whose family? which values? unconventional families and the church

Note: this is the first in a series of posts. The focus here is on divorced mothers.

The decisive moment was when I found the letters. I’d gotten used to whiskey bottles under the bed and coke baggies in the filing cabinet; I’d gotten used to him vanishing for days; and somehow I had accepted the disappearance of thousands of dollars from our business account.  I too had made an art of self-destruction, once, and now I assumed he too would reclaim himself, after the birth of our child. The prospect of having a baby had changed everything for me, and though I was no longer emotionally invested in the marriage, I was determined to stick it out and make a decent family life. Before the money disappeared, I’d been looking at farms for sale.

The letters were all along the lines of “I know we should stop but I can’t.” The writer of the letters was a woman I knew, a single mother and former crack addict whom I’d helped out in the past. When confronted, he explained that it was nothing – just poetry. She’d asked him to teach her how to write poetry.

“In that case, you didn’t teach her very well,” I said, because sarcasm is my superpower.

During my separation period, and through my divorce, I lived with two friends in a log cabin in the middle of a field. We were running a community theatre company as well as working our respective jobs, so my son’s first year was spent in an atmosphere of Renaissance costumes, dramatic makeup, and amateur divas. My friends helped me with my son, and tolerated my volatile moods. I gardened, and we cooked, and threw bonfire parties. It was a time for regaining a sense of self, and awareness of the limitations in vision that had led me to make a series of idiotic choices. My divorce, however, was a choice I didn’t regret. Oscar Wilde’s facetious statement that “divorces are made in heaven” sometimes came to mind. Of course, this sort of thinking is frowned upon in Catholic circles, where it is customary to speak of divorce as a “terrible evil.”

I was only in liminal relation to Catholic circles, anyway. On Sundays we went to mass, sometimes wearing the costumes I made for our plays, usually twenty minutes late. It was a progressive parish, and no one seemed disapproving, but no one seemed welcoming either. It’s not easy to be invisible in voluminous gypsy skirts while toting a brown-eyed Botticelli cherub, but in that parish I was invisible. When I went to the cry room to nurse, it was usually dominated by yuppie parents making small talk while their grade-schoolers ran about playing games. No one else ever seemed to be nursing. No one spoke to me. The parishioners who showed up for the Spanish mass were friendlier and felt more my type, but I didn’t speak their language – and, they were a community. I had friends close by, and supportive family elsewhere, but my parish was not my community, even though it was where I’d done my marriage preparation, and had my son baptized.  I imagined that perhaps at other parishes, more vibrant and alert, I might have found support. I suspected that at more traditional parishes I might have met hostility.

After my housemates moved away, life became more difficult. Sometimes childcare ate up my entire paycheck. And my son kept getting sick at daycare, so I had to stay home with him, and not get paid – but still had to pay the daycare. On the last day of the month I sometimes foraged for wild edibles. Finally I realized that I would have to move back near my family, if I was going to have a sustainable existence.

In retrospect it is odd to think that in spite of our Catholic tradition of communal care and social justice, from the days of the early church on, it never occurred to me when I was poor, desperate, depressed, and isolated to seek assistance in my parish. I imagine the splendid religious houses of the Middle Ages with wise monks or nuns dealing out herbs, healing, food, and counsel – I imagine desperate people taking sanctuary in monasteries of cathedrals.  But my church was never a sanctuary. When I needed medical coverage, I got it from the government. When I needed work, it was the wife of a lesbian acquaintance who helped me get a job (teaching adult education for the homeless and mentally ill). When I needed daycare, I paid a third of my paycheck so that my son could be left with strangers in a fluorescent-lit room blasting eighties music. They didn’t even wipe his face after feeding him, so when I picked him up his mouth was crusted with leftovers and snot. A libertarian at the time, I was proud of not taking any further government assistance, in spite of the fact this meant my toddler was separated from me for hours every day.

The church provided me with the sacraments, but in that solipsistic vacuum it was hard for me to remind myself that these truly linked me with the body of Christ. They felt more like individual quirks that had become part of a fairly pointless routine.

There has been much talk lately about the church’s sacramental role in the life of the divorced and remarried, but what about the role of divorced people in the life of the church? I am curious about the experiences of other women, particularly. Women are regaled with the message that our moral duty is to stay home with your children, but for divorced women this is rarely an option.

I asked several women about what it was like getting divorced as a Catholic.

Tara is a single mother of three boys. Her husband left when her youngest was two and oldest was eight. “My children attended Catholic school in a small southern town. Our lives revolved around that school…we moved to the town solely for the school.” Her husband explained, when he left, that God had called him to another woman, also Catholic, who also left her children. “I would like to say that the community responded and understood (it takes a village). Unfortunately that was not the case. I was brought into the priest/principle’s office and told to see the pastor. I was told if I had prayed harder my husband would not have left.” Hers was the only divorced family in the school. “We were treated as oddities,” Tara said, “as if it was contagious. Divorce is like death, mourning occurs. There was no funeral for the death of my family. Just judgement.” Tara and her ex-husband went to counseling with a priest for a while. “Although sincere and wanting to help, the priest was ill equipped to help us, saying things like ‘clearly you are both hurt’ ‘it might not have been wise to steal all the family’s money and leave nothing to feed the kids.'” Finally, for economic reasons, Tara had to withdraw her children from the school. “Honestly it was not a difficult choice at that point. I was crushed and felt rudderless until I found a non-Catholic Church that the very first day said to me: what do you need, how can we help? They appointed a youth minister to take my boys under their wing, asked if we needed money, spent time listening and arranged counseling. It saved our family I believe.”

“It takes a village.” Why do people frown on this idea, as though it were some liberal invention? It is actually a very old understanding, rooted in the understanding of Christian community. Perhaps our contemporary western idea of “family” is too rigid, too isolated. If a non-Catholic church could welcome the outsider, it is particularly shameful that a Catholic community would fail to support one of its own.

Tara’s is not the only such experience. Molly also failed to find support in her Catholic network.  “I was raised Catholic,” she said. “The kind of Catholic that went on youth retreats where you studied Church history, and the Trinity and Marian apparitions. I went to Catholic HS, which still wasn’t Catholic enough. My parents would always find fault and ways that other Catholics were cafeteria Catholics and entirely too liberal. When I got married, I was certain that I would be married for the rest of my life. Divorce was not an option. My parents had already disowned one brother for getting a divorce and another for marrying a woman who had had a divorce. They both of course have left the Church.” During her marriage, her entire social structure revolved around the Church. During my marriage, my entire social structure revolved around the Church. But when her marriage began to fall apart, she had nowhere to turn. “If I brought it up with anyone, I would receive responses like, ‘you shouldn’t make him angry’, and ‘try therapy.’ I had been in therapy for years – therapists that he chose. When he would go, he would get angry and leave when they would suggest that he do anything to change. I had one therapist that feared for my safety after only one session with him.” In Molly’s circle, you had to stay married, no matter what. “Only, I couldn’t do anymore than I already was.  Needless to say, when I finally got a restraining order and a divorce, I was left with no one. No community whatsoever.” Finally she reached out to childhood friends, many of whom had left the church. “I slowly rebuilt my friendships and community. I left the Church myself. I attempted to go a few times. Most of the time, I broke down crying and had to leave. I eventually gave up. While I believe the Truths of the Faith, I didn’t find any kindness or community there and the will to keep going eventually left. And, I am much happier now. Dating a guy who was also raised Catholic, but left for other reasons. We are both divorced and so we will never be accepted by the Church. I would have liked to raise my children understanding the faith, but I wouldn’t want to have to explain why we are not accepted.”

Daniella’s story provides a better example of how a faith community should give support: “I was a single Mom and then I married the wrong guy because I felt like crap trying to be Catholic while being a single Mom. Now I’m separated. I’m much happier separated than I ever was married, but I struggle with some issues. When my husband left, people from the home school group provided like two months worth of meals for me, sent me gift cards, all of which was invaluable. I’m grateful for that. There’s a part of me that feels I should lay low, not be so open that breaking up with my husband was one of the best things that ever happened to me because I still come across Catholic articles that divorce is selfish.“

It’s possible that simple ignorance is part of the problem. We are provided with glowing depictions of Catholic marriage, assured that the sacraments give us a special grace of endurance of which other couples are deprived. But reality is always more complicated, and some people may be too sheltered to see this.

Pat, a divorced mother of two now in their fifties, encountered such ignorance.  “I actually asked the priest, as per the rules, for permission for a separation. After arguing with me for about 45 minutes he signed the proper papers. Then as I walked out he stopped me to ask: ‘you mean he just walked out on you?’ ‘Yes, father, and he’s much larger than I am. Nothing I could do.’ ‘Oh, I see’… How many times do you suppose I’d explained the situation!!!”  This was fifty years ago. Have attitudes changed? Perhaps in some circles, but not in all. And this is especially difficult for children of divorced parents. Pat said: “My son was the only child in his class at a Catholic school, where I also taught for a while, who came from a one-parent home, then known as a broken home. How I detested that!” Implicit in this is the idea that a divorced family somehow isn’t a real family.

Lacey’s experience as a divorced single mother shows how difficult this is for women, given the many conflicting societal pressures placed on us to perform the correct roles. “I was a divorced single mother. My marriage was invalidated by the church, and he later died. It was very difficult to go to mass because as a single mother it’s much harder to keep two or more children quite. And any noise brought harsh condemning stares. So usually we were relegated to going into a side room of the church and watching the mass on the tv provided for that purpose. Most of the time I didn’t feel this qualified as celebrating the mass, and just opted to stay home.” The divorced single mother is too often viewed as being obligated somehow to provide a father for her children, but how to do this? “There were also mixed signals with equal pressure to get remarried so my kids had a real family, and pressure not to date.” Lacey found that when she volunteered as a religious educator and in other areas, she received support, but when life was too hectic to allow this, the support vanished. “There was also equal condemnation whether I worked or not. If I did not work but stayed home, I wasn’t providing or setting a good example. If I worked I wasn’t raising my own children.” Lacey’s conclusion is one many of us share: “I would definitely like to see more effort in the church to support and encourage single parents. Not just mothers. And parents in general. Even today I don’t feel like children are welcome in church, and that makes it very difficult to go… I think we need to work on making children more welcome. There seems to be a mixed message: have children but don’t allow them to be children during mass.”

A divorced single mother needs material and spiritual support. As for the first, perhaps churches need to focus more on reclaiming our more traditional understanding of the church’s role in the physical, daily life of its members.  Luke writes of the early church that “there was not a single needy person among them” (Acts 4:34). In a wealthy nation such as America, this should be the goal of every church community. Granted, in poorer areas, this may not be possible – but, the church is a broad network. Right-wing Catholics are suspicious of public welfare programs that are supposedly usurping private charity – but social justice for families can’t wait upon the leisure of the better off. Churches should welcome those programs that enable families to flourish better, while also working to encourage private charity as a premiere Christian obligation. Catholic employers must also recognize their obligation to pay a just wage – especially if these same employers tend to inveigh against government welfare. When it isn’t possible to provide divorced mothers with the opportunity to stay home, at least Catholic employers should provide safe, reliable, affordable child care, preferably on the working premises, so that mothers needn’t be too sundered from their children.

Spiritually, church communities should welcome and embrace divorced mothers, not judge them. It is very unlikely that a woman would choose to be a single mother, with all the financial insecurity and psychological isolation entailed, unless the alternative were something worse. Trying to force a woman to remain with an abuser is not “keeping the family together.” It is, instead, putting a family in danger. And sometimes it wasn’t even the woman’s choice. If a man has left his family, what is left is still a family. And this family deserves more, not less support, from those who profess to imitate Christ.