"None of our laws or statutes derives more directly from ecclesiastical influence than those concerning divorce; and about nothing else, really, are we in such a complete."

I hazard the statement -- and I have heard a good deal of unvarnished preaching on the subject of marriage from Catholic pulpits -- that the reason for the Church's prohibition of divorce, like its prohibition of anything resembling birth-control, is to be found, if you go relentlessly back, to asceticism pure and simple. To put it crudely, if you are going to marry and live after the flesh, the Church will, if it can, see to it that you escape none of the penalties of living after the flesh. So far as it can, the church minimizes, for the married, whatever may be the pleasures of marriage. It sees to it that there will be a minimum of passion and a maximum of sacrifice; because marriage itself is only a concession to the weakness of the race, the universal appetites that religion itself cannot deny. The Church will permit you to marry, but it will make you pay."

"It is not the guests of Ellis Island who are divorcing all over the place. It is either the Americans themselves, or the really Americanized. You can blame the inferior stocks that have deluged our country for much corruption of the body politic and the social system; but you cannot accuse them of giving us the divorce habit."