Imagine your brother Jim discovers that his wife of 17 years, mother
to their four children, is leaving him for another man.
He pleads with
her to stay.
He asks that they get counseling to heal their marriage.
He
calls every priest he knows, along with family and friends, to try to
get the help he needs to keep his family together.
But your brother’s
efforts are in vain.
Jim learns that his wife has retained a lawyer, and is suing him for a
divorce. His mind races back to the day he made his vows before God
and the community of believers.
“I don’t want a divorce,” he cries out in despair. “And I will never sign a paper stating that my marriage is over.”
Over the next few weeks, Jim’s wife keeps asserting that she has left
because their marriage has been “hell.”
She says he is the only thing
standing in the way of her happiness.
She signs a lease on an apartment where she begins to bring the
children for visits.
The children, who are devastated and confused,
report that there is usually a strange man at the apartment during these
visits. “Sometimes he kisses mommy,” they confide with tears in their
eyes.
Outraged at the rate at which his world is spinning out of control,
Jim hires his own lawyer. It doesn’t take long for him to learn that
there is nothing to be done.
His divorce is imminent, and his ability to
act as the primary protector of his children is effectively over.
In fact, Jim’s right to parent his children according to Church
teachings will be undermined at every turn by a “family law” system that
worships at the altar of sexual freedom.
As your brother will learn
over the next year or two, this system serves one purpose alone: to
facilitate the destruction of marriages (and by extension families)
quickly and with the least resistance possible.
There is abundant research to affirm the dire consequences of divorce
for children: much higher likelihoods of poverty, teen motherhood,
school expulsion, conduct disorders, physical abuse, incarceration,
cohabitation, divorce, and even suicide.
This is not surprising.
As Catholics who believe in the sanctity and
permanence of the marriage vow, we can understand why things go
drastically wrong when that vow is breached.
As rational human beings
we recognize that when marriage – the foundation of civilized, lawful
society – is undervalued on a wide scale, the long-term repercussions
will be catastrophic.
What we may not know is that most divorces are situations in which
one person wants to end the marriage while the other is fighting to save
it.
The National Survey of Children indicates that about 80 percent of
divorce cases in the U.S. are forced, or unilateral, divorces.
Women
initiate two-thirds of all divorces.
Research also shows that the vast
majority occur in marriages described by the spouses as happy only five
years earlier.
According to a 2002 study using data from the National
Survey of Families and Households, the number is close to 75 percent.
Nonetheless, under “no fault” divorce, any husband or wife, at any time
and for any reason, can walk into a lawyer’s office and begin the
process of divorcing his or her spouse.
Unlike in any other area of the law, the defendant in a divorce case
is dead on arrival because the court never considers a defense of the
marriage.
The spouse who is being abandoned is presumed guilty.
Judicial discretion is illusory because the plaintiff (usually the
abandoning spouse who is seeking the divorce) always wins.
Even a child rapist has a right to a trial by a jury of peers. Our
Constitution guarantees it: “no person shall be deprived of life,
liberty or property without due process of law.” Not so for the spouse
who has been abandoned.
In our system of family law, the legal presumption is that the
marriage is over the moment one spouse decides it is.
It does not
matter who has engaged in adultery.
It does not matter how long the
couple has been married, whether they have minor children, or whether
they were married in the Catholic Church, which doesn’t acknowledge
divorce.
Our divorce courts violate the civil rights of countless men and
women every day.
Most victims do not have the ability to fight the
injustice.
Most suffer in silence and their stories remain untold.
In the face of this crisis, which is causing untold suffering and
injustice, what is our obligation as Catholics who uphold the sanctity
of lifelong marriage?
We must fight our tendency to look the other way in the name of
discretion or a false sense of charity. This instinct is rooted in a
cultural ethos that values privacy and personal (meaning, sexual)
autonomy above all other rights.
As Catholics, we have moral obligations when we know someone who has
abandoned his or her family in order to seek a divorce. We have a duty
to stand in solidarity with the spouse who has been left behind, and
with any children who might be involved.
We should not assume that the marriage must have been deeply troubled
to have reached this point. And we should not accept the assertion that
the one left behind was “just too difficult to live with.”
Such claims
are usually made to deflect attention from the real issue —spousal
abandonment and the immoral conduct that almost always accompanies it.
Sometimes, when we are friends with the couple involved, we might be
tempted to conclude, “There must be something we don’t know. This must
be more complicated than we think.”
All too often, the complicating
factor is in fact quite simple — an adulterous affair.
It might be useful when we consider “logical explanations” for
abandonment for us to contemplate our own marital struggles.
How would
we fare should the survival of our own marriages hinge on our spouse’s
view of us at a particular moment in time?
The Church teaches that marriages are comprised of two flawed
individuals whose job is to love one another unconditionally: “Love does
not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does
not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (I Cor. 13:
5-7).
What does it mean to stand in solidarity with an abandoned family?
It means not being afraid to use the term “abandonment” instead of divorce when speaking about these situations.
For pastors and priests it means being willing to address the issue directly with their congregations.
For family members, clergy, and close friends of the couple, it means speaking to the abandoning spouse in charity, but with clarity.
For family members, clergy, and close friends of the couple, it means speaking to the abandoning spouse in charity, but with clarity.
The message to the abandoner must be this: “What you have done is
contrary to God’s plan for you and your family. We are praying you will
return home and seek the counseling needed to heal your marriage. Once
you decide to return to your family, you will have our full support.
Until then, please do not expect us to condone your action by pretending
it hasn’t happened.”
These encounters serve two purposes.
First, they assure abandoned spouses that they are not alone. They
tell the spouses that the Church community supports their desire to save
their marriage and uphold the marriage vow.
Second, by summoning the moral courage to speak candidly about the
devastation that spousal abandonment causes, we remind the world that
eternal Truth remains.
Sadly, men and women who abandon their spouses will often have family
and friends around who support their decision to “start over.”
It may
benefit one who has left home more than we will ever know to hear the
truth from us, who have their eternal souls in mind.
We need a renewed effort on the part of bishops and priests to
recognize that spousal abandonment is a crisis in our Church.
Church
leaders need to acknowledge this — and they need to encourage new, more
effective responses in our parishes and chanceries.
In every case of spousal abandonment, much is at stake — not only the
lives of the men, women and children involved, but also the belief of
all Catholics in the integrity of marriage as a sacrament.
In a world that would have us believe that divorce is just an
opportunity for a new start, the Church’s message must be loud and
clear: We will hold fast to our ancient teachings on marriage – for the
sake of our souls, our families, and our civilization.
* Hilary Towers is a psychologist and mother of five. She is a parishioner of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Woodbridge, Va.