A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Vatican missing the point (horribly) on divorce and remarriage August 12, 2015

Good entry at One Peter Five on the disastrous approach the Synods on the Family seem to be taking towards the topic of divorce and remarriage.  I very much agree with the author below that many modernist Synod fathers and their advisers seem to believe that divorce is just something that happens to people, like getting the flu, and that the Church owes it to those people to not ostracize them for such an unfortunate accident.  There is almost no recognition of the evil of divorce in and of itself and the moral culpability of souls who fall into it the vast preponderance of the time.  I say vast preponderance, because there are rare situations of abuse and neglect where ending the marriage (but not re-marrying) is the only option due to criminal or dangerous behavior on the part of one or both spouses.  But that is not the cause of divorce in most cases – in most cases, the causes are much more prurient.

The author also makes the point that the Church, far from seeking a way to “normalize” divorce and remarriage and readmit souls in that situation to the Blessed Sacrament, should be actively discouraging divorce by pointing out the enormous damage it does to children (and the spouses themselves) and excoriating this evil to the degree it deserves.  Instead, Synod fathers have taken to using children as human shields to deflect criticism, pretending their “concern” is for the good of the children, who…….guess what!……..not being divorced, are not deprived of the Sacraments in any way.

As the author notes, rare outstanding situations aside, there is nothing in divorce that is good for children, and anything that increases the prevalence of divorce – such as a total collapse of the Church in defense of 2000 years of constant belief and practice on this subject – is an abdication of the gravest moral duty and a shirking of the very role for which Christ created the Church: the salvation of souls.

Good stuff below, it’s a long article, I excerpt a bit (my emphasis and comments):

Why is it that every time some self-styled “reformer” sets out to do away with the ancient, commonsensical, and unchangeable teaching of the Church on the question of divorce and remarriage, they immediately trot out children like human shields for their agenda? [Because people even today have strong emotions about protecting children, and appealing to emotion is a great way to short-circuit logic and get people to sign onto dumb things] Divorce and remarriage, one of the most anti-child programs ever dreamt up in the pit of hell, must be allowed, celebrated, destigmatized, promoted, or excused — why? — because we must think of the children! [Right. And let’s parse this a bit.  The idea that there are more than a handful of nominal Catholics in this country (and Europe, too) who don’t go to Mass because they are divorced/remarried/no annulment and accept that this situation bars them from the Blessed Sacrament is ludicrous.  These are the same people who contracept and fornicate in rates at least equal to the general population.  You think being divorced is going to somehow keep them from receiving if they want? You think a priest is going to stop them in 99% of the parishes in the world?  You think they stay home from Mass over this? You think their kids are less involved in the Church because mom and stepdad know they shouldn’t receive?  So, basically, this is virtually the only area of Doctrine (outside the German Church tax) still rigorously enforced and adhered to?!? Please.]

This is a damned lie. [Exactly.  The entire false moral conundrum is a farking lie.]

It is a lie, however, that Pope Francis — based on those whom he has invited to play key roles at the Synod — appears to be entertaining. Cardinal Kasper and the Gang have embraced it. And why should they not? The Old World septuagenarians gleefully hacking away at the sacrament of Holy Matrimony haven’t experienced its horrors themselves. They were raised in largely traditional families before the culture went completely to hell. They don’t have children or grandchildren who’ve suffered through it. And they haven’t been around Catholics who were experiencing it and also had the moral vocabulary to explain to them properly just what it had done to them, most likely because those poor souls had been deprived by these same shepherds of the catechesis that would have equipped them to do so. [I think, even more, this is part of the same revolution ongoing for decades to reduce the Church to a pathetic, shrunken, humanistic husk of her former self.  This is about making a church of man, not God]

I wish I could impress upon the Holy Father just how critical it is that these men not get their way. I have both the practical experience and the moral vocabulary to explain what is being proposed. My parents divorced when I was in college. I wasn’t a small child, and I wasn’t living in the home most of the time. My three younger siblings were, however, and I’ve had a front row seat to see that emotional trauma play out in their lives, and, to an extent, experienced it in my own. What happened in my own family informs my bias, but it’s one that comes directly from experiential knowledge – knowledge that is evidently lacking in the halls of Casa Santa Marta. [More on that later]

Let’s be clear about something from the start: divorce, unless one spouse is truly abusing the other, or presents a clear danger to the children, is an undeniably selfish act and a mortal sin. “Remarriage” after divorce is compounding that selfishness with even more selfishness, and that mortal sin with more mortal sin. And who suffers? The children, always. They suffer first, they suffer longest, and, I would argue, they suffer the most deeply. [Totally agree.  In fact, the entire sexual revolution – from contraception to divorce on demand to abortion to pseudo-sodo-marriage has as its primary victims whole generations of children,millions upon millions of them, the vast majority of whom will turn around and victimize their own children similarly, if they can be bothered to have any.  “Regularizing” divorce will only multiply the abuse while giving it a false patina of moral legitimacy from the world’s still reigning (if badly faded) moral arbiter, the Church]

In his August 5th general audience, Pope Francis expressed a concern that people not make fun of children for being illegitimate, or having divorced or remarried parents…….

……This acceptance, however, cannot heal what has been broken. It will not fool the little ones into thinking that all has been made right. To help these children, we should be doing all that we can to prevent them from experiencing the breakdown of the family in the first place. We should be decrying easy divorce and guilt-free remarriage.We should be stigmatizing it and shouting our disapproval of divorce from the rooftops until nobody — save those in real and desperate need — dared do a thing like it again……..[That’s what society, under the leadership of the Church, used to do, decades ago. There used to be such a stigma attached to divorce that very few would obtain one for less than truly grave reasons. But then the Church surrendered her moral authority more or less voluntarily and the culture spun completely out of control bare months later, so to speak.]

Let me again be clear: what the kids on the playground or the old ladies in the neighborhood say is the least of a child’s concerns when their parents split up. A child is the physical embodiment of the love of his parents. Because of this, a truly existential crisis ensues when a child realizes his parents no longer love each other.

Exactly, and let me congratulate the author, Gemma Flyte, on a really well-written piece.

I have seen so many lives destroyed by divorce.  I grew up among the first generation of casualties of mass divorce on demand for no particular reason.  Every single one of the kids I knew who were the product of divorce were affected in extremely negative ways.  Let me count a few:

• K, born 1961, parents divorced 1977, went from being an honor student to an addict and Playboy Playmate. She is a never-married single mother
• S, born 1971, parents divorced 1991, spent a year in a drunken stupor and dropped his major from computer science to, ahem, journalism.  He has been unable to have a mature relationship with a woman, ever.
• D, born 1969, parents divorced 1978, is himself divorced and works blue collar type jobs, in spite the fact his father held a PhD in engineering and he has a very high IQ
• B, brother of D, experienced problematic relationships with the opposite sex and poor school performance before pulling himself together in college.  He resisted marriage for years, preferring concubinage, but is now married and a father of 1
• R, brother of K, born 1970, had a very difficult childhood as the parent of a single alcoholic mother. However he found Jesus Christ and received badly needed discipline in the military and is a married father of 3
• J, born 1970, parents divorced 1987, went from an honor student to high school drop out in less than a year.  He was basically lost for 5-6 years before pulling himself together.  He is presently married and step-father of one.
• T, born 1971, never recovered from his parents’ divorce in 1983 and killed himself at age 19 in 1990

Note that most of these children of divorce were in their teens or twenties when it occurred, and yet it rocked them to their cores.  This is also just the external impact of divorce I was privy to as friends of the above, I could not discern the terrible private moments of grief and loss.

Those are just a few. I could name a lot more. I admit to being a bit passionate about the matter. Whatever divorce did for the parents – and it rarely helped any of them to live happier, more fulfilled lives – it was devastating for the kids.  That the Church would countenance giving even partial sanction to this mass atrocity is unthinkable, and reveals the utter moral derangement of the men who plot for it.  Frankly, it makes me sick to even consider it.

Post is too long, that’s it.