Chewing on the Pope’s Latest Words on Marriage

Reading about the pope’s recent remarks on marriage, in which he speculates that many, if not most, Catholic marriages may well be null—I was reminded of a conversation I had some months back with a priest.

We found ourselves sitting next to each other at a fundraising dinner at a banquet hall. While the bread baskets and limp salad were being passed around, he mentioned that he was a rector of a large seminary—and also had a background in canon law.

Since part of my ministry includes working as an advocate for my diocesan tribunal—facilitating annulments and doing a lot of the preliminary legwork for people seeking a declaration of nullity—I shared an observation.

“I do a lot of work on annulments,” I explained, buttering my bread, “and I’ve noticed something. So many of the people who come before me about getting an annulment have one thing in common. Many of them came from broken homes themselves. Or, if not broken, at least seriously dysfunctional. We’re talking alcoholism, drug abuse, physical violence. They run the gamut. There’s been a lot of pain.”

He nodded in agreement and stabbed his salad.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I said, “but the common thread here seems to be that many of them got married without understanding, really, what they were doing. And I don’t just mean sacramentally—but that’s a big part of it. It’s more than religion or theology. They just don’t ‘get’ marriage, or relationships. They’ve never seen a good marriage modeled for them, and they don’t know how to do it. They don’t know how to relate to another person, how to fight with another person, how to resolve conflicts. And they don’t have a sense of this being a lifetime commitment, and something that will undergo a lot of problems over a lot of years.”

“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Absolutely.” But then he said something that shocked me—but that made perfect sense.

“We’re seeing the exact same problem in the seminary.”

“Really?”

“More of these young guys are coming from broken homes. They have parent issues. They have mother issues. They have issues. Period.  Relationship problems. Maturity problems.  We have our hands full.”

We chewed a moment in silence.

“Well,” I began, “what can you do?”

He sighed. He shrugged. “Some of these guys take a lot of work.”

What all of this drove home to me is that the problem of divorce in our culture goes deeper and wider than we usually think. It affects families in ways we can’t often foresee—and is even impacting vocations to the religious life.

While experts —and the rest of us —will continue to debate what the pope had to say about widespread invalid marriages, I think we can all agree that the current state of marriage in the world is dismal, and getting worse. And I do think having more bad marriages—or marriages that are seriously damaged—only perpetuates the problem.

When couples don’t really understand what they are getting into; when they can’t negotiate; when they can’t compromise; when they can’t communicate constructively, disaster often follows.

They truly have no idea that a vow is a weighty thing.

UPDATE: A friend sent this my way, and I confess I’d never encountered it before. It’s the exhortation which used to be read at a Catholic Nuptial Mass. (Whatever happened to this?) Perhaps if more people heard this and took this to heart, we’d be in a different place:

My dear friends: You are about to enter upon a union which is most sacred and most serious. It is most sacred, because established by God himself. By it, he gave to man a share in the greatest work of creation, the work of the continuation of the human race. And in this way he sanctified human love and enabled man and woman to help each other live as children of God, by sharing a common life under his fatherly care. Because God himself is thus its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self. [But Christ our Lord added to the holiness of marriage an even deeper meaning and a higher beauty. He referred to the love of marriage to describe his own love for his Church, that is, for the people of God whom he redeemed by his own blood. And so he gave to Christians a new vision of what married life ought to be, a life of self-sacrificing love like his own. It is for this reason that his apostle, St. Paul, clearly states that marriage is now and for all time to be considered a great mystery, intimately bound up with the supernatural union of Christ and the Church, which union is also to be its pattern.]

This union, then, is most serious, because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate, that it will profoundly influence your whole future, That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life, and are to be expected in your own. And so not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death.

Truly, then, these words are most serious. It is a beautiful tribute to your undoubted faith in each other, that recognizing their full import, you are, nevertheless, so willing and ready to pronounce them. And because these words involve such solemn obligations, it is most fitting that you rest the security of your wedded life upon the great principle of self-sacrifice. And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you will belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is usually difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, and the Son so loved us that he gave himself for our salvation. “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

No greater blessing can come to your married life than pure conjugal love, loyal and true to the end. May, then, this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on. And if true love and the unselfish spirit of perfect sacrifice guide your every action, you can expect the greatest measure of earthly happiness that may be allotted to man in this vale of tears. The rest is in the hands of God.

Nor will God be wanting to your needs, he will pledge you the life-long support of his graces [in the Holy Sacrament which you are now going to receive].

Photo: Pixabay