By REY FLORES
Divorce seems to be a cancer running rampant amongst Catholics nowadays. I bet each one of you reading this knows of at least one Catholic couple who has been divorced, is an adult child of divorce, or maybe you yourself have been through a divorce.
It seems that the holy Sacrament of Marriage, much like other aspects and traditions of the Church today, isn’t as holy as it once was. Perhaps I’m saying that wrong. It isn’t that these sacraments and traditions are no longer holy — the problem is that our lukewarm, tepid clergy are no longer teaching us and leading us to revere and hold these things as absolutely sacred.
Bai MacFarlane, who heads Mary’s Advocates, defending Catholic marriage on many fronts, has most recently been attempting to get the attention and support of Robert Cardinal Sarah:
“We hope to get the attention of Cardinal Sarah so he will intervene to defend decent Catholic spouses from no-fault divorce.”
This may be difficult. MacFarlane reports that, according to Rome correspondent Edward Pentin, an orthodox cardinal in charge of a dicastery might be forced to have personnel working under him who are reformists who do not know canon law or ecclesiology. Cardinal Sarah, for example, might be pleased to help us, but he may never know we are asking for help if personnel in his dicastery block us.
If there is one thing that I have experienced personally and professionally, it is the firewalling and gatekeeping that go on across most dioceses. One tries to get the support of a local pastor, one’s own pastor, or the local vicar of clergy, usually to no avail.
MacFarlane adds: “In his position as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Sarah is responsible for resolving certain kinds of controversies brought to him. Recently, a different congregation (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) issued a response resolving questions about the problem of using the wrong formula in Baptisms. We’re asking the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments to resolve questions about the problem of relegating to no-fault divorce courts all cases of separation of spouses. Whenever Catholics divorce, they are approaching the civil forum in a case of separation of spouses.”
Why is it that members of today’s clergy so readily surrender their God-given and Church-given authority to the secular courts? Why is it that when one approaches the topic of saving marriages from divorce, clergy and laity alike squirm and prefer to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the sanctuary?
For several years now, MacFarlane and Mary’s Advocates have been showing abandoned spouses how to invoke canon law to ask the Church for help during a marriage breakup. MacFarlane says that in the United States, “Catholic chancery personnel seem to think that the civil courts are the authority with rightful power to decide cases of separation and divorce. My research findings show the opposite.”
One abandoned wife who submitted a canon law petition was just featured in Leila Miller’s blog recently: “When even the Church abandons the abandoned spouse.”
Miller is the author of books: Impossible Marriages Redeemed: They Didn’t End the Story in the Middle, endorsed by Bishop Athanasius Schneider; and Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak, endorsed by Cardinal Sarah.
About divorce, Miller wrote in her blog that “nothing in that carnage grieves me as deeply as when the agents of the Catholic Church are complicit in the dismantling of Catholic families.”
Miller published a diocese’s response that one abandoned wife received with identifying information removed. “What she received in return” says Miller, “was, in my opinion, scandalous: cruel, condescending, and in opposition to Church teaching and the moral law.”
Some time ago, the woman in Miller’s blog did appeal to Cardinal Sarah’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, but they never conducted a proceeding deciding the controversy she raised.
Miller recently sent a letter to Cardinal Sarah on behalf of a number of aggrieved appellants, in addition to the woman in Miller’s blog. All never had their recourse decided by his congregation.
The letter can be read in its entirety on Miller’s online blog at www.leilamiller.net/blog.
Here is an excerpt from that letter, “Attached is a copy of the recourse that was previously submitted to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. The appellant asked me to submit to you a cover letter supporting the appellant’s position. We ask you to please intercede and protect Catholic spouses from civil no-fault divorce by ensuring that bishops decide cases of separation of spouses when petitioned.”
“Appellant’s recourse to the Congregation was made after a lawful administrative petition was never decided by the Bishop. The Bishop did not undergo an administrative proceeding concluding in a singular administrative act deciding the controversy raised. The appellant sought a decree deciding the controversy in a case of separation of spouses. The respondent is alleged to have abandoned parties’ marriage. Petitioner sought diocesan assistance for reconciliation, or a decree informing the respondent that the respondent is a malicious abandoner.”
“The diocesan leadership in the United States errs when they relegate their exclusive authority in cases of separation of spouses to the civil forum. This error is exacerbated because the civil forum uses no-fault divorce. Therein, the state purports to have competence to relieve every abandoning spouse of his or her obligation to both maintain the common conjugal life and contribute one’s share of the secondary end of marriage: mutual help. Additionally, divorce defendants, who have committed no offense justifying separation, routinely lose everyday access to their children which causes immense pain and gives scandal.”
“Your Congregation conducted no proceeding addressing the attached recourse.”
MacFarlane concludes, “Christ, through His Church, has much more to offer married couples in crises than we are seeing right now in the United States. We must correct the harmful policy of having government divorce courts decide cases prior to any Catholic canon law investigation.”
Please consider supporting Mary’s Advocates, and visit their website if you or a loved one need help navigating through the storm of trying to save a marriage. Visit www.marysadvocates.org.
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