Posted on 05/22/2014 7:38:39 AM PDT by BlatherNaut
T o much fanfare in the press, Pope Francis has started a "dialogue" about the Catholic Church's marriage practices. The part that has received the most attention is whether civilly divorced and civilly remarried Catholics should be admitted to Holy Communion, without having to abandon their second marriage, which the church recognizes as continuing adultery. This issue will be addressed by the bishops of the Catholic Church at a "Synod on the Family" over this year and next.
Unfortunately, the pope's favorite theologian and the pope himself have initiated this discussion in a befogging cloud of pessimism. The pope is said to have speculated that 50 percent of Catholic marriages are invalid, which is to say they were somehow deficient in form (how the sacrament was conducted) or in intent (the couple didn't intend to marry as the church teaches) and thus are eligible for annulments. Such a dire assessment reeks of high-handed clericalism. Worse, it amounts to the pope doubting not just the sincerity of many Catholics, but the grace of God himself.
First, some background. On the one side there is the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog, Cardinal Muller, the German prelate leading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who fired a pre-emptive shot last year. The words of Christ forbid remarriage, and the theology of the church proclaims that the marital union reflects the faithfulness of Christ to the church. As Muller put it, "Faithfulness to marital consent is a prophetic sign of the salvation that God bestows upon the world."
On the other side, the pope has raised the profile of another German theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, who for 30 years has been tub-thumping for marriage reform, saying it is a kind of mercy. He holds that while civil remarriages cannot be recognized by the church, asking the civilly remarried to abandon their second marriage or be excluded from communion is untenable. During a media blitz earlier this month, Kasper revealed to Commonweal magazine the pope's eye-popping assessment that half of Catholic marriages are likely invalid.
But when Cardinal Kasper was confronted with the arguments of his opponents — namely that others in a state of mortal sin are required to confess their sins and make some kind of change to remedy their state of life — he balked at the suggestion that the civilly remarried should be required to live according to the church's teaching, that is, with sexual fidelity to the first, valid marriage. "To live together as brother and sister?" he asked. "Of course I have high respect for those who are doing this. But it's a heroic act, and heroism is not for the average Christian."
This is exactly where the game is given away. In the cardinal's theology, there are "average Christians" who cannot be expected to live up to the Christian ideal of marriage, even though it was their vocation. The pope's own reported view that 50 percent of marriages may be invalid is another sign that clerics at the highest level of the church regard the vocation of family as simply beyond the reach of many of the church's members. Kasper continued, "Many canon lawyers tell me that today in our pluralistic situation we cannot presuppose that couples really assent to what the church requires. Often it is also ignorance."
In other words, Christians are too confused and ignorant to know what a marriage is. They do not understand or take seriously the vows they make. Poor things. This dire reading of the signs of the times allows the "solution" that reformers like Kasper have been demanding, a de facto abandonment of the church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. And it justifies this change — or at least, smooths its reception — by too eagerly embracing a conservative premise: The culture of marriage has gone to the dogs.
Even contemplating this reform indicates how far we are moving away from a Catholic Church that used to bestride the world with confidence, recognizing and affirming the goodness of marriage, even marriages made outside itself. Instead we are being confined in a more crabbed and doubting institution, one that dismisses many of the extant marriages within the church as no more sure than a coin flip.
Perhaps the cardinal should speak more plainly. He is not defending the dignity of "average Christians"; he's condemning many of his co-religionists to a life as semi-Christians. His idea of mercy is to tell believers that, in view of the way things are — pluralism and all that — there's no need for them to live as Christians have lived before them. Come to Communion, but leave Christian heroism to the experts.
My prediction is that the synod will issue a document strenuously claiming to affirm the indissolubility of marriage, while instituting a practice that contradicts it. The remarried will be encouraged to examine their consciences and consult with pastors in the hope of having Communion. The practical effect will be a new perceived "right" for the divorced to approach the altar, and much acrimony for any pastor who objects in any case, not only from his parishioners, but from his bishop as well.
In the context of adjudicating annulments, Polish Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz said that any view that dismisses so many unions as invalid reflects an "anthropological pessimism" that would hold that "it's almost impossible to get married, in view of the current cultural situation." If the pope's view is that 50 percent of Catholic marriages are invalid, it is not just an insult to our natural human ability to marry, but also an insult to St. Paul, who said that the moral law is written on men's hearts. And it's an insult to God's grace to imagine that our own age is somehow different, that we cannot depend on God's help to live out the vocations He gives us.
If marriage is, as Cardinal Muller holds, a reflection of God's faithfulness to those He loves, then the obverse holds as well. As such, Cardinal Kasper's belief amounts to nothing less than a slur on God's fidelity. If Christians can't expect God to help them live the married life, if they cannot expect him to be faithful to His promises, why the fuss if we are not faithful to our own?
That’s bad? Living like a saint?
Me likey weemens.
I’m a sinner.
I suck.
Dr. Edward Peters wrote a good article on that fact (that 6% of the world’s Catholics get 60% of the world’s annulments) some years ago. He mentioned, among other things, that Americans have telephones that work, and automobiles, and can drive to the chancery over roads that don’t have IED’s planted in them, etc.
If you consider intent alone, 50% doesn't sound unreasonable.
For a marriage to be valid, both the husband and wife must intend:
1) a lifetime commitment to each other --at a minimum, never to remarry.
2) openess to children. At a minimum, they must be open to the possibility of children at some time during their marriage.
How many nominal Catholics say to themselves at the time of their wedding, "if this doesn't work out, I can always get a divorce."
How many nominal Catholics never intend to have children?
Then add in all of the nominal Catholics who marry outside of the faith who could easily fall into these two categories.
In an abusive relationship, the Church permits civil divorce, but not remarriage, assuming that the original marriage was valid. A civil divorce is considered separation.
Additionally, an abusive personality could be indicative of a psychological condition that could make a marriage invalid. But that's just an educated guess.
Her post-marital actions indicated a mindset that almost certainly existed prior to the wedding, i.e., that she did not intend a lifetime commitment.
The idea of null marriages seems very reasonable to me. I don't know why so many people have such difficulty with it.
Your experience with the human race is different from mine.
Well, that would be an out.
pay the local bishop to declare them insane.
I’ll bet I can prove it too.
Surely there are some abuses. Who knows to what degree? But abuse doesn’t obviate the principle anymore than corrupt judges obviate the necessity of a criminal justice system.
“Your experience with the human race is different from mine.”
That’s a shame for you. At any rate, they hurt no one but themselves...
As for myself... I’ve been married to the same woman for more than 45 years. Under no conceivable circumstances would I get a divorce.
I was married in the Church. Do I have a valid Sacramental marriage? Almost certainly not.
I’m one of those outliers that believe that my word is my bond. Till death do us part really means that, and that has nothing to do with the Church, it has to do with me and the values I would like my kids to have...
“A husband or wife may have, not just the right, but the moral responsibility to separate from their spouse, esp.in cases of abuse. Even if the separation is accompanied by a civil divorce, no moral fault is incurred.”
I don’t think this is literally true. The standard vows state “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health from this day forward till death do us part”
So wouldn’t an abusive spouse fall under the “better or worse” clause? And to add to that, wouldn’t an abusive spouse fall under the “in sickness and in health” clause?
The spouse has NO grounds for with holding sex from a spouse...
If you enter into such a union believing that you do, you do not have a Sacramental marriage...
See posts 36 and 38.
And you will say: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
That’s crazy... And it is, But that’s what canon law dictates... You can’t pick and choose.
Would that not be the fault of the church teachers?
We need to distinguish between different things: physical separation, civil divorce, and divorce/remarriage. What a man or woman is promising, when they vow "for better, for worse, in sickness and in health" is essentially that they will uphold the marriage bond, i.e. remain sexually faithful, and not remarry while their husband or wife still lives: "til death do us part."
That does not forbid separations. Indeed very often spouses are separated, and for far lesser grounds than abuse. Military spouses know what it is to be separated for long periods of time because of deployment; chronically ill or seriously injured spouses often have to be hospitalized or put in a specialized care facility, and that entails separation as well. They are still faithful "in sickness and in health" -- the physical separation does not negate the marriage bond.
And we not infrequently read in the lives of the saints, that a devout married wife and husband, their children raised, agree to part and retire to a convent and a monastery respectively.
These are physical separations, sometimes lengthy and sometimes permanent, which do not break the original marriage bond. They do not involve adulterous remarriage.
As well, if one spouse is seriously abusive to the other, the physical presence of the victim in the same house as the abuser might constitute a grave near-occasion of sin to the abuser. Wives, for instance, have a serious obligation to NOT provide repeated occasions of sin for repeat-offender husbands.
Thus, separating to prevent injury to the victim, also prevents the multiplication of sins by the abuser. Thus separation is morally justified, not only for the physical protection of the one, but the spiritual protection of the other.
This is especially necessary where children are involved, Children must be protected both from being abused, and from witnessing abuse.
The spouse who flees abuse must still pray for the well-being and redemption of their marriage partner, and remain faithful in not seeking another partner. Thus the fleeing spouse still observes her vow.
"The spouse has NO grounds for with holding sex from a spouse...If you enter into such a union believing that you do, you do not have a Sacramental marriage..
You are quite mistaken. There can be a reasonable, serious, even obligatory reason to discontinue sexual relations.
Say the wife has recently experienced childbirth that involved a couple of episiotomy incisions. Intercourse could not only be very painful, it could rupture the sutures and cause hemorrhage. The husband shouldn't even ask for intercourse until healing has occurred. She has a right to refuse perineal injury.
Say a wife just survived childbirth complications like pulmonary hypertension with right heart failure. Another pregnancy could kill her. Both spouses then have a serious obligation not to risk pregnancy. If the husband wants intercourse, especially at a known-fertile time, she must refuse.
Say the husband is HIV+. Again, a morally serious reason not to have intercourse.
There are also legitimate reasons for civil divorce, a divorce which does NOT, for Catholics, entail a right to remarry. Civil divorce is sometimes necessary, as the Church recognizes, to "protect the rights of the weaker party," generally meaning to obtain enforceable support for spouse and children.
None of this justifies remarriage while the husband or wife is still living. And none of this justifies cessation of marital relations for unreasonable, non-serious reasons such as personal pique or preference.
Then lets leave it at that.
"Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God," wrote Cardinal Bergoglio in a letter sent to the monasteries of Buenos Aires. "We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God." To the clergy of the parishes, Bergoglio requested that all of them read from the pulpits a declaration defending the true definition and understanding of marriage. "The Argentinean people will have to confront, in the coming weeks, a situation whose result could gravely injure the family. We are speaking of a bill regarding marriage between people of the same sex," a bill that calls into question "the identity, and the survival of the family: father, mother, and children."
“What a man or woman is promising, when they vow “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health” is essentially that they will uphold the marriage bond, i.e. remain sexually faithful, and not remarry while their husband or wife still lives: “til death do us part.” “
So you are just read into it anything you want I see, and that justifies it...
Ordinary reading of the words mean nothing? The wording is pretty straight forward. Remember, this is a contract. Words mean something... If it were to mean what you want them to mean, why not just say it that way in the first place.
If there are unspoken implications in the vows, then the whole contract is invalid unless there is a severability clause. Which there is not...
It’s funny actually. The only time I married (almost 46 years ago), the vows I took and the ones my spouse took were different. I promised to love, honer and cherish. She promised to love, honer and obey. Why is this relevant? Simply because she lied, and that poisons the sacramental part of the marriage.
Of course there was no malice on her part, she was just too immature to understand what she was saying and why it was important. But that kind of immaturity also poisons the sacrament as well.
However, we’ll celebrate our 46th in a few months.
No law --- criminal, civil or canon --- requires exposing yourself or your children to assault, or enabling an assailant.
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