Mindy Selmys, who writes a blog anachronistically titled Catholic Authenticity despite having announced some months ago that she was leaving the Catholic Church, has written a blog post that has been shared around a good bit in which she both recounts her experiences of divorce and cohabitation and also makes an argument that the Catholic Church should change its teaching on the permanence of marriage. Readers of this blog may recall Selmys from a series of three posts I wrote about a year and a half ago, arguing against her series of posts laying out a case for dissent from the Church's teachings on contraception. Those posts actually followed a very similar basic argument structure (following the Church's teaching is hard, therefore God clearly doesn't want us to do it because he loves us), and my response to them can be found here: Part one. Part two. Part three.
Selmys's post on divorce draws heavily on her own personal experiences, but also seeks to make a broader point. The personal narrative describes how Selmys separated from her husband due to the escalating alcohol abuse which he had committed throughout their marriage. This separation left Selmys to serve as a single parent to their seven children, which was incredibly hard. After about a year, during which she and her husband attempted counseling but he refused to stop drinking, she decided their separation needed to be permanent, and (providentially, she feels) at the same time a long time male friend of hers offered to move in with her. Having this man move in relieved her of many of the burdens of single parenthood, and her home life seemed to improve.
Interspersed with this narrative, she makes an argument that the Church ends up encouraging women to remain in abusive relationships, because the Church's teaching that those who are validly married cannot remarry while their spouses are living (even if they have legally separated for good reasons) makes women feel as if they need to remain in abusive relationships in order to have the basic support of another adult in the household. The following is the core thread of her argument, skipping most of the personal detail:
Men, and particularly Catholic men, tend to approach the question of remarriage in terms of sex. In cases where a marriage is abusive, you are of course allowed to leave – indeed, it may be morally obligatory if there is a threat to the life and well-being of the children. But in such cases a woman (statistically, it is usually a woman) is expected to live in continent singleness, devoted to the vows that she made to a man who mistreated her.
This isn’t seen as a problem because “nobody ever died from lack of sex.” Nevermind that an adequate morality cannot treat death as the only relevant negative outcome; the more pressing issue is that for a mother having a partner is not primarily about having someone to rock the bed with.
When the Church says to women “You may divorce – but you may not remarry” they are, in effect, saying that you have two choices: make it work with your abusive spouse, or commit to single parenting until your children are grown. If the woman in question has been faithful to the Church’s teaching about openness to life – or if the abuser has used repeated pregnancy as a means of keeping his spouse dependent on him – then this can create a situation that is genuinely unmanageable.
...
This means that women, finding themselves trapped between a rock and a hard place, end up returning to marriages that are physically or psychologically unsafe – not only for the woman herself, but also for the children. There were several times in the year that my ex and I were separated when I almost caved and brought him back home. The relentless pressures of trying to manage alone were enough that it seemed like maybe it would be a good gamble to hope that things would be different this time round.
By telling women that they can’t find a new partner, can’t build a safe and functional family life, Catholic teaching creates a situation that works in favour of abusive spouses. The institution of marriage comes to be privileged over the actual good of vulnerable women and children. The symbolism of the cross ceases to be centred on liberation from sin and death, and becomes instead an indefinite sentence to suffering where the only possible resurrection lies in the hope that the abuser will reform himself. This empowers abusive people to hold their families hostage and employ the vows of marriage as a bulwark against the necessity of repentance.
I don’t think this is what Christ intended.
It’s now a month since my new partner moved in, and in that time we’ve built a home life that is not only manageable but actually happy. My children’s mental health has improved. The house no longer looks like ground zero of some domestic disaster. I can rest when I’m sick, secure in the knowledge that there is another functional adult managing the household. Alcoholism no longer has a place in our family, or a strangle-hold on my hopes for the future.
According to the Church, this is a mortal sin. I am barred from communion, and so is the man who stepped up to help me pick up the pieces of a family fragmented by addiction and abuse. While the current Pope is trying to create space for people in situations like mine to exercise conscience, for priests to use their judgment so that victims can be protected and included, conservatives continue to fight tooth and nail to make sure that abused and neglected spouses are left without options.
This condition of slavery to another person’s sins is not, I think, what Christianity is supposed to produce. It privileges the law over the actual good human beings, and prevents God’s providence from being able to deliver us into new life.
I think there are several clear problems with the line of thinking that Selmys presents here. However, before getting into those, it's important to note that it is indeed moral (and under certain circumstances morally necessary) for a Catholic to separate from her (or his) spouse in order to escape abuse or for other grave reasons. It's also important to note that in many cases a marriage which has been rooted in abuse and deception will prove not to have been a valid marriage in the first place, and that in such cases the annulment process will give that Catholic canonical permission to marry by finding that no valid marriage was ever in force.
Turning to Selmy's arguments, perhaps the most troubling element is an implicit assumption that a woman must exchange sexual favors for help in taking care of her family, and that the Church should thus step back and let her get on with the transaction. Having a partner, she argues, is not primarily about sex. It's about having someone to help with keeping the household together. But of course, the Church does not teach that it is wrong to have someone help you clean and put the kids to bed and drive people about town. Indeed, it seems clear that it would be a work of mercy to help a frazzled single mother in these ways. What the Church says is a sin is to have sex with someone to whom you are not married. Selmys takes it as a given that no one will want to help a mother who is separated from her husband unless he is getting sex in return for the help, but instead of identifying this demand for sex as the problem, she instead blames the Church for seeing the sex as a sin.
And to the extent that she's trying to make a practical argument -- there are also very good practical arguments for not moving in with another person almost as soon as you decide that your old relationship is not salvageable. People do not tend to make their best decisions at such moments, and this kind of serial cohabitation is, statistically, where a lot of child abuse actually comes from. In a sad number of cases, mom's new boyfriend does not treat mom's kids well. So there is a practical wisdom in not encouraging people to engage in serial sexual relationships in order to get help around the house.
Another problematic aspect of her thinking here is the way that she addresses God's will. It is very hard to live as a mother whose husband has abandoned the family, she argues. Therefore, God must want her to start a sexual relationship with a new partner so that she will not undergo this hardship. Now clearly, God does want the best for us. God created us that we might be eternally happy with Him in heaven. And yet, in the world that God created and the fall corrupted, there are a great many evils that we suffer. Does God will that the widow grow old without the companionship of the husband she hoped to spend her later years with? Does God will that the orphan not see his parents? Does God will that the mother of a dead child be deprived of the chance to see her offspring grow up? God certainly allows suffering, even if suffering is a result of the world not being as God intended it to be. And in that God is all powerful, we cannot even say that the fall is truly contrary to God's will. God keeps the world we live in, with all its suffering, in existence by the active exercise of His will. He allows the fallen world to be what it is, rather than bending toward some sort of forced happiness.
Some of these examples of suffering -- suffering that also leaves people alone and abandoned-- may seem more impersonal: people die, people become sick, people have disabilities. These sources of suffering are often not the direct result of some other person's action. From one point of view, that may seem to make them more directly God's fault. In the case of a spouse suffering from the abuse of another, the suffering is caused directly by another person. Why does't God step in and allow the victim of abuse another go? But then, why Didn't God prevent any given source of suffering: that cancer, that car crash, that miscarriage?
God allows the sufferings of this world to happen. He allows a husband to abandon his responsibilities to wife and children and devote himself instead to alcohol abuse. He allows a partent to abuse his or her child. He allows us to wrong each other.
If we cannot imagine that God would allow suffering in this one area, how can we imagine that the rest of the world is the way it is? I can't see that the problem of theodicy which Selmys poses is more problematic than any other. Indeed, in that it is so clearly a result of one person hurting another rather than the hostility of the world itself, it seems less hard to explain than many.
We will not heal the suffering of this world through piling more sins on top of the sins that are already here.
From God's perspective, from the perspective of the happiness we are meant to enjoy eternally, euthanasia will not solve the suffering of sickness. Eugenics will not solve the suffering of disability. Abortion will not solve the suffering of poverty. Adultery will not solve the suffering of abandonment. Sin, in short, does not solve suffering. It may paper it over for a time, but if we are to believe God's revelation to us about how we are to live, these seeming shortcuts to happiness in fact do nothing but perpetuate suffering in different ways.
The happiness that God offers is not a "get out of consequences free" card, but rather the chance to grow in virtue despite a unvirtuous world, and to be happy with Him one day in heaven. That is the release from suffering towards which we should all strive.