for the woman, this home will be her principal creation.... rich in memories and ob jects that recall the events of a life lived together ... the thoughts, the joys, the shared suffering.... And the animating spirit of it all will be the feminine hand and heart which the wife employs to make every corner of the house attractive, if only through care, order, neatness, keeping everything ready to be used when needed; ... making meals a comfort after work.... To woman more than man, the Lord has granted, with the sense of grace and harmony, the gift of lending attraction to the simplest things, precisely because she ... is born to spread gentleness and sweetness in the home of the family.

Already in the 1940’s, the Holy Father saw the danger of the false image of married life presented by films and other branches of the Media controlled by persons whose values were very much at odds with those of Christian culture. Repeatedly he felt the need to warn newlyweds against the dangers and pitfalls of being seduced by hedonistic expectations and delusions. He felt the need to present young people with a realistic picture of what they could expect of married life in the long run. Only in this way could they hope to reap what God had promised to those faithful in marriage:

Some would allege that happiness in marriage is in direct proportion to the reciprocal enjoyment in conjugal relations. This is not so; happiness in marriage is instead in direct proportion to the reciprocal respect between husband and wife, even in their intimate relations... The mutual esteem which it generates is one of the most efficacious elements of a pure and therefore all the more tender love..... What is fidelity if not re spect for the gift that each mate has made to the other, of self, body, mind, and heart for the full course of life...

Modest elegance, the spontaneity and delicacy of her ways, the inner goodness of her soul, all these... form the indefinable charm of a pure and innocent girl... and have so drawn him toward her with the rapture of an ardent and chaste love....

Years, passing over handsomeness and beauty... take away some of love’s freshness and give it in exchange a more thoughtful and austere dignity ....

Maternity exacts courage: the wife must be no less heroic than her husband.... If forced separations, and other delicate circumstances, should intervene, obliging a husband and wife to live in continence, then the wedded couple, remembering that the body of each belongs to the other, will, without any hesitation, accept their duty and maintain the stern discipline which virtue enjoins.

And when, with the advent of old age, there comes a multiplication of ailments and infirmities, and...a host of afflictions which, without love’s strength and support, would make repugnant the body.... the most tender cares will be lovingly lavished on that body. This is fidelity in the mutual gift of the bodies.

... During the time of their engagement, everything seemed enchanting: each gave the other, with sincerity...a tribute of admiration....The expansion of joy and love gave to the conversation a candor, a vivacity, and a liveliness which lent sparkle...and added a pleasing glitter....This is attraction, enthusiasm; but not yet fidelity.

That season passes; failings are not slow in appearing .... The fireworks have died out, blind love opens its eyes, it suffers disillusion...Then for true and faithful love, begins the struggle, and at the same time the challenge .... It becomes perfectly aware of these failings but accepts them with affectionate patience, conscious as it is of its own de fects .... It now goes on to discover and appreciate ... the qualities of judgment, good sense, and solid piety, rich treasures which, though hidden, are sound ....Love is no less clever and watchful in shielding from the eyes of others any gaps and blanks in intelligence or knowledge, as well as any eccentricities or asperities of character .... Love is ready to perceive what brings together and unites, and not what divides; ready to rectify an error...with so much good grace as never to irritate or offend .... It tactfully asks advice of the partner, letting it appear that if it has something to give, it is also happy to receive. It is in this way ... that a spiritual union is established in the wedded couple,...cooperation which makes them both rise toward the truth in which there is unity...toward God. What else is this but fidelity in the mutual gift of their minds?

Whereas contraception had, until about 1930, been condemned by not only all Christian denominations, but by all the major world religions, by the 1940’s it was widely practiced by even young Catholic couples. The Pontiff felt duty bound to give a stern warning against this insidious perversion and insult against the Creator. He left no doubt that a married couple’s happiness would be dependent upon their openness to life and love:

There are newly-wed couples who believe they can allow themselves at first a period of moral licence and enjoy their rights-without any concern for their duties. This is a grave sin which provokes the divine wrath; a source of unhappiness, even here on earth, whose consequences should instill fear....When it returns to memory... it is sometimes realized, with useless tears, that it is too late: the couple which has been unfaithful to its mission has nothing left but to wither without hope in the desert of its sterile selfishness.

An open heart is a source of happiness in the common life of a wedded couple... This mutual trust, this reciprocal opening of the heart, this mutual simplicity in sharing thoughts, aspirations, worries, joys, and sorrows, is a necessary condition, an element, indeed an essential nourishment of happiness. The souls of husband and wife should be put in common, as if to form of two souls one soul only.

Pius XII was very much a realist, and well aware of the problems confronting married couples in modern times. Being faithful to God’s laws and God’s blueprint for family life had never been more difficult. Those setting the patterns of social life and morality in modern society lived by values which were diametrically op posed to what the Church had always taught regarding marriage and the family. Further more, modern econ omies organized for efficiency and the maximum ex ploitation of resources, of which human labor was now considered as one, made few allowances for the human values inherent in Chris tian family life. As both Leo XIII (in Rerum No varum) and Pius XI (in Quad ra ge sirno Anno) had taught, those in power were driven by an insatiable greed for ever greater profits, and were largely oblivious to the suffering their decisions were causing, especially in the deterioration of family life:

The modern social structure of labor, industry, and the professions demands that a large num ber of women, wives in cluded, enter the fields of work and public life,...but it is doubtful that such a condition is the social ideal for the married woman .... However .... Providence ... has given to the spirit of the Christian family superior powers to mitigate ... such a social state .... The sacrifice of a mother who ... must, beyond her domestic duties, also work to provide ... for the upkeep of her family not only conserves her children’s love but makes it increase ... when religious sentiment and faith in God are the foundation of family life....

...The woman’s mode of life and the form given to her education used to be inspired by her natural instinct which made the family her field of endeavor, when she did not, for the love of Christ, prefer virginity....Today, by contrast, the old type of womanhood is rapidly changing. You now see women... entering nearly all the professions, hitherto fields of livelihood and action belonging exclusively to men.... The march of women seems to have been penetrating into the whole area of public life....

For Us the problem of women,... in each of its multiple details, consists entirely in the conservation and increase of the dignity woman has received from God.... Those systems which exclude God and His law from social life, and allow the precepts of religion a humble place, at most, in the private life of man, are not in a position justly to consider the problem of woman.

It is ironic that the pope who, probably more than any of his predecessors had so strongly focussed on the suffering which modern social or ganization was in flicting upon wo men, should in retrospect be vilified by today’s feminists. Their complaint is that be did not ac know ledge the “equality of women” in the sense in which that phrase is used today. He had about as little patience with doctrinaire feminists as did Juvenal in his satires nineteen centuries pre viously, and he insisted on up holding perennial Catho lic teaching on the subject:

In their personal dignity as children of God, man and woman are absolutely equal, also in regard to the ultimate end of human life, which is eternal union with God in the bliss of Heaven .... But man and woman cannot maintain and perfect their equal dignity except by respecting and putting to use the peculiar qualities which nature has be stowed upon the one and the other, indestructible spiritual and physical qualities. These peculiar characteristics which distinguish the two sexes reveal themselves so clearly to the eyes of all, that only obstinate blindness or doctrinarianism... could... misunderstand or disregard its value.

Woman....collaborates with man, but in accordance with her natural tendency....Her manner, her innate inclination, is motherhood. Every woman is destined to be a mother; mother in the physical sense of the word, or in a more spiritual and higher but no less real meaning.

This pope saw clearly the misery and anguish which doctrinaire feminism could bring about in society. Had young women in the United States in the 1960’s been exposed to his warnings, they might just possibly have been able to resist the siren songs of the strident feminists who have helped to bring about the greatest social problems our nation has ever experienced.

Public trends have been developing in a manner not favorable to the true benefit of the family and of women .... A woman who, in order to add to her husband’s wages, also goes to work...leaving her home uncared for....This home...becomes... wretched because of lack of care; the various members of the family...are hardly ever together, either for meals or for a rest after the day’s labor, much less for common prayers. What remains of family life? And what attraction can it have for the children?

To these painful consequences... is added another even more deplorable; it concerns the education of the young girl, especially, and her preparation for life. Used to seeing her mother always absent and her home dismal...she will find no attraction in it, she will not feel the slightest inclination for domestic occupations, and she will be unable to understand their nobleness and beauty or desire to devote herself to them some day as a wife and mother.

This is true in all social strata....The daughter of a woman of fashion, who sees the supervision of the home left to strangers and her mother engrossed in frivolous occupations and futile amusements, will follow her example....The woman, if she were to reflect properly, would probably realize that the extra earnings which she secures by working outside her home are easily devoured by other ex penses or even by waste, which is ruinous for the economy of the family. In the face of theories... which...strip woman of her mission and, with a mirage of unbridled emancipation, or...divest her of her personal dignity....We have heard a cry of ap prehension....

Somewhat paradoxically while urging women to focus on their domestic and filial duties, Pius XII also commands them, in a manner binding on conscience, to organize in order to defeat the enemies of Church and home at their own game:

The fortunes of the family, the fortunes of human coexistence, are at stake; Every woman ... is strictly bound in conscience not to stand aloof but to come into action...in order to stem the currents which threaten the home and to fight the doctrines which undermine its foundations, to prepare, or ganize, and achieve its restoration.

She must compete with man for the good of civic life, in which she is, in dignity almost equal to him....Both have the right and the duty to co-operate for the dignity, equive collaboration in social and total good of society and the nation....This effect political life in no way alters the special character of the normal action of woman. Asso ciating herself with man...she will apply herself principally to tasks which call for tact, delicate feelings, and maternal instinct, rather than administrative rigidity. Who, better than she, can understand what is required by the dignity of woman, the integrity...of girlhood, the protection and education of the child? Only woman will know, for example, how, without detriment to efficacy, to temper with kindness the repression of loose morals....

As the above passages make abundantly clear, Pius XII saw things very much from the point of view of how they would affect women. As his biographers attest, he was a very sensitive and compassionate person. Through years of experience, when he was a very young priest, of being a spiritual advisor to young women, he learned of the sorrows and difficulties faced by women in a very rapidly changing secular society. As best he could, he strove to comfort and console them, and to point out, and express his appreciation of, their unique contribution—in addition to giving very practical advice.

Nevertheless, he was just as adamant as his predecessor popes in being faithful to the Gospel, the letters of St. Paul, and the teachings of the Fathers of the Church regarding the hierarchical structure of the family and the relative positions of authority of the husband and wife respectively:

How often have been sung the praises of the mother, considered the very heart, the sun of the family! But if the mother is its heart, the father is its head; the health and efficiency of the family depend, therefore, first of all upon the ability, the virtues, the activities of the father.

Present-day living conditions tend to engender and practically introduce wide-spread leveling in male and female activities, so that not infrequently a husband and wife come to find themselves in a situation which almost approaches equality.

And yet, the Christian conception of marriage which St Paul taught his disciples at Ephesus, like those of Corinth, could not be clearer and more explicit: “Wives shall be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the master of his wife as Christ is the head of the Church.... As the Church is subject to Christ, so are wives subject to their husband in everything. Men love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for it .... Let each man love his wife as himself, and let the wife respect her husband.”