“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?”

[Amity]

Those nine years were not wasted. It gave your kids time to work some issues through and the opportunity to have a meaningful voice in what happens with their own lives. I think “staying married for the children’s sake” is a legitimate option, but I also believe that, by the time they’re old enough to have a good understanding of what divorce actually means, the kids should have a voice in that decision. You gave them one, and that’s a great thing.

I don’t think the government should make marriage more difficult. OTOH, a lot of pastors in my denomination (non-Catholic) simply won’t marry a couple if (1) the couple won’t go to counseling or (2) the pastor doesn’t think the marriage will last. If my pastor sat down with my kids and said, “Look, I see trouble coming because of this and this and this,” my kids would definitely think twice about the situation. I’m not saying anyone should be forced to submit to that sort of religious vetting before they can get married, but it potentially can add a layer of protection for those who use it. (And anyone who’d submit to the religious leaders who’d abuse that power likely have bigger problems than marrying the wrong person....)

Ideally, of course, parents teach their kids what to look for in a partner and what the warning signs of trouble are, so the kids back off before marriage is even an issue. But obviously, in a lot of places, that ball’s been dropped.

[informavoracious]

Catholics go through pre-Cana before marriage. It is supposed to help hou learn what marriage means, if you and your spouse want the same things... But sometimes people don’t seriously put into it what is needed. They are blinded by love or lust and will go through it only because it is required, ignoring the warning signs of trouble ahead. People will lie to themselves and others to get what they think they want.

[Salvation]

Ditto.

At a point in my life I got us registered on a Marriage Encounter weekend.

It was the best investment of our married life.

We had many years of marital bliss and learning to talk things out before my husband died from lung cancer.

[Salvation]

Worldwide Marriage Encounter

http://wwme.org/

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

--- Marriage is about adults, and what makes them happy. ---

This is why gay "marriage" has become widely accepted.

People simply don't understand the nature of marriage, which is why, paradoxically, so many annulments are justifiable today ("Oh, THOSE vows. Whatever.")

[JoeFromSidney]

a lot of pastors in my denomination (non-Catholic) simply won’t marry a couple if (1) the couple won’t go to counseling or (2) the pastor doesn’t think the marriage will last.

When I was in graduate school, one of the Catholic chaplains at the student parish was a former Navy chaplain during WW II. One day he mentioned that back then his bishop told him not to perform a marriage for sailors who were caught up in a quickie wartime romance. His bishop said those relationships weren't going to last, and it would be better for both parties if they didn't get married in the Church, even if it meant a JP wedding or simply living together. I guess there was some wisdom in that advice.

[JoeFromSidney]

Catholics go through pre-Cana before marriage.

Both my wife and I had been widowed when we met. She was then 61 and I 69. The priest that married us had to go through the same routine as for all weddings. When he asked us if we would accept any children God sent us, we just looked at each other and laughed. We marked YES on the form.

[informavoracious]

LOL, definitely! Who wouldn’t accept a miracle like that!