As we approach the feast of St. Monica, we will find ourselves deluged on social media, as we are every year, with hot takes about how not to use the saints to encourage women to stay in abusive marriages.
These takes are sometimes even dramatically accompanied by photos of models bound and gagged or cowering under a clenched fist, as if women everywhere are literally held prisoner by their monster husbands and are simply awaiting permission from their friendly neighborhood blogger to break free of the mental constraints imposed upon them by an irrational church, run by priests anxious to keep them in their shackles. Are there some women in mortal danger? The world is a big place, so the answer is yes. Does anyone think that those women should be beaten, bound, and gagged because of dear St. Monica or the truly wise and delicate Élisabeth Leseur? Of course not. But it's Straw Man Season out there.
Let's be realistic about the state of marriage today. Very few, including priests, dare tell a woman to keep her marriage together, for fear of being accused of supporting and enabling abuse, which has become a catch-all word for a spectrum of situations, not all of them even a little dire.
Few have any idea how to encourage a woman in difficulty. No one knows how to help a couple recover and flourish. Many seem to have lost hope that a man can repent and change. Above all, no one feels comfortable urging discomfort and yes, suffering -- perhaps because we are all trying to avoid suffering ourselves in our worldliness. By my observation, even Catholic counselors, when told of a difficult situation, respond with advice to leave the union.
But let's stop. Let's return to the unbroken (but now bent) teaching of the Church that marriage is indissoluble. Yes, the Church can find that a marriage never occurred with a declaration of nullity, but no power can dissolve what has occurred (and that is not what annulment means!). "What God has joined, let no man put asunder."
We must stop giving people excuses for divorce. If there is a situation that truly puts anyone in danger, the Church has always allowed separation. Sometimes it is the only remedy, always with the hope of reform and reunion.
Somehow, oddly, separation doesn't satisfy those anti-St.-Monica pundits. They want divorce and they want it now. It's almost as if they don't think that marriage is, indeed, indissoluble.
Here is the crux of the matter: Parents often say, with the sense of having stated something rather fine, rather exalted, that they would do anything -- suffer anything, up to and including death -- for their child. Yet, when a couple divorces, they put a knife through their child's heart. They demonstrate that in fact, there is quite a bit they would not do for their children. They deal a blow, in the name of happiness, from which a person will never fully recover. And we in our Church today do not help them do better. Shame on us when we forget the example given to us by our great saints and instead jettison their witness.
Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak, a compilation of personal reflections, is the only book I know that conveys in a multi-faceted way that no one person could encompass on his own, the harm done to the child of divorce. Leila Miller, the compiler, has posted on her blog the insightful and important Foreword by Jennifer Roback Morse. Please read it, I beg you, before you give a big "you go girl, amen, preach" to those loud voices telling women to leave their marriage!
St. Monica, pray for us!
Here here! As a child of parents who lived and are still in an acrimonious marriage, i am so grateful for their fidelity. We might have avoided some unrest if they had divorced, but at such a terrible cost. They humbly stayed together for their children, and simply to keep their promise before God and I am better for it. Of course we want happy holy marriages. No one wants to hear that you can be unhappy in your marriage and still be doing the right thing by staying put. Yet... my parents are happy people. We had and have wonderful family times even though all is not as it should be much of the time. Of course God wants us to be happy, but even more to be united with Him. Happiness seems often the goal when divorce is on the table, yet pursuing it brings lasting misery for the children. Ive seen how happiness can result from the peace of doing the right, very hard thing.
ReplyDeleteWell said!!
DeleteThank you! As a wife/mother in a very difficult marriage I NEED to keep hearing such testimony!!
DeleteI am the original poster above. I will add you to my prayers tonight. The Lord knows who we are and what we need. I cant tell you how much peace my mom has now as she rounds the final lap of her vocation, due to being steadfast. It can be done! She had and has loving family, a few good friends, and a solid habit of prayer. She often told us, while not running down my dad, that marriage is supposed to be better than she had, so we didnt make mistakes in choosing a spouse. She has prayed for my dad for years. Finally he now prays a daily rosary with her and attends mass with her. An answer to much prayer! Also, dad got cancer, a broken leg, eye disease, and a heart attack in the space of10 years. Mom told him after the first incident this was the Lord getting his attention. She never spoke up to him! But she was right and dad listened. Things have changed alot since then. Of course there is much more to the story, but those are things that have inspired me to witness. She is not one for therapy but us children have all used that with various sucess. Don't be afraid that your children will be ruined. We cannot know how God will work for our salvation. He is still working for all of us. Til the last breath.
DeleteUgh, yes! I heard the "I would die for you" talk as my parents were divorcing. So...staying married to my mother is worse than death? You would die for me, but you can't stay with the one person you made a perpetual vow to?
ReplyDeleteAmen Leila, you go girl, preach!
haha I will try!
DeleteI think that part of the problem with these discussions is they never include concrete examples. Faithful Catholic women who probably should leave because they are married to real, checks-all-the-boxes narcissists don't precisely because they are trying to be faithful Catholic women who take their vows seriously. They're unsure how much abuse is too much? Many times, their husbands (especially), their parish, their families have convinced them they're being too "needy". Whereas others do leave because they just can't get along with their husbands in a generic sense. They too lack real examples of when you just "put up with" him. I would say in the first situation the children will be damaged no matter what. If they grow up seeing mom physically or emotionally abused, it will affect their development. If mom leaves that will also affect them (because a whole family makes them a whole person). The 2nd situation is one where all the adults assure themselves it's better for the kids when the truth of the matter is the kids don't care if they don't "get along" because they just want the family together.
ReplyDeleteI want to add there is absolutely zero support for faithful Catholic women who don't want to end their marriage but need help because their husbands truly are physically or emotionally abusive. They're told to divorce by their priest. Or told by their conservative friends to suck it up. It's marriage after all!
Thank you!!! Yes!!! Some of us are “bleeding out” but actually want to keep our marriage together and there is NO support. They don’t understand the dynamic of an empathetic woman who would do anything to try to please her husband but he cannot be pleased and moves the goalpost and becomes more critical. We want to stay even at the expense of mental and physical health but there’s no help to be found to navigate this situation
DeleteThis is an interesting and very thorny question. I would say my parents fit your first example of the narcissist husband and the wife who dealt with alot of dismissing of her valid feelings and concerns (is this emotional abuse? It wasnt healthy, but abuse seems to immediately take the situation too far.) Yet they have now been married more than 50 years and my dad is at the end of his life. They still have some very wonderful moments of friendship and enjoyment. He is not a monster, and he has in fact gotten alot kinder to mom. I have the gift of seeing their long faithfulness to each other bear fruit now. Not perfect, but still amazing. And as a burdened lonely young wife in her 30s and 40s, trying to understand what she was doing wrong, my mother could not have dreamed of the strength and peace she would gain in her 70s. Or the depths of her faith. By staying through what many women today leave, she has gained so much. I mean this not to boast or chide those who leave, but to encourage. You don't know how the Lord will walk with you and just how you will come out the other side better and stronger. Eternity is the point. My mom has told me these things. My dad too has said he would not understand faith without my mother. His friends in his youth can't believe how much my dad prays now. I dont quite know what the other comments are looking for when they talk about support for women in these situations. Nothing will make it hurt less. Our family felt different and alone because we were different from happy families. But the fresh others offered was welcome. Being around other happy families helped me to see how a good marriage should function. My parents have benefited most from friends and a church that all focused on growing holy. It didn't fix their marriage but that was the best thing.
DeleteGreat for that couple that came out the other side. What of the children? Unfortunately, the effects I've seen are hurt children who carry that for the rest of their lives. The wife may have carried the burden for herself but not the children. The children are likely to leave the Church, hate men, hate their parents, have poor relationships, and generally make poor choices in life.
DeleteAnd please for anyone who doesn't know emotional abuse by a narcissist can be even more damaging than physical abuse please do some reading on it by qualified experts. It's more than the dismissal of feelings.
I am one of those children.
DeleteI don't mean to dismiss your experience, just sharing my own.
I too am one of those children. I begged my mother to leave, but she valued respectability and financial security over our safety, including our physical safety. There were many in my childhood who had to be aware that all was not well with our family, but the patterns of denial are very difficult to break. It is a failing to elevate the appearance of marriage over the people in it.
DeleteI think a good rule of thumb for asking the question of "Can this marriage be saved" is when there are children in the household is whether the motivation for separation is for the protection of the children or whether it would take place despite their best interests. In a starker way, would you be fighting for full custody as a single parent, believing that very difficult path is better for them than staying in the marriage?
Yes! A podcast I sometimes listen to had on a prominent Catholic blogger, recently divorced. The podcasters and the guest all talked about how taboo it is to leave, how difficult that makes it when it’s really necessary, etc (absolutely true in certain circles, I’d say). But! Then the guest said that it was hard coming to grips with the fact that there wasn’t a marriage anymore. Neither host corrected her or guided her to the truth. I actually wrote them expressing disappointment in this and they just dodged the question. I don’t pretend to know if a separation (or even civil divorce) was necessary in this case, but neither dissolves the union, which cannot be dissolved- something the podcast guest had written with her husband in the past!
ReplyDeleteFor stories of hope in difficult marriages, I highly recommend Jeff cavins’ amazing grace for married couples. 12 stories of completely redeemed marriages.
Everything you’ve written here is utter nonsense. Those women need to GET OUT NOW. Let those men die in pain and loneliness. There is no benefit whatsover to being miserable and anyone who counsels a wife to stay is guilty of beating her just like her husband. Suffering doesn’t do anything good and should be avoided.
DeleteThis is not actually what I said. I said that sometimes they DO need to get out, I don’t know whether this particular women did or not, but “getting out” doesn’t mean the marital union is actually dissolved. I did not say I’d counsel a wife to stay in an unsafe situation, absolutely not; again, only that physical separation and possibly even civil divorce don’t actually dissolve the marital union. Maybe respond to what I said. I was NOT disappointed these podcasters had on a prominent Catholic blogger who had separated from her husband. I made it clear that I have no idea whether or not that was necessary (she didn’t say she was abused but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t). I was disappointed that they spread the lie that there was “no longer a marriage.” There is either still a marriage (not saying she shouldn’t separate; she certainly should if there’s true abuse) or there never was a marriage.
DeleteWhether abuse that merits separation or other difficulties, I absolutely do recommend Jeff cavins book. It is true that god can redeem all things, if we let him. This is not to say everyone will accept the grace, but it is real and offered.
DeleteI saw a recent Edify video, where the featured speaker, J.P. DeGance, argues that the collapse of marriage is main reason for the collapse of faith and Church attendance (I don't think he's wrong, though I would argue there are other reasons, too...feminization of the Church, banal liturgies, watered-down catechism, etc....of course these terrible things are indirectly or directly the result of the same movement that hates marriage and the family, aka communism/feminism). However, he points out that since the Church believes that The Youth are the key to revitalizing the church, they spend ~$4-6 billion dollars annually on youth ministry (Catholic and non-Catholic Christian churches combined). But The Youth keep leaving, what gives? His group Communio commissioned a study that found if a child grew up in family with continuously married parents, be it a Baby Boomer or Millennial child, the children keep going to church. So he argues that instead of spending $$$ on youth ministry, churches need to focus on marriage ministry and saving the family. He gives an example of a 3-year ecumenical effort in Jacksonville FL of to strengthen marriage, and how the divorce rate dropped as a consequence of that effort. I think he's right. Fix the family, keep the faith (of course - I think it goes in the other direction too - fix the practices of the faith...keep the men, which leads to keeping the family - but that's a conversation that church leaders definitely don't want to have...in fact, one might even suspect that some want the current outcome, but that's another conversation).
ReplyDeleteBut in short, an awesome youth ministry (and I am not opposed to awesome faith things for The Youth! My own children have grown spiritually from such efforts!) cannot compensate for a bad family culture when it comes to keeping The Faith. But I suppose it easier to minister to the youth than say hard truths to their parents.
Wow...excellent assessment & commentary!!! And, I totally agree!!!
DeleteI am all for separating if necessary for the safety of spouse and child, but I wish more spouses would remain faithful to their vows even separated. I have known those who have done this - it can be done and is very edifying! On the other hand, I have a friend who was recently divorced after almost 40 years of married life, 7 children, homeschooled... the guy went off the deep end. She was encouraged immediately to seek an annulment and is seeing someone already. He abandoned her for sure, but I'm probably the only person who encouraged her to stand firm in hope of eventual reconciliation or just be faithful to her vows in the meantime. It was her "very devout" aunt was the one who suggested she pursue an annulment immediately! In the meantime, I see the havoc it's wreaking on the kids' faith. I think they could see what their dad did was wrong, but their mom moving on in this way has done far more damage, in my opinion and it breaks my heart!
ReplyDeleteThe distinction is between separation and divorce.
DeleteMy parents marriage is bitter. My sister and I are grown now, but it was always marked by lots of passion, anger, and yelling. My mom was... not good to us kids. I am still grateful they stayed together through the threats, drinking, and heartache. She may have been (be) awful, but I never felt disposable or unloved like my friends who are children of divorce. Makes a difference
ReplyDeleteThere is only one way to deal with an abusive man: kick his worthless ass OUT. Let him sleep on ghe street until he proves after YEARS of work that he has changed, but no forgiveness until he changes FIRST.
ReplyDeleteHello, I came across your writing as a 30 something catholic woman contemplating divorce who is veery scarred. My husband has many psychological issues. He has never hurt me physically but he spews a lot of verbal abuse at me when I put up boundaries and ask him to stay away from me and our children during his breakdowns.
ReplyDeleteMy husband does not work. He says his anxiety is too bad. I work full time to support our three children, two of whom have chronic illnesses. I cannot leave him alone with the children. He's not a safe adult for them to be with.
Right now we are separated but he reaches out every few days to say he is coming back because he can't live on his parents sofa forever. He lasers out and gets angry when I say I don't want him to come back. He says he cannot take care of himself.