“Not only divorced from marriage, divorced from reality.” An essay on ugliness of divorce

Archdiocese of Washington ^ | 8/21/2014 | Msgr. Charles Pope

[markomalley]

Some years ago a woman (and parishioner) told me, almost in passing, me that she and her husband were planning to divorce. Knowing that she had two young children, both under 10, I asked her in so many words, “What about the children?” Unabashedly she assured me that they were in fact divorcing for the sake of the children. Perhaps she saw my bewildered, and dubious look, so she added, “We don’t want them to experience all the yelling and bickering.” “Hmm…,” Said I, “Well then stop the bickering and yelling…get what ever help you need, but don’t make the kids pay even more for your problems.”

I was a parochial vicar in those days, so the pastor was informed by her of my “insensitive remark” along with her with demands that I learn to be more sensitive and diplomatic. Luckily the pastor saw the irony of her demands, since diplomacy between these spouses seemed lacking, as did sensitivity toward children who did not likely “feel” great that their home was breaking up because the adults could not get along.

When I was a little child (not song long ago) in the mid 60s, divorce was still considered shocking, and to a large degree wrong. But that was before we crossed the chasm of the cultural and sexual revolution. In 1969 no-fault divorce began to railroad through the land like a runaway train leaking poisonous gas. Within less than a decade divorce went from something shocking and whispered about to being a mainstream action that we should have sympathy for. After all, the thinking went, doesn’t God want everyone to be happy? How can we be so mean to say that people should stay in “unhappy marriages?” Never mind those vows that they took which had no happiness clause but even seemed to imply there would be unhappy times: better or WORSE, richer or POORER, in SICKNESS and in health for as long as we both shall live. No, forget all that. Marriage is about “happiness” and every one’s “God-given” right to be happy. God only wants me to be happy, Jesus wasn’t really serious we he spoke of the cross and our need to carry it by patience, long-suffering, forgiveness and bearing with one another.

I remember another couple who were fighting bitterly in my rectory parlor. They began throwing around the “divorce” word. I asked them, “But what about the vows you took?” The husband after a pause said, “What vow, father?” So I recited the marriage vow from memory. “Oh that…” Said the husband….”But you know, you just say those words at the ceremony because you’re supposed to….” Thus, he seems to have thought of them only as ritual words and considered himself exempt from vows that had come forth from his very mouth before God and man.

Thus, in the short span of a few decades we have come to the place where many do not see marriage as about keeping vows and commitments or about what is best for children. Marriage is about adults, and what makes them happy. And all of us are just supposed to understand this no matter the effect that it has (obviously) had on children.

In his recent book, Anthony Esolen in his book Defending Marriage, 12 Arguments for Sanity has some poignant observations:

Parents will say, “My children can never be happy unless I am happy,” but they should not lay that narcissistic unction to their souls. Children need parents who love them, not parents who are contented; they are too young to be asked to lay down their lives for someone else. It is not the job of the child to suffer for the parent, but the job of the parent to endure, to make the best of a poor situation, to swallow his pride, to bend her knees, for the sake of the child. I have heard [from those] who still quaver in voice when they speak about what their divorced parents did to them – hustling them from one half of a home to another half, enlisting them as confidants, one against the other, [threatening] them that they may just find themselves a lot less often with a parent they love if they do not do exactly what the [threatener] demands. (and I would add, forcing them to endure daddy’s new live-in girlfriend or mommy’s new husband, who also happens to bring along a strange new step-brother who is hard to get along with and who started touching them in embarrassing places). Children must grow up at age ten so their parents don’t have to. (p. 142)

Esolen also comments on how children often have divorce “explained” to them:

[The Child] must be told that the father, although he wasn’t so terrible, just couldn’t satisfy the mother in some mysterious way, and so bad was this dissatisfaction that she had no choice but to compel her son [or daughter] to live without a father….Adults are wonderfully adept at weaving webs of self-decit around themselves for protection. Children aren’t….They aren’t yet dulled by habit, or by slogans, or by a long history of compromising with the truth, so that what they do see, they see clearly. (P. 138)

Yes, indeed, children are famous for for seeing through the hypocrisy of adults. Their innocence is still shocked by misbehavior and inconsistency. I remember a high-school classmate, whose parents had divorced, wondering why “the rules” in the house only applied to her. One day she asked his mother who had divorced why she couldn’t love her father anymore. The mother said, “But I still do love him.” My classmate saw through this self-justifying lie and challenged her mother to “get back together with dad again.” Her mother just said “You’ll understand when you get older.” In one short phrase her mother both patronized her daughter and beckoned her to the cynical and compromised world of the baby-boomer generation, a generation that never collectively grew up, and which may well be the most narcissistic, ego-centric, selfish and immature generation since the patricians of the late Greo-Roman culture.

Disclaimer - I realize that every divorce story is an individual story. I know that there are some who read this who will be angry or hurt and insist that my picture does not take into account the special and unique circumstances that led to their divorce. I realize too that some divorcees tried to save their marriage and could not, since the other spouse refused. OK. But I only speak to the general problem, not to every specific possibility. The critique here is cultural, first of all. The fact is, we used to work out our differences and stay married, by and large. But today we do not. We used to consider the impact that divorce would have on children. Today we do not; or the children are way down on the list beneath the needs and wishes of the adults.

Divorce has shredded our families and caused grave harm and hurt to children: psychically, emotionally, spiritually and even physically. If we cannot see this we are not only divorced from marriage, we are divorced from reality. You might say, “Well I don’t think it’s so bad. The roads are paved and the planes run on time.” Ok, but talk to someone whose parents divorced. Talk to them honestly about the absurdities to which they were subjected, where they were supposed to get along with their siblings while mom and dad played by other rules. Talk to them about being shipped back and forth to different domiciles and having to feel guilty that they liked one setting or parent more than the other, or that one house had different rules than the other, of that mom and dad bad-mouthed each other and subjected the kids to loyalty tests. Ask them about how all of this affects their understanding of acceptance, loyalty, trust, self-esteem, respect for authority, appreciation for the truth, personal responsibility, courageousness, perseverance, forgiveness, human dignity, sexual responsibility, marriage, family, love, and on and on.

We need to see divorce for the diabolical lie that it is and that it comes from the hardness of our hearts as Jesus clearly says (Matt 19). We ought not separate what God has joined. And if we do, there can be little but destruction that comes from it.

Splitting the family is like splitting the atom. And for all the anxiety we had back in the 80s about “the bomb,” as usual, Satan had us focused on the lesser thing, to avoid focusing the greater and truer problem. All the silly “Nuclear Free Zones” did nothing. Whereas a few “Divorce Free Zones” (like we had prior to 1969) might have actually made a difference. But the problem is always someone else, not me or the decisions I make.

Even in the Church we got all swept up in questions of nuclear war etc. Total silence on that issue from the Church would have been wrong. But where were similar statements against the nuclear fission of divorce as our families were split and we were issuing annulments like candy?

Do not mistake this for bishop bashings. We cannot expect the clergy to solve every problem in a cultural and moral tsunami where lay people and what they do outnumber clergy 5000 to 1. But clarity and a bit more courage never hurts.

Perhaps it is like the clarity and courage an old pastor (noted above) showed me when I was “turned in” for being insensitive and undiplomatic, who saw the hypocrisy of the complainant and commended me, instead of scolding me, for raising a simple question, “What about the Children?”

[markomalley]

Msgr Pope ping

[Veggie Todd]

It should be harder and more expensive to get married than divorced.

[informavoracious]

Truth.

[wideawake]

I see billboards advertising $300 divorces.

I've never seen ads selling $300 weddings.

[The Working Man]

I agree with you.

[Tax-chick]

It should be harder and more expensive to get married than divorced.

Are you expecting that many more people will take to lives of long-term sexual continence, or do you think the fornication/illegitimacy culture has worked out really well for everyone?

[The Working Man]

Good question, I don’t have an answer.

All I can say is that my divorce cost me nine years of separation while I worked my butt off to give my children a home and trying to keep an amicable relationship with a woman who became all, ‘Me, me, me’ to the point that I had to ‘make’ her see her children on her scheduled visitation days so she might remember what they looked like.

Eventually it was my children who told me point blank in a counseling session to just get a divorce because living in limbo was hell on them and on me too.

And frankly if it had been harder to get married I might, (Maybe, I sure hope so), have seen that there was an multi-generational pattern of a mental disorder that would have warned me off on marriage to her in the first place.

However in all honesty I might have disregarded it anyways, Hormones can blind a human being in sundry and miraculous ways.

[TalBlack]

“Yes, indeed, children are famous for for seeing through the hypocrisy of adults.”

Yep. When I was 8 (in 1967) I contemplated the concept of divorce against the comprehensiveness of the Vows and called ‘bullshit’.

[driftdiver]

Its a complex problem and people look for simple solutions. IMO the crux of it is people are not living according to Gods plan. Most of us weren’t raised according to Gods word and we don’t live our lives according to the word. We try to and are successful to varying degrees.

We can’t sleep around, gamble, get drunk, and a host of other bad behaviors and not expect it to create problems in our lives.

[Tax-chick]

It’s always been the case that some people are mentally ill, and some people make poor choices of a spouse. Some spouses abandon their families, with or without divorce. Nothing is going to change that.

Msgr. Pope is saying that a society in which marriage vows are considered binding is better for children, overall, than a society with walk-away “marriage.” (By implication, it’s also better than a fornication-and-illegitimacy society.)

There is no structure that will provide easy happiness for everyone. What sensible person even imagines that there could be?

[The Working Man]

All good points, it is complex and we, as humans, tend to look for simple, ‘easy’, answers.

On a side note, there are people who really should never get or be married. I think training in how to spot them or identify them is something that needs more work on by teenagers and adults.

[The Working Man]

Msgr. Pope is saying that a society in which marriage vows are considered binding is better for children, overall, than a society with walk-away “marriage.” (By implication, it’s also better than a fornication-and-illegitimacy society.)

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And I agree with this. I always have.

[Tax-chick]

I agree, too.

[New Perspective]

Tough situation, I feel for you as I have been there as well. “Me, me, me” seems to be the new mantra for some women who think they can do it all and have it all.

[NYer]

Ping

[Skooz]

Bfl

[narses]

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[SumProVita]

Speaking of marriages, Pope Francis called a married couple yesterday evening. He telephoned the Foleys to comfort them after the death of their son at the hand of savage Muslims.

Fr. Z is reporting this:

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/08/pope-calls-family-of-american-journalist-killed-by-muslims

[Salvation]

Sadly, shouldn’t it be the other way around?