“Not to
Condemn or Condone but to Help”
October 7, 2012, 27th Sunday in Ordinary
Time
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 shall 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.
“No longer two but one flesh”
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
Fifty
years ago!
Fifty years ago this Wednesday, October 11,
1962, Good Pope John opened
the Second Vatican Council which set the Bark of Peter on quite a new course. On the
evening of that memorable day Good Pope John appeared at the window of his
papal apartment, in response to the chanting and singing from a crowd estimated
at a half million people assembled in St. Peter’s Square below. He greeted the
crowds and then cried out, “Dear children, dear children, I hear your voices.”
In the simplest language, he told them about his hopes for the Council. He
pointed out that the moon up there was observing the spectacle.”My voice is an
isolated one,” he said, “but it echoes the voice of the whole world. Here, in
effect, the whole world is represented.” He concluded: “Now go back home and
give your little children a kiss. Tell them it is from Pope John.”
Divorce: everyone’s problem
Today’s scriptures readings are painful and
embarrassing for all of us, for divorce is everyone’s problem. 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, nieces and nephews who are divorced. Two of my three nephews are
divorced and remarried, despite the fact that they had two very good parents.
Two out of three isn’t a very good record! I try to make some sense out of their
failed marriages. Did they fail precisely because the sons had two very good
parents, and that didn’t prepare them for the real world out there, which is
full of wrong partners?
Bp. Ken and the `marriage business’
Kenneth Edward Untener (1937- 2004)
was the Bishop
of Saginaw, Michigan. His
first words to the
people of his diocese were: "My name is Ken, and I am your waiter. I will
be your waiter for a very long time.” Then he proceeded to wait upon the people
of his diocese, a good number of whom were divorced and remarried. Bishop Ken
once said, “I wish the churches would get out of the marriage
business.” What in the world did he mean by the churches “getting out of the marriage
business?” Perhaps this: 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. Etc. That’s what Bishop
Ken meant by the churches “getting out of the marriage business.”
A personal and painful experience
I had a very personal and
painful experience of the Church’s busyness with the `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 section in a
Manitowoc, WI, newspaper for Dec. 18, 1972, 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.”
Imbued with the
anticlericalism typical of the Italian peasantry, and also finding it difficult
to find an Italian-speaking priest in their new land, Pasquale and Euphemia got
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’ in the eyes of the Church. When some years ago I had
the opportunity to look up my baptismal record in my home parish, I came across
a startling entry after my name (written 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 that my father’s name was Pasquale Luzi! Not only was my
parents’ marriage invalid, I too was
invalid, illegitimate, or ` bastardo’ in the Italian language.
But my personal and painful experience of the Church’s `marriage
business’ didn’t stop there. Years later, before I could be ordained a
priest, my parents’ `invalid marriage’
had to be `fixed up’ in the eyes of the Church, for no `bastardo’ was allowed
to be ordained a priest in those days. `Fixing up the marriage’ could be done
only by my parents expressing matrimonial consent to each other in front of an
authorized priest. For various reasons that was very difficult to arrange, but
in order to facilitate my ordination it eventually took place, but under the
most painful circumstances.
When Bishop Ken said, “I wish the churches would get out of the
marriage business, that’s what he was
talking about! But by no means
did he mean that the churches should get out of the serious and joyful business
of uniting their sons and daughters in holy matrimony with a bond lasting until
death.
Bishop Ken on the issue of divorce
On the 25th
anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical letter Humanae Vitae in 1993
(reaffirming the Church's stand against artificial birth control) Bishop Ken
used the occasion to invite his Church to reopen an honest and transparent discussion
on the issue of birth control. The invitation was not well received, and it
went nowhere. Bishop Ken also expressed himself on the issue of divorce. He
said, “I am not here to condemn divorced people, nor am I
here to condone them. I am here to help them. Jesus did not come to condemn or
condone the woman caught in adultery; He came to help her.”
Divorce – a failure
In the area of marriage much has changed in the Church in recent years.
The path to marriage annulments is now rather wide open. Some Catholics, whose
marriages have failed, feel that the path of annulment in order to enter a
second marriage is quite dishonest, and they choose not to go down that path.
Instead, they quietly solve the problem of their divorced and remarried status
for themselves. Refusing to be excluded from the Table of the Lord, they simply
continue to participate in Catholic Eucharistic 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.”
There’s something honest and even
compassionate in Küng labeling divorce `a failure.’ 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 there’s no failure, then there’s no need for tears, and people are free
to merrily move on to the next marriage. Annulment is divorce without tears. Labeling divorce a `failure’ is divorce
with tears.
Divorce - a failure of God’s plan
The Gospel is quite clear: divorce is
a failure of God’s plan. In today’s gospel 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 Ken
also insisted that marriage is a life-long commitment. He said, “Look, I preach
life-long commitment. No mistake about that. I preach life-long commitment.
But, what if, for some reason, it fails?”
A law or an
ideal?
The scriptural injunction is one man to one woman
until death do they part. Is that a law
carved in stone, or is that an ideal
written in the heart? It is an ideal. But we hasten to say that an ideal is not
some sort of wish-washy affair, which we can take or leave. An ideal is a guiding
star. On
their wedding day a man and woman pledge to forsake all others, and to love each
other in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death do they
part. That’s not a law; that’s an ideal; that’s a guiding star.
“Not to condemn or condone but to help”
Bishop Ken asked, “What if, for some reason, a marriage fails?” He
answered his own question: “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.' It is my job not to condemn or
condone divorced people but to help them.” Bishop Ken’s did not condemn or
condone divorced people, but he did help them pick up the pieces of their lives.
Bishop Ken invited
failures to the Table of the Lord. He insisted upon the indissolubility of marriage not as a law carved in stone
commanding people to stay married,
but as an ideal written in people’s hearts commanding them to stay in love.
Conclusion
A
standing ovation for Bishop Ken
Bishop Ken’s first
words to the
people of his diocese were "My name is Ken, and I am your waiter. I will
be your waiter for a very long time.” He did such a wonderful job of serving God’s people, especially
God’s hurting divorced people, that a throng of 1800 people attended his funeral Mass on
April 1, 2004. The church that day resounded with a strange mix of crying and laughing, and it joyously rang out with
audible `Amens’ and a standing ovation for their beloved “Bishop Ken.”
