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.
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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.
20 comments:
Selmy's article was certainly heartfelt but one of the other things that struck me was the notion that while God might legitimately ask adults to suffer, it made no sense at all to accept that our children could suffer with us (which for her was much of the emotional thrust of her argument).
The painful truth is though that of course our children will suffer if we find ourselves bearing an especially heavy and painful cross, and there is just nothing we can do about it if we are willing to bear the cross God calls us to...When talking to one of my daughters about the times when she and her sisters have suffered in the midst of our family trying to do the right thing, I pointed to a crucifix as a way of indicating that God's promise was not that doing what was right would entail no suffering - au contrarire, it could mean the opposite....
I deeply in my bones get that the suffering of children is the most painful thing for a parent imaginable, and I would not want to make Mindy's situation any worse at all by being uncharitable, but the pain of our children is part of the deal. Some of the hurts go very deep indeed, but even in very hard situations, all bets can't be off.
In some ways though, her post points to a deeper problem - that we believers are so stretched and seem incapable of helping each other in a sustained and effective manner. While perhaps owning all goods in common as did the early Christians is beyond us, there are far too many people among us are suffering without the help of their brothers and sisters in faith.
I remember when the Torodes recanted their book Open Embrace: A protestant couple rethinks contraception. Now that they were a more mature married couple instead of being young and idealistic they realized how hard NFP was, and how contraception would solve all of their problems. Then later they got a public divorce and Bethany said Sam was abusive all along. I can't help but think in both cases, the underlying problem wasn't NFP.
What if, instead of losing one spouse to alcohol, one were to lose one spouse's ability to be a "second body" doing all the tasks? I had a friend whose husband was on permanent disability, and I don't think his disability check went that far in the household. Depending on the seriousness of the disability, he probably wasn't helping with the bedtimes, and definitely wasn't helping with any heavy lifting..... Yes, he still was a partner with whom to share the general weight of life, but not in a physical sense. Or what if one's spouse is struck down by early Alzheimer's - should one be free to go out and procure a replacement? Sometimes people tell moving stories about how the new spouse helps care for the ex - does that make it ok?
Perfect picture up top.
...and when she says, "privileges the law above the actual good human beings" she reveals a strain of legalism (law just because & arbitrary vs law based on reality of what will cause us to flourish) which may be part of her problem.
Like Mother Like Daughter recently pointed to an interesting article on legalism underlying attempts to do away with sexual ethics in Church: What Is Legalism? by CHRISTOPHER O. TOLLEFSEN (Apr 15, 2017 at Public Discourse).
Here's the top blurb: "Contemporary legalism downplays, ignores, and occasionally denigrates the “rules” of morality in favor of mercy, accompaniment, and integration, because it fails to see that there is an essential and constitutive relationship between morality and human flourishing."
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/04/18930/
mandamum,
That's an interesting point about moral law. As I recall both the psalms and St. Paul talk about God's law as an expression of God's love, whereas the modern tendency is to see law and love as opposed.
The author of the article makes several generalizations that are at least dubious, I hope; in any case, they don't justify the conclusions she draws. I dislike it when people try to play the gender card ("Catholic men pronounce judgment and women are to suffer"). Being men and women has nothing to do with it. That is, I acknowledge it's more often that physical abuse targets a woman and she is more likely to become a single parent, but a single dad suffers just as much for being a single parent, and physical abuse doled out by the physically stronger men has nothing to do with other faithful Catholics (i. e. endorsing the Church's teaching about marriage) being also men.
Also, besides the exaggerations that are manipulative (Catholics don't see the forced lack of sex as a problem; Church endorses the choice of bringing the abusive partner back) I wish to note the time frame o the events she recounts. Just a week after a great conflict (implied being the final point of separation) she had a log time friend become her live-in partner, and "it has been a month" since she has the new partner living in. This is not time enough to allow for perspective on the new arrangement, not even to judge if the new partner is really a good helpmate in the long run (not that it would justify the moral relativism and disregard of the moral imperative, just to mention that her situation can't be viewed as proof that it will work out great if the Church only relents and allows cohabitation/remarriage in these cases).
I do think that these situations are in fact moral imperative for proactively finding ways to help single parents/abandoned spouses in the practicalities, and Catholics have a great deal to improve in this area, and to stop any prejudice/comments against divorced people (who try to live in celibate separation)
Also, there ought to be practical help for the aspects that worsen the situation of the author. In her post, she recounts that she lives in a secluded location, car almost a wreck etc. - she may be too battered down to find alternatives to life circumstances that add to her burdens, but it is not impossible to try to move to a different locality, to try to find a new and more convenient job, to find a supportive Church community. It is very, very difficult, but it's not impossible.
In a sad number of cases, mom's new boyfriend is more interested in the kids than in mom.
“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.”
Not trying to start a fight – but this is one of the types of things that has made me hesitant to enter the Church despite being impressed with Her teaching on indissolubility (who else teaches this besides Mennonites?).
While I don’t doubt that e.g. defect in consent occurs, it seems like the annulment process has become a get out of marriage free card – thus there is little practical difference with current Protestant “exception(s)” teaching and Orthodox “mercy” teaching. Or one of the other defects I suppose but defect of consent seems to be card everyone is playing.
This just seems like bad counsel (“if he is abusive, then there’s a good chance of defect in consent”) in current times given the low threshold for being considered “abused” among both men and women in our victimology culture (I’m sure real abuse does occur).
As I understand it, the annulment process provides, at best (and it’s not being applied under the best of circumstances in the U.S. in 2019) moral certitude and not absolute certitude. So you really don’t know if your marriage was real or not – you have just enough confidence to act (divorce your spouse and remarry). I assume you get out of committing mortal sin because IF you are committing adultery with the new spouse, at least you’re ignorant to the fact. This confidence is based on an unverifiable abstraction (the consent of the will of the partner) hence the traditional presumption in favor of the marriage and why very few annulments were granted. Then again, maybe the Pope and Zippy Catholic are right – most modern marriages probably aren’t valid since most of us don’t even understand what marriage is anymore – who knows what we are consenting to.
Bruce, my parents are annulled, so I've only seen the process from the outside, but even in a matter of abuse, the tribunal is not passing judgment on the current state of the marriage, but looking to gain a picture of the spouses at the moment of consent. They send questionnaires to people who knew the couple at the time: family members, friends, members of the wedding party, the priest who married them, if possible. The process for the couple asks about their attitudes toward marriage, secrets they might have been keeping -- it often strikes me that it would be helpful for couples in marriage prep to go through the annulment questions, confront some of this stuff before taking vows.
Now, often the current state of the marriage is an indicator of whether the graces of the sacrament have been operative in this couple's life together. Again, I can only speak to my parents' marriage, but what seemed outwardly a solid, religious marriage was, from the inside, rotten and dysfunctional -- from the very start, and before the start. My parents' annulment came through shortly after I got engaged, and I remember a friend asking me, "Doesn't it make you afraid to get married, that your parents could be annulled?" "No," I replied, "if anything, it reassures me to know that they didn't have the graces of the sacrament."
Enabling Abusers: On Divorce and Remarriage
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my husband tended to lurk, drunk and intimidating, whenever my kids or I had guests over
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I needed to make a break. We needed to move on
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less than a week later my best friend of 18 years asked me if he could move in
"Lurking" LOL. And I want to know exactly how many days "less than a week is".
Alternate title "Adulteress kicks out her husband to shack up with her lover"
Thank you, Mrs. Darwin (as an aside, my wife is an at home Mom with 8 kids so great respect to you – I see how hard it is firsthand).
I don’t understand sacramental theology very well. I guess I assumed that graces of the sacrament of matrimony primarily consisted in the making licit & sanctified what would otherwise be illicit and sinful (the conjugal relationship, etc.) and in the grace to bring up children together. I imagine there’s more to it than that though - I should look it up in the CCC.
It seems problematic to me to judge the validity of a sacrament by the worldly effects (what we can see) on some other participant in the sacrament. We don’t necessarily expect to be able to do this with baptism, confirmation, the Holy Eucharist, absolution, etc.
I don’t know how anyone could know for sure that their marriage wasn’t valid unless they themselves gave fraudulent vows. I will never know for sure if my wife fully consented.
"This just seems like bad counsel (“if he is abusive, then there’s a good chance of defect in consent”) in current times given the low threshold for being considered “abused” among both men and women in our victimology culture (I’m sure real abuse does occur)."
"It seems problematic to me to judge the validity of a sacrament by the worldly effects (what we can see) on some other participant in the sacrament. We don’t necessarily expect to be able to do this with baptism, confirmation, the Holy Eucharist, absolution, etc."
Bruce,
I agree that the annulment process with the marriage tribunal isn't a perfect solution (in fact, quite fraught with potential pitfalls, some of which you mention) but it's still the best thing we have. If both the married couple and the tribunal approaches the process with the right attitude, then many of those pitfalls can be avoided and the tribunal's judgment will be in alignment with how God sees the truth of the validity of the marriage in question.
It would be wrong to judge a marriage based on its present state, or any ruined marriage would be invalid by definition (and it would really be the equivalent of allowing divorce) - it can only work the other way round: if the marriage is annulled/declared never to have been valid, then we don't have to wonder in retrospect how it could have deteriorated in spite of the graces of the sacrament. Although, of course, this is also a very human way of thinking: the effectiveness of grace in helping us depends not only on God who gives it, but also on the ability/willingness of the recipient to accept it.
Hi Agnes,
Thank you for helping me understand the Catholic position.
You write:
“If both the married couple and the tribunal approaches the process with the right attitude, then many of those pitfalls can be avoided and the tribunal's judgment will be in alignment with how God sees the truth of the validity of the marriage in question.”
and
“if the marriage is annulled/declared never to have been valid, then we don't have to wonder in retrospect how it could have deteriorated in spite of the graces of the sacrament.”
As I understand it, the Holy Spirit does not grant the charisma of infallibility to such a judgment so the declaration of nullity is a fallible decision. The reality of the marriage is independent of the judgement of the tribunal. If the decision is fallible it will not necessarily be in alignment with God’s will.
So as an outsider, it seems to me if this is the Catholic position, then it is the Catholic’s way of doing what Protestants (phony “exceptions”, “the adultery of the new marriage is a one-time sin”) and Orthodox (“mercy”, “economia”) do.
Bruce,
Sorry, as the author of the post, to have been the slowest to respond.
One note on my the post itself: While I brought up the possibility that a marriage to an abuser might not have been valid, I certainly would not hold that all abusive marriages are inherently invalid. A marriage is clearly valid or not based on the circumstances at the time of the marriage. It is not rendered invalid after the fact by things that happen later.
I seem to recall that from what I've read from canon lawyers who actually deal with tribunals, consent is not actually used as a justification for ruling a marriage invalid all that often. By far the most common reason for a finding of nullity is that either Catholics failed to follow the right form (as in, they had some secular or Protestant marriage ceremony rather than a Catholic one) or one of them was unable to validly contract a marriage due to already being married, etc.
Obviously, I have an insider view, but to my mind the clear difference between the Catholic approach to annulment and the Orthodox and Protestant approaches is that the Orthodox and Protestants hold that you can dissolve a marriage and yet contract another one validly, while the whole idea of annulments is that they are based on a finding that no valid marriage was contracted in the first place. As such, I know a number of people who have been divorced but have not been granted annulments and thus are unable to ever contract another marriage validly.
Certainly, there is the possibility of the annulment process being abused by people who think it would be merciful to make any given marriage dissoluble in order to allow people to seek apparent happiness in this world via another marriage. I think it's clearly the duty of those who work on tribunals to make sure they are not allowing this kind of bias to control their work. However, I think the doctrinal understanding of annulment is fundamentally different from approaches to dissolving or ignoring marriages and allowing remarriage.
So glad you decided to post some thoughts on this.
I find that I am unsure of the answer to this:
"As I understand it, the Holy Spirit does not grant the charisma of infallibility to such a judgment so the declaration of nullity is a fallible decision. The reality of the marriage is independent of the judgement of the tribunal. If the decision is fallible it will not necessarily be in alignment with God’s will."
I would love to hear someone clarify this, but it was my understanding (without any formal teaching that I can recall) that although the judgment of the marriage tribunal is not under the charisma of infallibility (so, it is theoretically possible that they make a faulty judgment) it is still indisputable under the canonic law. Instinctively, I treated this in my mind like the power of absolution of sins (in theory, it is possible that a priest makes a faulty decision in the Sacrament of Penance that only God and the person's conscience will be aware of) but since unlike the power of absolving of sins, the binding power of the marriage tribunal's judgment is not directly confirmed by the words of Christ, I am unsure.
I am not an expert but as I understand it, canon law gives the tribunal the power to render a verdict.
I heard Cardinal Burke talk about the subject on EWTN. The main detail that I remember is the distinction between moral certitude and absolute certitude. Tribunal decisions can be assumed to provide moral certitude not absolute certitude.
Bruce,
It's a good question. I feel like I recall hearing an explanation about this at one point from a canon lawyer, but it's been a while and rather than trusting to memory I sent a note out to a canon lawyer friend to see if he can provide an explanation.
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