Article I. On the Obligations of Spouses

I. Spouses are held: 1st, To mutual love. For since they are one flesh, they ought also to be one heart. Thus Ephes. v, 25: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church"; Tit. ii, 4: "(Wives) let them love their husbands." 2nd. To conjugal society and cohabitation. This is clear from the nature and ends of marriage and from the words of Christ, Matth. xix, 5: "A man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall be two in one flesh." 3rd. To furnishing mutually to each other food and whatever pertains to the decency of their condition: from the words of Christ, l. c. Matth.: "For now they are not two but one flesh." - Cf. Ephes. v, 29. 4th. To rendering to each other the conjugal debt when it is seriously asked and there is no legitimate cause for denying it, because they have obliged themselves to this. - Cf. I Cor. vii, 4.

II. The husband is held in particular: 1st. To conduct the family estate diligently, and either rightly to administer or to take care that both common goods and the wife's goods are not dissipated; 2nd. To take care that the wife fulfills the duties of Christian profession, and executes the precepts of both divine and ecclesiastical law. For the man is the head of the woman and the ruler of the whole family; and therefore the right governance of both wife and whole family duly pertains to him. 3rd. To correct a delinquent wife, where this work is necessary for her amendment and for preventing scandal. But correction ought to proceed from charity or love of justice or zeal for procuring the right governance of the family, and to be much lighter than the fault deserves, because the wife is the companion of the man, not a slave. Care must also be taken lest peace and love perish between them.

III. The wife, for her part, is held: 1st. To reverence the husband, because he is her superior, as is clear from what has been said. 2nd. To render obedience to him, because obedience is owed to a superior in those things which pertain to governance; the Apostle to the Colossians iii, 18, says: Women, be subject to husbands, as is fitting, in the Lord. 3rd. To bear the care of the house in the family affair, and therefore to go about the offices of the family.

Speaking of Christian marriage, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Arcanum thus explains its dignity and the duties of spouses:

"By the nuptial society something higher and nobler has been proposed than had been before: for it was commanded to look not only to propagating the human race, but to generating offspring for the Church, citizens of the saints and domestics of God (Eph. ii, 19), namely, that a people might be procreated and educated for the worship and religion of the true God and of Christ our Savior (Catech. Rom. chap. VIII). In the second place, their own duties have been defined for each of the spouses, their own rights entirely described. Namely, it is necessary that they always be so affected in soul that they understand that the one owes the other the greatest love, constant faith, and attentive and assiduous protection. The man is the prince of the family, and the head of the woman, who nevertheless, because she is flesh from his flesh and bone from his bones, is to be subject and obedient to the man in the manner not of a handmaid, but of a companion; namely so that neither honorableness nor dignity may be absent from the obedience furnished. But in him who presides, and in her who obeys, since each represents an image, the one of Christ, the other of the Church, let divine charity be the perpetual moderator of duty. For the husband is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of the Church. ... But as the Church is subject to Christ, so also let women be subject to their husbands in all things; Eph. v, 23, 24. But as regards children, they ought to be under and obey parents, and to show honor to them on account of conscience; and conversely, in protecting children and especially in forming them to virtue, all the cares and thoughts of parents must be vigilant: 'Fathers, educate them (children) in the discipline and correction of the Lord'; from which it is understood that the duties of spouses are neither few nor light; yet for good spouses, on account of the virtue which is received from the sacrament, these become not only tolerable, but also pleasant." § "Nor to them."