According to Vittorio Messori, one way to save the traditional family is to “return to pre-arranged marriages.” Catholics must “declare war on romantic love,” he claims. In terms of divorce, Messori has the following to say: “When the referendum (the Italian divorce referendum of 1974, Ed.) was called and I had already converted to Catholicism, I voted for it to stay, going against the advice of clerics.”
Messori, the world’s most widely read Catholic author and the only person who boasts a record number of book interviews with Popes Wojtyla and Ratzinger - when he was still a cardinal - could not care less about political (and clerical) correctness.
According to him, for too long now a sweetened, sugary image of the family has been spreading across the so-called Catholic world. This does not quite tally with the “saltiness” of the Gospel.
Excuse me Mr. Messori, the Church has recently concluded celebrating the World Meeting of Families in Milan with the Pope and yet you are talking about pre-arranged marriages and almost go as far as to praise divorce?
“Catholics must be aware of one thing: we are the only ones to have monogamous and indissoluble marriage. In other religions as well as in the Protestant and Orthodox denominations of the Christian faith, divorce is allowed in a more or less disguised form. Defending this type of family on a uniquely human level is impossible now: by nature, it is hard for a man to remain faithful to a woman right until the day they die. Only faith in Jesus, who “ordered” this kind of relationship, for our own good, can justify such an indissoluble union. We bet on faith and this naturally seems like “madness” to non believers.
What do pre-arranged marriages have to do with this though?
“My comment was intended as healthy provocation. If marriage is not just continuous emotional chirping, but it is a pact for life, it is worth re-evaluating the wisdom shown in the past, when parents chose their daughters’ husbands. So many of my forty year old single or separated female friends have confided to me that we should go back to pre-arranged marriages. Instead of leaving everything up to chance, it is better to put our trust in someone who has experience and is able to make an informed judgement based on temperament, whilst taking into account factors such as age, solidity and perhaps even material wealth as well…”
And where do feelings fit in?
“But it is precisely this romantic Nineteenth century concept of love which is steeped in rhetoric from the Italian novel Heart and full of women whose only role is to care for the family that has ruined the Catholic family. If anything, the role of Catholics today is to combat romantic love. Marriage, I repeat, cannot be based on emotions, because emotions are, by nature changeable. Without faith in Jesus, the promise of “forever” made between a man and a woman would be irrational. Catholic marriage is part of the Gospel’s paradoxical and upside down world (remember the commandment “love your enemies?”). Christ himself warned us that not everyone would understand. In fact, once the order of things was clear, even the disciples exclaimed: “Well, if this is the way things are, it is not worth getting married…”
Speaking of family, what was your personal experience as a child?
“Terrible. It would have been better for everyone if my parents had divorced. But my father was a clerk and money was scarce.”
So, Mr. Messori, are you in favour of divorce?
“In the West we now live in a state of “successive polygamy”: if I have the money to maintain my former wives, I can change wives no problem. I must confess that when the referendum was held, although I had already converted to Catholicism, I voted for the institution to stay. I did not take part in the clergy’s anti-divorce campaigns and I did not go down the road taken by my fellow-Catholics. The point remains that if my neighbour, for the sake of argument, does not believe in Jesus, what is the point in forbidding him to leave his wife and letting him go off with a younger, prettier woman?”