Posted on 06/05/2004 9:44:25 PM PDT by Bai Mac.
One may ask, against whom or what must we defend matrimony? There has been much publicity about defending matrimony against those who want to recognize same sex unions, but there is another force which, as yet, is not being properly challenged. This web log is about the other challenge: DIVORCE. Pope John Paul II, stated in Novo Millennio, ".. this fundamental institution [the family] is experiencing a radical and widespread crisis. In the Christian view of marriage, the relationship between a man and a woman — a mutual and total bond, unique and indissoluble — is part of God's original plan, obscured throughout history by our 'hardness of heart', but which Christ came to restore to its pristine splendour, disclosing what had been God's will 'from the beginning' (Mt 19:8). ... . On this point the Church cannot yield to cultural pressures, no matter how widespread and even militant they may be. Instead, it is necessary to ensure that ... Christian families show convincingly that it is possible to live marriage fully in keeping with God's plan and with the true good of the human person — of the spouses, and of the children who are more fragile." (sec. 47) Militant forces are attacking the indissolubility of matrimony. Militant, by definition, means aggressive or hostile in attitude or actions, especially in defense of a cause; waging war; fighting; warring; and showing a fighting disposition without self-seeking. These forces which insist that divorce is the natural solution to marital discord, are not pretty. Defending against them is not a simple task. However, as Christ's followers, we are also called to be a militant movement. Pope Paul VIexplained, “[The Second Vatican Council] ratified and extended the contribution that, for more than a century, the movements of the Catholic laity have been offering to the Church, pilgrim and militant.” We all know that in the end, Christ's forces win, but in the meantime, some of us will be called to the front lines or to raise the battle banner and cry, "We Must Defend Matrimony from the Attacking Forces of Divorce!"
Let the weblog of the ongoing battle against divorce begin!
Great to see you posting here. You may have noticed several previous FreeRepublic threads on the topic.
I saw some of your material in the Plain Dealer. I think it's great the way you are going after this issue.
You may however, want to figure out how to insert the links to the original web pages. If you have a web page devoted to "Defending Marriage," you should get the links working so that people can see them.
I find your writing above to be not very cogent. You don't answer your own question about who or what are attacking marriage. You can't say "divorce is attacking marriage." That sounds an awful lot like the "war on terrorism." There have to be actual people who are carrying out the terrorism, you can't wage war against a concept. Similarly, you can't launch a war against a concept like "divorce." You have to identify the causes and the sources of what has gone wrong, and identify who were the protagonists.
It looks to me like you still have an awful lot of thinking yet to be done.
Next you might say, "It is Catholic marriage that is under attack." I'm afraid you might find out that you have been naive about this point. Catholic marriage today also includes divorce. You are probably well aware of the skyrocketing annulment rate that has resulted in tens of thousands of Catholic annulments.
1. The annulment proceedings cannot even be initiated until the civil divorce is final. So the annulment process automatically includes the divorce process.
2. Annulments are granted virtually automatically. A frequent poster on this board is Sinkspur, who is a deacon of the diocese of Dallas and has had experience with the canonical proceedings there. He has stated that he has never heard of an annulment application ever to have been denied.
3. The Roman Rota is the court of appeals in the Vatican. The head of the Roman Rota has written several articles stating that there are far too FEW annulments, even after the geometric increase of the past few decades which he has presided over. Here is his reasoning:
a)The "personalism" of John Paul II has raised the new concept of "the good of the couple" to a level where it is equal or even superior to the "good of procreation."
b)Traditionally an impediment to the "good of procreation" could be grounds for an annullment.
c)Therefore any impediment to achieving the "good of the couple" can be grounds for an annulment. Any marriage in which each partner does not sincerely wish the fullest development of the other can now be dissolved.
4. Pope John Paul II himself spoke about this situation in a recent speech to the Roman Rota. He told them that they had relied too much on "pastoral criteria" in making their decisions, and that "truth" must once again become one of the criteria for determining the validity of the marriage. Can you believe that? The pope admits that "truth" was NOT one of the criteria being used by the Roman Rota. They considered only the interests of the couple.
Let's recall, every time we speak of an annulment, by definition it was preceded by a civil divorce. And the Catholic Church recognizes it, and allows the couple to remarry. This has been happening tens of thousands of times in recent years. And when the Roman Rota evaluated these decisions, they did not base their reasoning on such antiquated concepts as "truth."
I am familiar with a couple who like you were in charge of a highly-visible Catholic apostalate. They had been married for over 20 years and had a large number of children. The wife became very interested in the "personalism" and the "theology of the body" of John Paul II. Next thing you know they have completed their divorce, and the wife is filing for an annulment. She claims that she is doing the right thing according to the most recent teachings of the Church. Perhaps she is not so wrong about that.
Which still leaves us with the question, "Just which institution of marriage is under attack by divorce, since we can see that the Jewish, the Muslim, the Protestant, the secular and the post-Vatican II Catholic institutions of marriage all include provisions for divorce.
BUMP
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Welcome to FR Bai. Hope you and your boys are hanging in there.
Why don't you consider starting a true blog. You can get one up and running easily and free at blogger.com. If you are going to have multiple posts it would be nice to have one place where they could be read sequentially and it could be a central place on this topic.
There are currently not Catholic blogs on this subject at what is collectively known as St. Blogs. I am sure that Catholic bloggers such as myself would link to it and to be able to shed light on this extremely important topic in our culture.
Your question is rather puzzling! ALL marriage is under attack from our current "forced divorce" regime! That means that Catholic Marriage--the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony--is also equally under attack.
Catholics divorce in about the same proportional numbers as non-Catholics. In spite of the rigorous preparation usually required for the exchange of vows within the Catholic Church, no one is there to defend these "higher order" marriages when trouble is brewing and--even worse, jursidiction is silently relinquished to those operating the Civil Divorce Machinery--a grim-reaper type of system that dooms the outcome from the very start.
No other religion has the richness of the Catholic Church's doctrines on Marriage. (see www.defendingholymatrimony.org). If we, as Catholics, value Marriage so highly, why are we no different than anyone else in these divorce numbers?
Church Authority is needed prior to the final divorce decree -- so many intact families could be salvaged from this doom if the rules were changed, whereby Church personnel would activate their role prior to the final divorce decree -- to help untangle the conflict of two earthly beings -- imperfect and in need of guidance.
Waiting until after a divorce has been finalized for personnel to begin an "examination" is like waiting until after someone is dead to begin surgery!
As for your claims about Our Holy Father's views, I think you are badly distorting things and I would like to see the citations that would back your claims.
You asked, "What kind of marriage is under attack?" For you Maximilion, I am happy to answer these questions. I think Saint Maximilian Kolbe would ask similar questions because, as founder of the Militia of the Immaculata (MI), he was interested in deepening the knowledge of the Gospel (good news) in others and in the conversion of Church opponents. Those opposed to the indissolubility of marriage are attacking the institution of the family and therefore are simultaneously attacking the Ecclesia domestica,the domestic church (CCC 1655-1657). All marriages, including mine, are under attack because marriage, by definition, is indissoluble. Marriage was not invented by secular, protestant, or religious institutions, any more than the unalienable right to, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were invented by the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Certain truths are self-evident, originating from our Creator. Indissolubility of marriage, the institution for raising children, is one of them.
You also asked, "Who are the protagonists?" You stated we can't wage war against a concept, and you suggested that I still have an awful lot of thinking to do. Your right about me having to do more thinking. I've only been intimately involved in this issue for less than a year, while others before me have specialized in different aspects of this struggle for years. To make this HUGE, complex struggle easier to understand, allow me to use an analogy as I introduce the protagonists. I suspect that most people on this conservative news forum understand that abortion is an attack on life. The right to life is an unalienable right originating from our Creator. Is the pro-life movement waging a war against a concept? Yes. Abortion, however is not only a concept, it is a deliberate action with casualties: murdered babies, and wounded mothers. Pro-lifers are waging offensive and defensive battles against abortionists, pro-abortion educators, propagandists, lobbyists, political activists, and media professionals.
The pro-abortion movement's victories occur in abortion clinics. The pro-divorce movement's victories occur in domestic relations court. Many of the pro-abortion forces' goals are achieved by Planned Parenthood; the pro-life force opposing Planned Parenthood is STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood). Similarly, many of the pro-divorce forces' goals are achieved by the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association; one pro-marriage force trying to oppose them is Americans for Divorce Reform.
The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is fighting on may fronts; National Right to Life is trying to oppose them. In this country, the pro-divorce forces are profiting from divorce within a 250 billion dollar industry; one pro-marriage effort trying to minimize their damage is the Divorce Resource Center. Just as the Roe v. Wade decision was a tremendous victory for the pro-aborts, the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (1973) was a major victory for the pro-divorce movement. Just as roevwade.org exposes the truth regarding the major pro-abort legal victory, stolenvows.com is a pro-marriage effort to expose the tactics of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, which was quite a stupendous legal maneuver.
Pro-abort forces try to work amongst baptized Catholics through Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC); Priests for Life are amongst the pro-lifers countering that attack. One pro-divorce force working amongst Catholics is the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church. They propose that couples have the right to divorce and church annulment if their relationship isn't "symbolizing the union between Christ and the Church." If falling short of the goal, "to symbolize the union between Christ and the Church," justifies divorce and annulment, then no one has a valid marriage; all Catholics should get divorced because everyone falls short of the goal. Defending Holy Matrimony's (DHM) (See Documents and Mission) and the book, What God has joined together, the Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism, (See review) are both pro-marriage educational endeavors opposing such stark claims.
In the pro-life movement, the living victims of abortion have launched the National Silent No More Awareness Campaign to make the public aware of the devastation abortion brings to women, men, and their families. The pro-marriage group, Adult Children of Divorced Parents (ACODP) is trying to make the public aware of the devastating effects divorce has its innocent bystanders, the children. ACODP heals battle wounds.
When a woman regrets being pregnant, pro-lifers try to rescue her from the pro-aborts by offering help through Crisis Pregnancy Centers. When couples are having marital discord, a growing number of pro-marriage Marriage Savers are available to rescue them from divorce. Pro-lifers also fight offensively through chastity education, while the pro-marriage educators work offensively by meeting at the annual Smart Marriages Conferences sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education (CMFCE).
Thus ends my partial list of protagonists waging the war to defend marriage from the forces promoting divorce. You raised other issues which also merit answers, and I hope replies are posted. Instigating a cultural shift is an immense task. However, those contemplating divorce have concluded divorce is the best solution to their marital problem, while our Creator promises a better solution of hope and reconciliation. Our culture oughtt to offer the same solution ESPECIALLY for the sake of the children who naturally want their mommy and daddy together. I am stunned at how the forces of divorce don't want to hear how clearly my four sons articulate their desire to have an intact home with two parents together.
ALL marriages are under attack from a greedy, money hungry $300 Billion Dollar Divorce Industry. There are a host of people who profit tremendously including lawyers, judges, social workers, psychologists, child support enforcements agencies, etc.
I think you have the official words of Our Holy Father, John Paul II, mis-interpreted. He has written and spoken of the problem of divorce over and over again. I have documented sources for his words.
I would like to know resources for the articles you mentioned that were written by the head of the Roman Rota stating there are too few annulments. Would you please share those with me?
As I stated, John Paul II has spoken profusely on the indissolubility of marriage, and its value for "the good of the couple" for our society to recognize the permanence of marriage. I could quote pages and pages, but will just give a few quotes from his speech to the Roman Rota on January 28, 2002:
2. The essential properties of marriage—unity and indissolubility (cf. CIC, can. 1056; CCEO, can. 776 3)—offer an opportunity for a fruitful reflection on marriage . . . I want to examine indissolublity as a good for spouses, for children, for the Church and for the whole of humanity.
4. Marriage "is" indissoluble: this property expresses a dimension of its objective being, it is not a mere subjective fact. Consequently, the good of indissolubility is the good of marriage itself; and the lack of understanding of its indissoluble character constitutes the lack of understanding of the essence of marriage.
6. When one considers the role of law in marital crises, all too often one thinks almost exclusively of processes that ratify the annulment of marriage or the dissolution of the bond. At times, this mentality extends even to canon law, so that it appears as the avenue for resolving the marital problems of the faithful in a way that does not offend one's conscience.
8. It could perhaps seem that divorce is so firmly rooted in certain social sectors that it is almost not worth continuing to combat it by spreading a mentality, a social custom and civil legislation in favour of the indissolubility of marriage. Yet it is indeed worth the effort! Actually, this good is at the root of all society, as a necessary condition for the existence of the family. Its absence, therefore, has devastating consequences that spread through the social body like a plague
9. Among the initiatives should be those that aim at obtaining the public recognition of indissoluble marriage in the civil juridical order (cf. ibid., n. 17). Resolute opposition to any legal or administrative measures that introduce divorce . . . must be accompanied by a pro-active attitude, acting through juridical provisions that tend to improve the social recognition of true marriage in the framework of legal orders that unfortunately admit divorce.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2RROTA.HTM
See Also: http://www.DefendingHolyMatrimony.org
The annulment proceedings cannot even be initiated until the civil divorce is final. So the annulment process automatically includes the divorce process.
Can anyone find documentation demonstrating that this procedure (civil divorce shat be finalized prior to annulment investigation) is an authoritatively rule for Catholic tribunal courts, in accordance with church law?
If civil court doesn't care whether couples are married according to church law, why do Catholic courts (tribunals) care if couples are married according to civil law? Wouldn't granting an annulment before a divorce give couples the same status as most civilly married Americans: married according to civil law and not married according to church law? What's the big problem?
This posting could cause scandal to readers who assume JPII's Theology of the Body condones divorce. Readers have the right know if this wife is misinterpreting the theology of the body. Since you say they are a highly-visible couple, could you point us to a webpage about them? If not, can you just tell us who they are, so interested readers could do their own investigation, like you did with my husband and me.
I can't imagine why you are puzzled when all the further comments in your post did a good job of supporting everything I said in my post.
Catholics divorce in about the same proportional numbers as non-Catholics.
True. So what does this tell us about "Catholic marriage" in the post-conciliar era? For starters, it tells us that it is no different from protestant marriage.
No other religion has the richness of the Catholic Church's doctrines on Marriage.
It depends on how you define it. If you look at 2000 years of Catholic marriage doctrine, then I would agree with you. But if you take the view of marriage that is currently promoted by the Church, which starts in 1962 and is so entirely self-referential to the teachings of the current pontificate that it amounts to solipcism, then "poverty" would be a much more accurate adjective to describe that body of doctrine rather than "richness."
Church Authority is needed prior to the final divorce decree -- so many intact families could be salvaged from this doom if the rules were changed, whereby Church personnel would activate their role prior to the final divorce decree -- to help untangle the conflict of two earthly beings -- imperfect and in need of guidance.
Really? What if those "church authorities" told the couple it was okay to use birth control? What if those "church authorities" undermined the hierarchical nature of the relationship between husbands and wives? What if those "church authorities" told the couple that the teachings of the Bible were historically conditioned and no longer apply to our day and age? What if those "church authorities" told the couple that annulment is available for any couples who decide they no longer wish to stay together?
Do you still think they help salvage any intact families, or would they be more likely to torpedo the vestiges of any intact marriages they came in contact with? And don't fool yourself -- all the above statements constitute the current teaching on marriage. It is virtually impossible to find pastoral guidance that does not include all those positions.
As for your claims about Our Holy Father's views, I think you are badly distorting things and I would like to see the citations that would back your claims.
That would be a bit difficult since you don't identify any of the supposed "distortions."
I didn't say that JPII's Theology of the Body condones divorce. But what I did imply is that JPII's Theology of the Body causes divorce because of its misrepresentation of traditional Catholic teaching on marriage. If one takes an encyclical like "Casti Connubii" by Pope Pius XI and compares it with post-Vatican II teachings on marriage, one sees that all the most fundamental teachings have been undermined in various ways.
If one's view of Catholic marriage comes from post-Vatican II sources, then your grasp of what Catholic marriage consists of will be so defective as to make it impossible even to know the Theology of the Body causes divorce, because you won't have any traditional Catholic teaching to compare it against.
In his latest address, which is the one I had in mind, and which is the one in which he said that the Roman Rota must return to using TRUTH as the primary criteria for determining the validity of a marriage, he lists the other criteria which have replaced the assumption of the validity of marriage:
"In this perspective, the favor matrimonii, they say, should give way to the favor personae, the favor veritatis subiecti or the favor libertatis."Probably these were described as "pastoral consideration" in a news report since they would translate as "a presumption in favor of the persons," "a presumption in favor of the 'truth of the subjects'," [rather than the truth of the object of marriage] and "a presumption in favor of freedom."
You assume that Pope John Paul II was correcting the Tribunal of the Roman Rota for relying too much on "pastoral criteria" in making their decisions, and that "truth" was NOT one of the criteria being used by them. This is an erroneous assumption.
I don't think so. After all, he was speaking directly to the Roman Rota. It's true what you say that he is considering also a wider audience. But one cannot discount the actual audience to whom he is addressing his remarks. Especially since the Roman Rota as the highest court sets the agenda for all the rest, and therefore they have set the agenda for the explosion of annulments which is referred to as the "annulment crisis." Here, for example, is a judge of the Roman Rota publicly calling for an increase of annulments based on the grounds of simulation:
Marriage Annulments and Married Personalism by Msgr. Cormac Burke
Too many nullities?Are there too many declarations of nullity? I have little doubt that there are too many on the overworked grounds of consensual incapacity, and too few on those of simulation (especially exclusion of indissolubility or of offspring)...
Nullity practice has gone through a period of great change, and it seems evident that an imbalance has been created. It is less clear what the result would be if the imbalance were corrected. A reduced overall number of nullities? Possibly, but I am not sure to what extent the reduction would be substantial.
Let us suppose (I assign arbitrary figures) that 50,000 marriages of Catholics break up each year, that 40,000 of these apply to church tribunals for an annulment, and that 38,000 of the petitions are answered affirma tively (i.e that the marriage was null from the beginning). Let us further consider two quite distinct hy potheses that could correspond to this scenario:
A) 99% of the nullities declared are under canon 1095, that is, on grounds of original consensual incapacity;
B) 75% of the nullities are given under canon 1101, that is, on grounds of simulation, with most of the remainder being under c. 1095.
The first of these two hypotheses corresponds more or less to the present position. It is a situation that is running out of credibility.
The second hypothesis outlined might be credible. At least it rests on a different presupposition; i.e. not that the great majority of those whose marriage fails were incapable, at consent, of any true marital commitment, but that they deliberately did not engage themselves in such a real commitment at all.
This latter scenario is not our present situation. If it were, would we have less declarations of nullity than at present? I repeat that I do not know. What I do feel is that we would be in closer touch with reality and more directly to face with the real problem of the present time which, to my mind, is not the inability to commit oneself in marriage, but the widespread unwillingness to do so.
Matrimony is no longer stated to have a “primary end” — procreation — (as in canon 1013 of the 1917 Code), but to have two apparently co-equal ends: “good of the spouses” and “procreation.” The “good of the spouses” (bonum coniugum), is not only an expression of undoubted personalist flavor, but also a totally new term in ecclesial parlance, the 1983 Code being the first time where it is used in a magisterial document to express one of the institutional ends of marriage.
The distinctions here may seem subtle; but they are clear and important. The bonum coniugum is an end on a par with procreation. Therefore, the exclusion of an openness to (ordinatio ad) the bonum coniugum would invalidate consent, just as would exclusion of openness to procreation.
I favor a large switch from the grounds of consensual incapacity to those of simulation. Whether this may result in any substantial reduction in the numbers of marriages declared null is something about which, as I have said, I am not at all sure.
This is a good analogy, especially if one keeps in mind that the pro-life movement has been totally fruitless for more than 30 years now. Why? Because there are fundamental flaws in the foundation of their philosophy which make it impossible for them to achieve any good. Same thing with any sort of "war against divorce." First one has to understand the nature of marriage before you can defend it. JPII and Msgr. Cormac Burke, for example, spill gallons of ink upholding the indissolubility of marriage while at the same time introducing innovations into the Catholic institution of marriage which are bound to lead to tens of millions of failed marriages.
This is true. But it is not the underlying cause. It cannot be said that Catholic marriages are failing in equal numbers to protestant marriages simply because divorce lawyers wish to make a lot of money. There has to be a process at work breaking up those marriages and driving those people towards the divorce lawyers.
I think you have the official words of Our Holy Father, John Paul II, mis-interpreted. He has written and spoken of the problem of divorce over and over again.
Yes, he speaks about the indissolubility of marriage, but at the same time he has put in place a new "personalist" vision of marriage which has proven to be incompatible with indissolubility. Here are just 2 examples:
1. JPII does not support the Biblical and traditional and magisterial teaching regarding the hierarchical nature of the relationship between husbands and wives. "The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church." He undermines this teaching at every opportunity. This is a sure recipe to destroy marriage.
2. JPII does not support generosity in accepting children and reliance upon divine providence. He recommends "responsible parenthood" and family limitation through natural means. This is another surefire way to make sure that traditional Catholic marriage is destroyed.
Max, I don't think that's what I said.
Annulment applications are denied. But, once an application is accepted as having canonical grounds, I've never seen an annulment refused, if not on first judgment, then on appeal.
Thanks for the clarification.
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