Perspective Pope ignores wisdom from lived
reality
By ARTHUR JONES
The one-column story about the pope
urging lawyers and judges not to take divorce cases was on one page of my
newspaper. Across the way was a six-column headline: Abuse: Japan finally
confronts the horror of marital violence.
Certainly no one in his or her right mind actually favors
divorce, just as, one hopes, no one actually favors war or abortion.
Simply stated those three -- divorce, war and abortion -- result,
respectively, in wrecked families with bewildered, emotionally crushed kids;
dead 20-year olds; and dead babies.
But does a church that can argue the case for military chaplains
(who perforce must argue for the just war theory and thereby side with killing)
not want the same Catholic compassion present as an element in these other
tough, wrenching arenas in life?
My wife and I have been married for 40 years, but in our families
the divorce patterns are pretty close to the average for Europe and the United
States.
In those rare cases where a nearest and dearest had no option but
to divorce, Ive counseled get the best darn lawyer you can find. And if
that lawyer is Catholic, great. For if divorce werent bad enough,
theres that extra element of anguish in suing for divorce that comes with
the being-Catholic package. (From the worst-case scenarios Ive heard, the
annulment process is rarely a cleansing exit from an unworkable marriage.)
Pope John Paul II referred to divorce as a festering
wound in the society.
True, some people do use divorce as an easy step in serial
monogamy or to avoid commitments theyve made, just as some women use
abortion as a birth control device. And some nations use war as the easiest way
to exert their power.
But the reasons for the divorce frequently are an even greater
festering wound within the family relationship than that which
divorce inflicts on society.
Might not a Catholic lawyer or judge with a keen conscience be
just the person to find ways to keep the festering to a minimum -- by doing
what is necessary to cauterize the wound and keep the parties talking in the
interests of the children, once the drastic deed is done?
The popes address did nothing to advance the discussion,
even while theres every reason to praise Catholic teaching for holding up
marriage as lifelong ideal.
But the overall teaching is so trapped in its self-created tangle
of virginity and celibacy and sex-as-procreation fixations, it propagates
distorted notions of what married and conjugal life are all about.
Consequently, practically every fresh pronouncement, like this one to lawyers
on divorce, moves the church further away from having any useful impact.
John Paul is an odd combination. A romantic and a do-it-my way
university professor in the 19th-century mold, he is also a man with notions of
family apparently based more on wishful thinking than personal experience.
He beatifies a married couple who stayed together without having
sex as if that were a plus. (Have you ever seen a happy-looking statue of St.
Joseph?) And these strange romantic illusions feed on themselves in that
closed-off Vatican world. For if the pope wants to call in the experts, those
who recruit them will recruit people who will tell the pope what he wants to
hear. You can be sure it wasnt a roundtable of happily married
grandparents whod all celebrated their golden weddings that selected the
worlds best example of a couple worth beatifying.
Nor did the pope talk to people like them before he spoke on
divorce.
Yet it is people who have walked together for 50 years who know
why other people might have to walk away. Couples whove worked and still
work at being companions, friends and partners -- emotionally, sexually,
intellectually -- understand the good fortune that has visited them when it
works out.
What they, and people at every level of the Catholic community are
listening for in papal and Vatican utterances is some sense that the
institutional church understands that it is the laypeople who are the ones with
the lived reality.
No one is calling for Catholic teaching to take its cue from the
culture. Neither do Catholics want the teaching to be out of touch with those
who best represent its community in that culture. People such as the golden
wedding elders who, on many life issues, are wiser than the teaching.
This particular case, the simultaneous newspaper stories of the
pope on divorce and of women in Japan (it could have been America or Italy)
fleeing abusive marriages, is offered just as a case in point.
Catholics -- lawyers and others -- will read the marital violence
story and nod their heads. They know. And theyll read the pope story and
shake their heads and say he doesnt know.
How sad.
Arthur Jones is NCRs editor at large. His e-mail
address is ajones96@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, February 22,
2002
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