Love Divine and Love Sublime: The Catholic Marriage Advisory Council, the Marriage Guidance Movement and the State

Abstract

On the eve of the invasion of Poland, under a dedication to the pacifist priest and Dean of Canterbury Cathedral Dick Sheppard, Herbert Gray wrote Love: The One Solution (1938). This Presbyterian pastor, widely acknowledged as the father of the modern marriage guidance movement,1 sought to show the overarching importance of love for ‘our time and our world’ and concluded: We say with conviction that ‘love is the one solution’ for all the problems of married life and home life. But it must be real love, and not merely physical passion. And when it is real love, it still needs to be informed and intelligent love. It cannot do its perfect work without perfect knowledge.Therefore the people who are working for harmonious marriages are not without vital relation to the people who are working for world peace. We must have peace in our homes, if we are to have peace in the State and in the international world.2