Sad Stories

I have a friend who is ill.  It is a debilitating and degenerative illness: she is getting worse, and it makes her increasingly irritable.  She is, of course, aware of this.  Her husband, a professional man with a responsible job, has left her for another woman.  She is alone, now, and getting increasingly ill.

I have another friend.  She has four children.  Her husband, another professional man with a responsible job, has left her too.  She is alone, now, struggling to cope with the children, and all that entails.

Both of their husbands, of course, had promised to stay with them for better or for worse; to give up all other women for them, and so on.

Why do I mention this?

Because I believe that in both of those cases (and doubtless in many thousands of others), the husband would not have left if divorce and re-marriage were not acceptable in modern society.

This is the problem when hard cases are allowed to drive the law in a permissive direction: innocent people suffer - and it is almost impossible to turn the clock back.  The fantasy that such changes only affect those who would otherwise be stuck in a bad marriage is quite false.  Every marriage is at least potentially weakened by such laws.

And of course, not only the abandoned women (or abandoned men), but also the children, are the victims - and ultimately we all are.

That is one reason why I believe any move to mask the dreadfulness of divorce and 're-marriage' in the Catholic Church would actually be uncharitable: it might ease the pain for many, but would have the unintended consequence of increasing it for many more, for generations to come.