L- Q. C--. ~ I 1-y~~ 'j) 
_ 13 f"ok!ev:, ~ O\M~S 

ADT Sqb\ 

BROKEN HOMES 

<By 

Francis P. Le Buife, S.J. 

THIRD PRlNTING 

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Broken Homes 1 

THE long day has waned over the whirling city, and out from the fastnesses of the business world where 
men fought so lustily for the gold that buys the playthings 
of time, tired men have hurried home to seek short respite 
from their gruelling game. The roar of the world has 
been hushed a bit and as the sun rdbes itself in dying 
splendor, flicking its last rays across the Pacific waters, 
evening settles down and all seems wontedly peaceful. 
Within the homes loved ones tell loved ones of what the 
day had brought in sorrow' and in joy. Other some look 
to a night of sleep to ease their pain-racked bodies, and 
other some have hurr,ied forth to drink in their fill of 
pleasure where sweet music speeds the lagging hours and 
drowns out the serious notes in life's deep harmony. Peace 
there is upon the surface of the earth whereon life throbs, 
but there is much fateful brooding in nature, for down, 
deep down, the depths are stirring and there is no man 
to note their stir. Here a stress and there a strain, here 
a thrust and there a yielding, and then as though some 
huge g,iant turned restlessly in his sleep, the very founda-
tions of the unthinking city slipped and with one vast roar 
of crashing walls that silenced the very death-cries of the 
doomed, San Francisco lay in ruins. The fault in the bed-
rock had given and man and the works of man lay heaped 
as broken toys when wilful children play. 

Seismologists today begin to plot and plan the ways of 
earthquakes and place their finger wamingly now on this 
spot, now on that, and tell us that some day-it may be 
soon and it may be late-wreckage will be strewn upon 
the earth's fair surface because the bed-rock gave. Other 
some will tell us that the earth will rise and shake itself 
free from the puny incumbrances of man, because, seeping 
down into molten rock through the crevices in the floor of 

lPaper read before the Twenty-sixth Annual Session of the New 
York State Conference of Charities and Correction. Hotel Roosevelt, 
New York City, Dec. 9, 1925, and reprinted from the Catholic Mind. 

1 



2 BROKEN HOMES 

the ocean, the waters are turned into expanding steam 
which disrupts and rends asunder the solid crust above. 

CIVILIZATION 'S BED-RoCK 

So too in the life and ways of men, there are certain 
things that are the bed-rock of civilization and when that 
bed-rock shows a fault and slips or when disruptive forces 
rend the ways of men, disaster stalks the land. There is 
little need, it would seem, to stress the importance of that 
unit which lies at the very foundation of Qur societal life. 
Whatever may be Qur rdigious creed, whatever may be 
our political views, whatevertpay be our sociological out-
look, before us stands the gaunt, stark problem of our 
family life. That this unit, primordial both biologically 
and sociologically, is not in its aforetime vigor, that thereby 
one of the greatest, if not the greatest dynamic is in-
operative to the intense harm of the social whole, is the 
conviction, 'growing both in intensity and in expression, of 
all thinking men. 

Surely none of us will deny that the family is the very 
bed-rock Qf civilization, that with it pure and intact, civili-
zation is -intact, and with it gone, civilization is no more. 
Furthermore, we may safely state that to all the family is 
indeed more than an aggregation of folk who pool their 
resources and eat and sleep beneath the same roof. There 
are deeper and more abiding values in the family than can 
be read upon its surface, and these are the real values, the 
values which make that unit the primary unit of civilized 
societal life. They are the very warp and woof of family 
life and give it that strong texture by reason of which it 
supports civilization itself. In the loom of societal life, 
as the shuttle of custom and social standards swings back 
and forth, it is from the family that the intertwining life-
threads are drawn and as these lives are strong and true, 
so too will the finished cloth of our social whole be sound 
and so too will it wear well under the friction incident to 
existence; 'but be these lives weak and frayed, so too will 
the s'oc,ial whole be a sor·did thing with no attractiveness 
to right-minded men. 



BROKEN HOMES 

And what, may we ask, are these real values which 
give to the family its worth? They are unseen, intangible 
indeed and yet most seen, most touched, most realized. 
As' Francis Thompson has weB said of even higher 
spir.itual things: 

o world invisible, we view thee, 
o world intangible, we touch thee, 
o world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! 

The things of sense are real; but many another thing 
is more real to the spirit of man and to the life of man 
that overtops in many ways the things of sense and time. 

ONENESS OF FAMILY BOND 

The first of these spiritual values we take to be the one-
ness of the family Ispirit. In every biological sentient unit 
there is oneness of consciousness which makes it a psychic 
whole. Are we not right then in demanding such unity 
of consciousness ,in that biological unit which it is our 
duty to consider now? There must be a oneness of mind, 
born of a oneness of puppose and rooted in a oneness of 
love, that unites father with mother and both of them with 
the children. Father and mother must indeed be "of. one 
mind and one heart,'; if they are to have happiness in their 
home, and are to bring up children who will be well-
mannered ibefore God and man. Yet it is .precisely this 
harmonious blending of two distinct and yet mutually 
complementaty souls that presupposes and partially causes, 
and at the same time follows, as an effect, the numerical 
oneness of the marriage tie. There can be an adequacy 
of equal love only where there is reciprocal undividedness 
of love, and this presupposes numerical unity. Indeed 
at the very bas·is of the family Iies monogamy, the abid-
ing union of one man and one woman. There have been 
and are deflections, many and varied, and at times de-
grading deflections from this ideal, but, as it was the 
original, so it has been the enduring, and now exists a!' 
the mos't universal form of marriage. 



4 BROKEN HOMES 

Of course, for years it has been customary to assert 
with Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan and others that the 
human race began with a state of sexual promiscuity 
wherein men and women mated as animals do. The 
falsity of this position has been adequately shown by no 
less an evolutionist than Westermarck and accepted and 
confirmed by another of the ranking evolutionists of to-
day, J. Arthur Thomson. We read in Westermarck (The 
History of Human Marriage, Vol. I, Ch. iii, p. 125): 
"Even if there really are or have been peoples living in a 
state of promiscuity, which has never been proved and is 
excedingly hard to ·believe, ,these people do not afford 
evidence whatever for promiscuity having ruled in prim-
itive times." Again (Vol. I, Ch. ix, p. 336): "It is 
not, of course, impossible that among some peoples the 
intercourse between the sexes may have been almost 
promiscuous. But the hypothesis according to which 
promiscuity has formed a general stage in the social his-
tory of mankind, instead of belonging-as Giraud-Teulon 
puts it-to the class of hypotheses which are scientifically 
permissible, is in my opinion one of the most unscientific 
ever set forth within the whole domain of sociological 
speculation." Again Prof. Thomson, than whom there is 
110 better known writer in matters scientific, says (What is 
Man ? Ch. ii, pp. 59, 60): "The general result is that we 
may with a clear intellectual conscience brush away the 
nightmare picture of primitive man as indulging in pro-
miscuity like rabbits. He was a married man. Nay more, 
there is a very strong case for regarding monogamy as 
primitive." This unity of marriage which underlies the 
unity of conscious purposefulness of the family is tre-
mendously important these days, for Prof. Thomson again 
tells us (p. 59) : "What chnilized man requires to depart 
from is indulgence in polygamous habits behind a screen 
of formally monogamous marriage." The scandals that 
increasingly soil our daily papers and which of late years 
have almost torn apart our social fabric, the sordid tales 
heard in our Domestic Relations Courts, ill-smelling scan-
dals that our yellow-journals gloat over with carrion-in-
stincts, and the privately confessed wrong-doings ·of those 



BROKEN HOMES 5 

whose public reputations are still more or less intact, warn 
us that the family is not secure. It profits one little to 
be an ala rmist, but prudence itself bids us 'raise our voices 
in warning protest when our folk, young and old, are 
taught to excuse their sex delinquencies by the invocation 
of "atavistic reversions" to "caveman" ancestry, when too 
we are blatantly greeted day by day with tales of "soul-
mates," "affinities," "co-respondents" and other soft-
names for repellent facts. Nasty things become less nasty 
when we meet them often, and so the current fashions of 
marital infidelity and its inevitable disruption of family 
unity both physical and psychic will grow more prevalent 
if the unity of the marriage-tie between one man and one 
woman, abidingly respected and abidingly observed, be not 
insisted upon. 

R ENDING THE FAMILY BOND 

But this spiritual and essential fact of oneness of mind 
and oneness of heart is offset not only by lack of physical 
oneness, it is offset or rather adequately nullified by the 
dissolution of the marriage-tie, for breakage of this bond 
means dislftlption of the family. Just as in the pure'ly phy-
sical order male and female are the principles of bodily 
generation, so too in that higher order of the unfolding of 
the latent soul-life of the child, father and mother must, 
through the years, blend all their efforts that shielded 
childhood may gro'Y into stalwart youth, and youth de-
veloping gracefully must give way to maturer years of 
useful service to God and man. Some of us hold to the 
absolute indissolubility of the Die which unites man and 
woman as husband and wife; others hold to an exceptional 
dissolubility for reasons exceedingly grave. Yet back of 
these differences of position, we are all agreed that the 
ideal which every true man holds before him is that of 
the wife whose love will be his undividedly forever, whose 
sole thought will be for the little ones who are the endur-
ing evidences of their mutual affection, whose supreme 
effort will be to give him that sweetest of all havens-a 
home! Weare all likewise agreed that the dream of every 
noble-minded girl is that of a man whose heart she will 



6 BROKEN HOMES 

hold as hers unreservedly and irrevocably, upon whose 
strong shoulders she may lean when the strain of life is 
hard and at whose side she may walk merrily when 
laughter abounds. That is the ideal-one man and one 
woman journeying through life, each an abiding keepsake 
unto the other. Yet where is that ideal in the. world at 
large today? Again, let us glance at the so-called primi-
tives, those poor fellows invoked so often to prove that 
our ancestors were ,a. wild and motley crew of animal 
profligates. ·What is the condition of marriage there? 
L. T. Hobhouse tells us (Morals in Evolution, Vol. I, p. 
150): "Marriage is indissoluble among the Andamanese, 
some Papuans of New Guinea, (certain tribes) in Su-
matra, among the Igorrotes and Italones of the Philip-
pines, the Veddas of Ceylon, and in the Romish Church." 
Philo L. Mills, in his epoch-making book, Prehistoric Re-
ligion, commenting on this passage, says (p. 35): "And 
he might have added-among the aborigines of Malakka, 
among the Aeta of the Philippines, among the Wild Dyaks 
of Borneo, among the Toalas of Celebes, among many of 
the American and Australian aborigines and among the 
Negrillos of Central Africa." 

Before looking at our own count'ry, let us glance at 
Europe. According to an Associated Press dispatch of 
July 21, 1924, the Soviet Government of Russia grants 
within five minutes at the cost of $1.50 a divorce which 
is desired by both parties and with only a single restriction, 
viz., that one must not be divorced and remarried more 
than three times in one year. Indeed of late, press re-
ports have told us of the intent to do away with marriage 
altogether. In Switzerland, where divorce is as easy to 
obtain as in the United States, there is only one divorce 
to every sixteen marriages. In other countries the divorce 
ratio is still lower. In France, there is one divorce to 
twenty-one marriages; in Denmark, one to twenty-two; in 
Germany and New Zealand, one to twenty-four; in N or-
way, one to thirty; in Sweden, one to thirty-three; in 
Great Britain, one to ninety-six; while our neighbor, 
Canada, has only one divorce to every 161 marriages. 
Even pagan Japan had in 1919 a lower divorce rate than 



BROKEN HOMES 7 

the United States, for it had only one divorce to every 
eight marriages. 

Now for our own record which furnishes food for 
much serious thought. In 1890, there was but one divorce 
for 17.1 marriages ; in 1900, one divorce to 12.7 marriages; 
in 1906, one divorce to 9.3 marriages, and in 1922, one 
divorce to 7.6 marriages. The whole range is run from 
South Carolina, where none may obtain a divorce on any 
grounds whatsoever, to Nevada, wherein we had the 
alarming spectacle of one divorce for every nine-tenths 
of a marriage. Put in another way-for the ten years 
ending with 1876, there were 122,121 divorces in the 
United States; from 1876 to 1886, 206,595; from 1886 
to 1896, 352,263; from 1896 to 1906, 593,362; from 1906 
to 1916, 975,728, making a total of 2,250,069. Picture 
what that means: 2,250,069 homes broken and we social 
workers are schooled to try with infinite patience to heal 
over the breaches that we find in even one home! 2,250,-
069 life-dreams shattered, for say what we may, the 
normal man and woman have a distinct dream in their 
hearts upon their marriage day. It is right, indeed, to 
grow thoughtful over individual cases and to picture the 
sorrows of a weary mother shielding her tender brood 
against a drunken father, and to limn in appealing colors 
the broken husband folding in at night his little ones 
from whom the fateful lure -of a mad world's pleasures 
have torn a forgetful mother. But again, whatever be our 
principles touching on such cases we must face facts and 
look at the Frankenstein monster that is loose upon our 
people today, sapping the very vitals of our family life. 
We execrate three marriages a year at the dissolution cost 
of three dollars for the two prior ones, but what of our 
own good country? 2,250,069 broken homes and yet we fea-
ture in our dai1y papers, the fifth so-called marriage of a 
prominent woman to one who is to carry the decent title 
of husband. 2,250,069 broken homes, and yet hear our 
younger folk pleading fOT a larger liberty; :ead the works 
of many professors who hold indissoluble marriage to be 
but a social convention to be set aside at will; glance at 
newsp;J.per and magazine articles which favor trial mar-



8 BROKEN HOMES 

riages and 'Of course divorce at will; listen to the popular 
cant upon separation, whereby as Chesterton says (The 
Superstition of Divorce, Ch. iv, p. 53): "So the un-
fortunate man who cannot tolerate the woman he has 
chosen from aN the women of the world is not encouraged 
to return to her and tolerate her, but encouraged to choose 
another woman whom he may in due course refuse to 
tolerate." 

UNHOLY ANTE-NUPTIAL FREEDOM 

These two spiritual aspects of marriage are the very 
bed-rock of family life and so of civilization itself, and yet 
it is clear to all of us that there is a far-reaching fault in 
that bed-rock and that the fault is slipping not gradually, 
but with the onward sweep of an avalanche and the worth-
whi'le things not only of cultured life, Ibut of life itself 
are themselves being swept away. But just as in earth 
convulsions, so too there are in family life disruptive 
forces that are seeping in and rending it asunder. This 
seepage of example of ante-nuptial freedom between the 
sexes is assuredly as wrecking a force as post-nuptial in-
fidelity land divorce. How can there be that unity of life, 
that oneness of purpose in seeking the worth-while things 
of life if there have been years of di sregard for the very 
sanctities of tEfe themselves? 

We have often heard it said that a young man must 
sow his wild oats, and the modern young woman is un-
fortunately quite frank in like claim. This is a question 
about which most of us would prefer to remain silent, 
but the time has come to speak out bluntly, even where 
reticence would be far more to one's taste. Some will tell 
us that morals have no place here. But what after all is 
morality? Morallity is the alignment of our actions as 
human Ibeings with the U'Himate purposes 'Of our rational 
nature. To deflect any human faculty from its fore-or-
dained purpose is therefore <immoral, for it is a perversion. 
Now, God has made man as he is, and woman as she is 
for one purpose-to re-people the earth and to secure this 
purpose He has planted in nature a strong impulse thereto 
and pleasure therein. Our young men and young women 



BROKEN HOMES 9 

must be taught that it is a degraded and degrading thing 
to misuse the primordial impulses of IHe or to act so 
frivolously that there is serious danger of grave lapses, 
and my own belief is that our girls imperatively need to be 
taught this most emphatically. 

We hear many a protest against "the double standard." 
Of course, there is no double standard in morals. What 
is wrong for the woman is wrong for the man. But may 
I say that our instinctively higher standard for woman is 
rooted in the very make-up of her nature? Man may sin 
and none can find a trace of his unholiness, but when a 
woman sins her very nature bears the signs and frequently 
the shadow of her sin clings to her through life as the 
child of another unwed mother. No, no double standard 
for sin, but has not the God of natu're kindly imposed a 
higher standard ·of virtue on those whose highest title is 
that of mother? ]'f our girls a're modest and respectful 
of themselves, d they have that proper restraint which is 
a protection to that fundamental virtue that every man 
demand~ ,in the woman who is to be not his concubine but 
his wife, then we need fear little for our boys. Our young 
women owe this to themselves for their own safety, first, 
because only the brute will take advantage of a modest 
gir'!, and again, because no man ever yet looked .on a 
woman as his equal. Therein is the tragedy of the modern 
girl, for she tries to be a "pal" with the boys. By a law 
of man's m'ind, detectable by observation and confirmed 
by history, a man cannot look .on woman as his equaL 
He either looks up to her, or down on her-and if he 
looks down 'On her, she pays the penalty. 

The great difficulty facing the family today is the un-
holy freedom of our young folk, whose license prior to 
marriage refuses to be summarily checked by the few words 
of a marriage formula, hastily pronounced by them before 
a clergyman or licensing officer of the law. That young men 
and women can and do lead such a continent life is a cer-
tainty, as it is the privilege of one in my position to know . . 
Moreover, even in the American Expeditionary Forces, it 
was found that 34 per cent of the 13,649 men who an-

. swered I a questionnaire had remained chaste during the 



10 BROKEN HOMES 

time of <their stay in France, a period varying from eight 
months to two years. And is it not the secret hope and 
cherished conviction of each one of you that your sons and 
above all your daughters, your brothers and more es-
pecially your sisters are such? And would you not fell 
the man that insinuated otherwise? 

SOCIAL CHASTITY 

But why this admitted breakdown in the morality of 
our younger generation? It is the seepage of the morally 
unwholesome atmosphere abroad in the community today 
that EttIe by little infiltrates into the minds of our youth 
and sunders the forces of their moral being. It is of little 
profit for us to try to keep our own houses clean and 
hygienic if the atmosphere all around us is miasmic and 
fever-laden. There can be no protection for the family if 
the atmosphere of the community at large be not morally 
wholesome, if there be not social chastity; for if there be 
no social chastity we have but a tainted race of younger 
folk who will not, cannot blend their lives in holy wed-
lock. That there has been decadence here is a fact that 
all men have noted. Fashions are tolerated today, pictures 
are printed in our daily papers and on the covers of our 
magazines which would have been matters for arrest a 
few years back. The motion pictures are frequently either 
lewd or frankly suggestive, and many of our plays on 
the so-called legitimate stage are utterly pornographic. 
Our boys and girls are arrested for sex-delinquencies and 
unmarried mothers are frequently social outcasts, and yet 
what have the boys and girls done? Only that to which 
we allow them to be openly tempted by what we 'permit in 
public. Play-juries may whitewash all they want and 
play-writers may 'prate about art and clamor for freedom 
in the name of ar't, but the fact remains that there are 
plays and movies and illustrations, and magazine articles 
and books today-and unfortunately many of them-that 
are open incentives to sin. Why prattle about "art" and, 
then when our young folk have followed out these "artis-
tic" appeals, damn them as sex-delinquents? Why not 
then allow a plea for "art?" How illogical we are! Why 



BROKEN HOMES 11 

do we not do one of two things- either -stop arresting our 
young folk for doing the very things to which we allow 
them to be provoked .or clean up our stage, our movies 
and our Iliterature ? You te'll me there is no albsO'lutely 
certain way of telling whether a thing is bad or not? 
With this::: beg leave to differ. May I offer you a simple 
test for the cleanness of a show or a book? Would you 

. want your daughter or your sister to -take the leading 
sinister part therein or be found reading the stuff that a 
man may write for her but dare not say to her in per-
son? And if i't is too bad for your daughter or your 
sister, why will you lower your manhood or your woman-
hood by seeing another man's datighter or sister debasing 
her priceless heritage? 

Added to this degrading influence of the stage, we 
have to thank our prohibition laws for a further accen-
tuation which is 'a blot on our country. High-school 
parties now are such tha't a public official said that no such 
things occurred in "red-Iight" districts years ago. Drink 
and immodest dressing and animal dances brought out 
from darkest Africa or borrowed from the houses of ill-
fame of South America, these we permit and then meet, 
here and there and everywhere in solemn convention, to 
see how we can cure the inevitable effects which have 
worked thems-elves out upon young folk. Only recently 
in N ew York, a woman teacher congratulated an audience 
of young ladies that they had enjoyed a "freedom without 
anchorage." Yes, they have a "freedom without anchor-
age," for they have been taught that -the Ten Command-
ments are mere outworn social taboos, that restraint is in-
tolerable, that the old ways are foolish ways. But are they 
to be congratulated on this? As well congratulate a rud-
derless ship adrift in the whirlpool for its freedom from 
anchorage, -as to congratulate our boys and girls ,because 
they know not these saving truths and stabilizing restraints 
without which the very fabric of individual life is ruined 
and the warp and waof of societal life is r-ent asunder. 
Because there is little of social chastity, there is little in-
dividuall ' chastity. ,Because there is 'little social and indi-
vidual chastity, our homes are ruined, fathers and mothers 



12 BROKEN HOMES 

are not faithful each to each, and the dockets of our di-
vorce courts a:re crowded, children are bandied about from 
one divorcee to a11l0ther or parked as automobiles are, 
parentless in an institution. 'Wealth we have yes, and food 
and raiment in abundance and much, over-much o.f the 
pleasures of life, but of the spiritual values which make 
for fa:mily union and cohesion, we of this generation take 
scant heed. 

"KEEPSAKES FOR HEAVEN" 

I have spoken very plainly, ladies and gentiemen, more 
plainQy than is 100 the liking of one of my position, but it 
seems that the hour is here ,when those on the watch-towers 
should sound the words of alarm, prudently, of course, 
and temperately, yet stro.ngly. If I have exaggerated, it 
has been quite unconsciously, and far from my intention. 
And the solution? There is but one-a reaffirmation of 
the sanctity IOf life, a re-s>tressing of the dignity of human 
parentage, a reiteration that life is worth living then only 
when we have made sacrifices, that we are happy not in 
proportion as we get things out of life, but o.niy in pro-
portion as ,we put worth-while things into the lives of 
others. The curse of today is individual selfishness, yet 
the happiest familly life entails a deal of yielding and self-
f.orgetfulness. The cure then of tomorrow, as it was the 
safeguard of yesterday, will be self-sacrifice. Only when 
the father realizes that it is his privileged duty to. think 
for and toil for h~s wife and little ones; only when the 
mother is convinced that home-making is no "part-time" 
job, as a recent writer says it is, but the bigges>t, noblest 
liie's-work woman has ever done or ever can do; only 
when 'Our young folk are taught that self-restraint means 
self-protection, and that purity is the priceless crown 'Of 
youth and the cherished memory 'Of olden years-then and 
then only will our family life be safe. And to tho.se of 
us who still look beyond the grave for a home sweeter by 
far than the fairest home on earth, father will be to 
mother, and mother to father, and children to parents, 
loved ,ones who are loaned by God as "keepsakes for 
Heaven." 



c/lmerica Press Publications 
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN ENGLAND 

By PETEB GUILDAY 
Profe8sor of History, CatboUc University of America 

This work, in two volumes, is a story, unsurpassed in 
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A collection from the volumes of "America" of Christ-
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IN TOWNS AND LITTLE TOWNS 

By LEONABD FEENEY, S.J. 

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• • • 
THE AMERICA BOOK OF VERSE 

Edited by FRANOIS X. TALBOT, S .J. 
Litera.ry Editor of •• America' • 

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THE AMERICA PRESS 
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That just about sums up w hat you wi ll find in the 

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AMERICA 
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