Dear Synod Fathers,
My husband and I were married in April 2008. Despite a lovely courtship and beautiful wedding, the first eighteen months of our marriage were terrible. Although we loved one another, we were unprepared for the daily compromises, negotiations and renunciations of self that a loving and successful marriage requires. Independent and extremely willful, we fought. We fought so ferociously and so often that after we entered couples therapy, our therapist told my husband that he should leave me. It would always be this way, she said. Things would never “change.”
Our marriage is now strong, happy and healthy. We’ve been married for over seven years and have three beautiful children. We hope to have more children and we’re committed to leading hidden, holy lives within the sacrament of our marriage in service of one another and the children given to us by God. How did this change happen? How was our marriage saved and transformed?
Our most steadfast supporter was the Church Herself. The Church’s position on the indissolubility of marriage and Her willingness to stand by this teaching in praxis (and not just in doctrine) strengthened us. She left us with no choice but to try and try again until things improved. She also provided us with the support and help we needed. We attended confession often. Faithful priests counseled and encouraged us. Older Catholic couples joyfully showed us that it was possible to have a happy marriage and how to do so.
When family members and secular therapists were ready to approve us walking away from the commitment we’d made, the Church wasn’t. I don’t know that our marriage would have survived if the Church had wavered in its teaching and practice on marriage, if it had offered us the false hope of a “merciful” way out. Instead, the Church encouraged us to rely on God’s help, to seek answers from Scripture and strength from the sacraments. We slowly learned to practice the Christian virtues of patience and forgiveness. By forcing us to persevere, the Church taught us how to love one another.
The misguided shepherds who hope to change Church praxis (if not doctrine) on the indissolubility of marriage do a great disservice to their flock—especially its weakest and most vulnerable members, because the victims of divorce and remarriage are almost always women and children. When unilateral, no-fault divorce was introduced, women were sold a lie. We were told that no-fault divorce would help us—that it would provide us with a way out of abusive, unhappy or constraining marriages. What it has done, however, is make us vulnerable. Men are more likely than women to have an affair and more likely than women to leave their spouses to marry or cohabit with someone else. And once divorced, men typically remarry sooner than women.
Divorce is the most significant and preventable cause of poverty among women and children. When the assets are divided in a no-fault divorce, the wife and children are left with less than they began with and no reliable income. It is not uncommon for husbands to default on child-support payments. It’s costly to run two households and courting a new wife is expensive.
When we welcomed our second child into our family it dawned on me how very vulnerable and dependent on my husband I’d become. As a stay-at-home mother, I’ve given up my career to be with our children. If my husband left me, I’d be stranded and desperate. I have the good fortune of possessing several higher degrees. As bad as it would be for me, how much worse for a woman without my education or privilege?
I know of several Catholic women whose husbands unexpectedly left them for younger women. These faithful mothers sacrificed careers, prestige and money to care for their husbands and children. Suddenly and unexpectedly single, these women have to find a new house—often in a new locale— and provide, as best they can, for their children on virtually no income. More than once I’ve seen the eldest son forgo college and get a full-time job to support his mother and younger siblings.
The one solace these women have is the Church. Their husbands and the lawmakers of the West might have abandoned them but the Church did not. What does it say to them if the Church turns a blind eye to the husbands’ irregular relationship and welcomes him to receive Holy Communion at Mass? With his younger, second “wife” in tow?
Despite the hopes of the Kasperites, it won’t be possible for the Church to allow those in irregular relationships to receive Communion on a case-by-case basis. It will, of necessity, be carte blanche. And this means that people who have abused their spouses and betrayed their marriages will be welcome to receive the Blessed Sacrament. This utterly undercuts the Church’s teaching both on marriage and the Eucharist.
The prelates of the West who support these changes seem to have forgotten the weakest and most vulnerable. They fail to recognize the devastation wreaked by divorce and remarriage. They speak of mercy but fail to show any solidarity towards the most desperate and abandoned members of the Church.
I am told that cardinals, archbishops, and bishops tend to hear only one side of the story: they are contacted often by those who've left abusive marriages, found new love and who are now desperate for the Church to bless their new arrangement by allowing them Holy Communion. They seldom hear from couples whose marriages have been saved by the Church. They do not hear from the women and children whose lives have been devastated by divorce.
My dear princes of the Church, we do not live in a liberal utopia where everyone divorces amicably and then lives happily ever after in easy, extended and uncomplicated non-nuclear, stepfamilies. Divorce and remarriage hurts. It hurts children and women the most.
Bishops, will you cast your lot with a few privileged and aging prelates from countries in which the Church is dying? Or will you follow Christ and stand up for the truth and beauty of marriage? Will you champion the most vulnerable of your flock?
For the sake of women, children and the good of the Catholic family—tear up the execrable Instrumentum Laboris and start from scratch. Don't be bullied by a minority of your fellow bishops. Resist all attempts to separate pastoral care from Church teaching. Be the good shepherds and stewards of the faith you have been called by God to be.
In the words of St. John Paul II, be not afraid. If you are fearless in your faithfulness to God's word and the Church's perennial teaching, you will have the support not only of faithful Catholic families and priests, you will also be guided and protected by the Holy Spirit.
Rachael Marie Collins has degrees from the University of New South Wales, Australian Catholic University, and Columbia Law School. She is a co-founder of the Neumann Classical School.
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