Not Condemning
or Condoning but Consoling
Introduction
Everyone’s problem
The missalette’s little commentary for each Sunday
seldom turns me on. This Sunday, however, I did find something that lit a
little light. It reads, “As we listen to today’s scriptures, let us be mindful
of family, friends and members of our communities who have struggled with the
difficult issues of irreconcilable marriages.” In good plain English it says
that today’s scriptures are painful and embarrassing especially for Catholics,
for there isn’t a single family among us who hasn’t had to deal with divorce.
Either we ourselves are divorced or we have sons and daughters, brothers and
sisters, mothers and fathers, relatives and friends who are divorced.
Today’s scriptures are always a bit
embarrassing for my sister. She was married to her husband for sixty long
years. They had three boys. She and her husband loved each other, were
unselfish, placed their kids before themselves, worked hard, and eventually
managed to move to the other side of the tracks. Despite such a good hotbed for seedlings, two
of their three sons are divorced and remarried. I always explain this failure
of my two nephews by saying they both
had such a wonderful mother and father that they really weren’t ready for the
real world, which is full of right and
wrong partners, and therefore of right and wrong choices. I always say they
just weren’t savvy enough when it came to choosing the right partners. I know,
of course, that my explanation of their failed marriage is prejudiced.
“The marriage business”
That great Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, Kenneth
Untener, now deceased, said, “I wish the churches would get out of the marriage
business.” What in the world did he mean by that? In the old days if a Catholic
married an un-baptized person without getting a dispensation from the church or
if a Catholic married with the intention of excluding children, that marriage
was considered invalid. It didn't count before the church, and since God had to
go along with the church, it didn’t count before God. In the old days if a Catholic married before a justice of the peace
and not before a priest, the marriage was considered invalid. It didn't count
before the church, and since God had to go along with the church, it didn’t count
before God.
In
the old days every attempt at a civil divorce and subsequent remarriage was
declared invalid for Roman Catholics, and against such an attempt the church leveled
the penalty of excommunication which excluded you from the table of the Lord. That
penalty was reserved “speciali modo" (in a special way) to the Holy See.
Only
More of the
“Marriage business”
Civil
divorce and remarriage was declared not only invalid but also sinful. In those
days we used to say of such people, “They are living in sin.” Through many
years of priestly ministry I well recall how that severe judgment haunted many Catholics
twenty-four hours a day through the whole length of a second marriage right up
to the very moment of death. That moment already burdened with the pain of
one’s illness and the grief of saying good-bye was further complicated and
burdened with the urgent need to make one’s peace with God by means of sacramental
confession and absolution. All that, I
believe, is what Bishop Untener meant when he said, “I wish the churches would
get out of the marriage business.” By no means did he mean that the church
should get out of the serious and joyful business of uniting her children in holy
matrimony with a bond lasting until death.
Incidentally
in 1993, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope
Paul’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae reaffirming the church's stand
against artificial birth control, Bishop Untener urged the church to use the
occasion to open a new and brave discussion--a holy conversation about birth
control. That urging was, indeed, courageous of him, because for twenty-five
long years Humanae Vitae was considered a litmus test of Catholic
loyalty. Untener’s invitation to reopen
the discussion for the sake of millions of good Catholics quietly dismayed
Born out of wedlock
Bishop Untener said, “When we try to sort out who
can get married and who can't get married, which marriages can be annulled and
which marriages cannot be annulled, we can become quite inappropriate.” “Inappropriate”
was a kind of weasel word which, I believe, Untener purposely chose. Perhaps he
really wanted to say “we can become quite ridiculous and even offensive.” The
church’s process of annulment declares that a marriage which took place on such
and such a date never took place at all. That sounds ridiculous to some people. Others
believe it’s also offensive to tell some woman married for twenty years that
she was never really married at all. All
her children would then be considered as born out of wedlock.
Because of the church’s
busyness with marriage I was considered as born out of wedlock. My parents migrated
to this country from
Years later when I was alone in the office of my boyhood parish, I
seized the opportunity to look up my baptismal record. There, lo and behold, I
came upon a surprising annotation. It read (in Latin of course) "Illegitimus"!
Not only was their marriage illegitimate I, too, was illegitimate! The Italian word for it is "bastardo." The church’s busyness with marriage did not
end there. Before I could be advanced to the priesthood that invalid marriage
had to be fixed in the eyes of the church so that it would be fixed in the eyes
of God, who perhaps didn’t know that it was broken in the first place. All that,
I believe, is what Bishop Untener meant when he said, “I wish the churches
would get out of the marriage business.” By no means did he mean that the
church should get out of the serious and joyful business of uniting her
children in holy matrimony with a bond lasting until death.
The refusal to be excluded
But
it often does not last until death. On TV this past week a statistic declared
that fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. All of us know divorced
persons. Some of them are our fathers
and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, and
yes, some of them are ourselves. In times past many divorced Catholics
painfully felt outcast, marginalized and excluded from the table of the Lord. Matters
have changed a lot since those days. The path to annulments is wide open now. Some
divorced Catholics choose not to take the path. Instead they have quietly
solved the problem for themselves.
Refusing to be excluded from the table of the Lord they simply continue
to participate in Catholic life. They are of the same mind as Hans Küng, that famous Swiss German
theologian and prophet. In a little volume entitled Why I am Still a Christian he writes, “I can not believe that he,
who particularly invited failures to his table, would forbid all remarried
divorced people ever to approach that table” (Mt 9: 9-13).
Divorce: a failure
Küng calls divorces failures.
That’s so starkly honest. It is a lot more honest than a church annulment which
declares a marriage which took place on such and such a date never took place at
all. Annulments seem to by-pass the whole idea of failure. If there was no
marriage to begin with, then there is no failure, and if no failure, then no great need for tears. Then
you’re free to cheerfully move on to the next marriage. I call annulments divorce
without tears. Admitting
that divorce is a failure -- that I call divorce with tears.” That’s more
honest.
The gospel is quite clear that divorce is a failure.
The Pharisees approach Jesus and ask, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce
his wife?” Jesus replies, “God made the
male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer
two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must
separate.” Jesus says marriage is a life-long commitment, and when a marriage
ends in divorce that’s a failure. Bishop Untener, too, insists that marriage is
a life-long commitment. “Look,” he said,
“ I preach life-long commitment. No mistake
about that. I preach life-long commitment.
But,” he asks, “what if, for some reason, it fails?”
Not a law but an ideal
Over the years I’ve honed an answer to that vexing
question. It goes like this. One man to
one woman until death do they part is not a law written on stone; it’s an ideal
written on the heart. But an ideal, we hasten to remind ourselves, is not a shabby matter. It
is not something wish-washy. It’s not something
you’re free to take or leave. An ideal is a shining star that stands before you
to lead you on. An ideal inspires you to soar to the heights you promised on
your wedding day when you vowed to forsake all others and to love your partner in
good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death do you part. But an ideal also convicts you when you have
failed. That conviction of failure is not
just a painful negative, it’s also a positive. It leads to growth and
makes you wiser for the rest of the journey before you.
One man to one woman until death do you part is not
a law written on stone commanding you to stay married. It’s an ideal written on
your heart commanding you to stay in love. And when you or your sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, relatives and friends fail that
ideal, then you take possession of your failure: you repent, confess your
failure especially to yourself, and then you get on with the rest of the
journey before you.
Not condemning
or condoning but consoling,
Bishop Untener said, “I like the distinction Jesus
carefully used upon the woman caught in adultery. He said, `I don't condemn
you.' But some people think the opposite of `condemn' is `condone.'” Untener said he was not here to condemn or
condone divorced people. He was here simply to help them. That’s what we’re doing
here this morning. As we read today’s Scriptures about divorce we’re not here to
condemn nor condone anything. We are
here simply to help the community of the divorced. It’s a big community. It
includes all of us who are divorced. And it includes all our divorced brothers
and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and relatives. We
are here to encourage one another to pick up the pieces, and with a newly
acquired wisdom get on with the rest of our life. We are here to console one
another with
the spirit of Jesus who went out of his way to invite failures to the table of
the Lord (Mt 9: 9-13).