“Not to Condemn or Condone but to Help”
(Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, MI)
October 4, 2009, Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Genesis 2:18-24 Hebrews 2:9-11 Mark 10:2-12
To the churched and unchurched[1]
gathered in a church not built by human hands[2]
The LORD God said: "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him." So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each of them would be its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all wild animals; but none proved to be the suitable partner for the man. So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called 'woman,' for out of 'her man’ this one has been taken." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.
The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark
Glory to you, Lord.
The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, "Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?" They were testing him. He said to them in reply, "What did Moses command you?" They replied, "Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her." But Jesus told them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate." In the house the disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Introduction
October 4 -- Feast-day of St. Francis
Introduction
October 4 -- Feast-day of St. Francis
Today, October 4, is the feast-day of St. Francis of Assisi, father of a multitudinous family of Franciscan brothers and sisters. Earnest Renan needed an exaggeration to characterize Francis: "He was the only perfect Christian since Christ." Oscar Wilde also needed an exaggeration: "There were Christians before Christ, but there haven't been any since; I make one exception: in 1182 was born St Francis of Assisi." Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo in his keynote address to the National Democratic Convention in 1984 in the city named after the saint, San Francisco, called Francis “the world’s first true Democrat.” To commemorate the 800th anniversary of Francis’ birth the US government issued a 20c stamp in 1982 bearing the image of Francis surrounded by birds. But today being also the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (cycle B) the readings direct us not to Francis (sad to say) but to a much less inspiring but an important subject: divorce.
Divorce: everyone’s problem
Today’s scripture readings are painful and embarrassing. There isn’t a single family among us who hasn’t had to deal with divorce. Either we ourselves are divorced or we have sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, relatives and friends who are divorced.
Today’s scriptures are particularly embarrassing for my family. My sister and her husband were married for sixty long years. They were selfless parents who placed their three sons before themselves. They worked hard and eventually managed to move to the other side of the tracks. Despite such a good hotbed for seedlings, two of their three sons divorced and remarried. I try to explain their failed marriages to myself by saying that my nephews had such a wonderful mother and father that they weren’t really ready and savvy enough for the real world, which is full of right and wrong partners.
The church’s ”marriage business”
Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Michigan (b.1937 – d.2004) once said, “I wish the churches would get out of the marriage business.” What in the world did he mean by that?
If a Catholic marries an un-baptized person without getting a dispensation from the church, that marriage is considered invalid. If a Catholic marries with the intention of excluding children, that marriage is considered invalid. If a Catholic marries before a justice of the peace and not before a priest, that marriage is considered invalid. Is that what the bishop meant by the church’s “marriage business”?
Catholics in invalid marriages were characterized by the church as “living in sin.” Through years of priestly ministry I recall how that “living in sin” verdict haunted many Catholics twenty-four hours a day through the length of a second marriage right up to the very moment of their death. That moment, already burdened with the pain of one’s illness and the grief of saying good-bye, was further burdened with the urgent need to make a death-bed confession to a priest. Is that what the bishop meant by the church’s “marriage business”?
A very personal experience
I had a very personal experience of the church’s “marriage business.” My parents fleeing the poverty of the Italian peasantry migrated to this country at the turn of the last century. They married in 1922. A clipping from the Manitowoc, WI, newspaper for Dec. 18, 1972 (37 years ago) entitled "50 Years ago Today" reads, "Pasquale Luzi, a native Italian and naturalized American citizen, was wed to Euphemia Lucchesi, also a native Italian, at the Manitowoc County Courthouse." A Catholic marrying in a courthouse! Peccato!
Imbued with the anticlericalism typical of the Italian peasantry, and not finding an Italian-speaking priest in their new land, my parents married not in front of a priest in a church but before a judge in a county courthouse! That made their marriage both invalid and sinful before the church.
Years later when I had the opportunity to secretly look up my baptismal record in the parish books, I came across a startling entry before my name (in Latin, of course): “Illegitimus!” (Illegitimate!). In the space asking for the name of the infant’s father was written “Pater ignotus!” (Father unknown!.) Everyone but the church knew my father’s name was Pasquale Luzi! Not only was my parents’ marriage considered illegitimate, I, too, was illegitimate! (Italians would have called me “un bastardo!")
But the church’s “marriage business” did not stop there. Years later, before I could be advanced to priestly ordination, the invalid marriage had to be “fixed up in the eyes of the church” (for no bastardo was allowed to be ordained a priest). “Fixing up the marriage” could be done only by my parents expressing matrimonial consent to each other in front of an authorized priest (which they later did under incredibly painful circumstances).
That, I believe, is what Bishop Untener was referring to when he said, “I wish the churches would get out of the marriage business.” By no means did he mean that the church should get out of the serious and joyful business of uniting her sons and daughters in holy matrimony with a bond lasting until death.
Divorce: a failure
Matters have changed in recent years. Now the path to marriage annulments is wide open. Some Catholics whose marriage failed consider that path as dishonest and choose not to take it. Instead, they quietly solve the problem of their divorced status for themselves: refusing to be excluded from the table of the Lord they simply continue to participate in Catholic life. They are of the same mind as Fr. Hans Küng, Swiss German theologian and prophet. In a little volume entitled Why I am Still a Christian he writes, “I cannot believe that he, who particularly invited failures to his table, would forbid all remarried divorced people ever to approach that table.” (Mt 9: 9-13)
There’s something honest and even compassionate in Küng labeling divorced people as “failures.” It’s more honest than a church annulment which declares a marriage which took place on such and such a date as magically never having taken place at all! Annulments bypass the idea of failure: if there was no marriage to begin with, then there was no failure, and if no failure, then no need for tears. Then we are free to merrily move on to the next marriage. An annulment is “divorce without tears,” while labeling it a failure is “divorce with tears.”
Not a law but an ideal
The gospel is quite clear: divorce is a failure of God’s plan. The Pharisees approach Jesus and ask, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” Jesus replies, “God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Mk 10:6-9) Jesus says marriage is a life-long commitment, and when a marriage ends in divorce that’s a failure. Bishop Untener also insisted that marriage is a life-long commitment. “Look,” he said, “I preach life-long commitment. No mistake about that. I preach life-long commitment. But,” he asks, “what if, for some reason, it fails?”
Over the years I’ve tried to hone an answer to that vexing question. It goes like this: One man to one woman until death do they part – that’s not a law written on stone; that’s an ideal written on the heart. But an ideal is not a shabby or wish-washy matter. It’s not something we’re free to take or leave. It’s a shining star that stands before us to guide us. An ideal inspires us to soar to the heights we promised on our wedding day when we vowed “to forsake all others” and to love our partner “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death do you part.” But an ideal also convicts us when we’ve failed. That conviction of failure is not just a painful negative, it’s also a positive. It leads to growth and makes us wiser for the rest of the journey before us.
Conclusion
Not to condemn or condone but to help
Bishop Untener said, “I like the distinction Jesus carefully used upon the woman caught in adultery. He said, `I don't condemn you.' But some people think the opposite of `condemn' is `condone.'” Untener said it wasn’t his job to condemn or condone divorced people but to help them.
We want a church which neither condemns nor condones divorced people but simply wants to help them pick up the pieces, and with a lesson learned get on with the rest of the journey before them. We want a church which in the spirit of Jesus invites failures to the table of the Lord. (Mt 9: 9-13) We want a church which will insist upon the indissolubility of marriage not as a law written on stone commanding people to stay married but as an ideal written on people’s hearts commanding them to stay in love.
[1] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church institution has left!
