Divorce & Remarriage
Young, James & True, Michael
DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE MICHAEL TRUE & JAMES YOUNG A report and a text from a recent conference I--A JVIeeling o f Divorced C a t h o l i c s "Be it resolved that the Bishops of the United...
...Some marriage bonds may prove to be indissoluble, but it seems to me that is only evident when a marriage is ended by death...
...in others it weakens and comes undone...
...We have always admitted through annulments that some marriages don't take because of defects at the beginning...
...How can we nurture and support those trends which promote stability and human fulfillment in marriage...
...So the words of Jesus in the New Testament do not forbid divorce...
...As he so often called people to higher standards of living, Jesus called married people in Israel to a higher form of marriage than was common in his day...
...Remember when we were taught the Mass would always be in Latin...
...What is her ann flung back across her eyes if not this...
...FATHER JAMES YOUNG, C.S.P.., is an adviser to the Divorced Catholic Group oJ the Paulist Community Center in Boston...
...Our contemporaries expect more in terms of intimacy, friendship,,~ 6upport and compassionship in marriage than any generation before us...
...The theme for thts year's National Conference was "Catholic Divorce: What Might It Be Like...
...rather their whole time together was marked by pressures and forces which drove them apart...
...The people are ready for a creative approach to marriage and divorce in the Church, ready to see the Church help those who have suffered alienation from the religious home of their birth because of divorce and remarriage...
...On October 25-26, four hundred persons--parish priests, canon lawyers, and men and women whose marriages have come apart--discussed and later adopted the resolution, participated in sixteen workshops, and compared notes on the strength of their associations in various parts of the country...
...The best evidence suggests that about one marriage in five in the United States currently ends in divorce...
...Matt 19/1-9, Mark 10/2-9...
...JAMES YOUNG OBSCENERY 0 0 0 0 0 | THE SCREEN Alluding to his own title, Le Fant6me de la LibertY, Jean-Claude Carriere said at a press conference that he and Luis Bunuel had wanted to arrange the fifteen or twenty episodes in their script for the film "with apparent liberty"--that is, at random, with no arrangement at all...
...The East has interpreted these words as counsel, and has since Apostolic times provided for the second marriage of Christians with Church blessing...
...All human relationships, especially the intensive relationship of husband and wife in marriage, change...
...several area people came simply to learn more about the Boston group, a three-year-old ministry initiated by two lay members of the Paulist Center community, with the help and encouragement of Father James Young, C.S.P...
...What is sacramental about a marriage...
...When I've explained to groups the scriptural and historical traditions and how the Church could change on this issue, I have found great openness among the people...
...The theological opinion that sees the words of Jesus as divine law is a modern Catholic position...
...Divorced Catholics Groups have done and are doing part of the important work of the Church on marriage - - a subject discussed at length, by the way, in Vatican ll's Constitution on The Church in the Modern World (Nos...
...The only readily apparent connection among any of them is the way that several seem to be jokes which work by a kind of inversion...
...Further, the tradition of the Eastern Church dating back to the time of the Apostles does not see the words of Jesus as divine law...
...In some cases they may be unrealistic--in others they believe that they married the wrong partner...
...It is clear from the New Testament sayings of Jesus that Jesus was against divorce...
...With the support of canon lawyers, theologians, psychiatrists, and social workers, divorced Catholics can point to some success up to this point, especially the increasing leniency of diocesan tribunals in awarding "annulments...
...rather they present an ideal towards which all should strive, while recognizing that some men and women will not realize that ideal and may have to seek it a second time...
...As Msgr...
...it is their love which is a sign of something unseen--the love of God for his people...
...Many Roman Catholic theologians and Church lawyers are arguing today that the second view which sees the bond of marriage as fragile and often broken should be considered...
...Publishers Weekly $5.95 TRICKS OF EYE AND MIND The Story of Optical Illusion by Larry Kettelkamp Illustrated by the authol Optical illusions occur all around us, though we frequently are unaware of them...
...At that time 75-80 percent of those appealing to the tribunal "were not given any relief...
...With her eyes shielded, his dominate the scene, for the beautiful young body revealed when she undresses is of course merely her body as seen by him...
...Like ostriches sticking their heads in the sand, all the characters in all the episodes in this film have had a capacity to deny their own eyes...
...There even seems to be mounting evidence that divorce is not easily accepted as a kind of marriage problem cure, but that Americans look upon divorce even more realistically today as a painful, sad transition full of heavy emotional implications for those involved...
...Morrow Junior Books...
...He bade his listeners attend to the teaching of Genesis: "In the beginning, God made them male and female...
...But then they also examine the cards more closely and begin to become excited themselves looking at them...
...in 1974, about 95 percent of those appealing received relief...
...A woman from Colorado heard about the conference through her daughter, an undergraduate in Massachusetts...
...First of all, there is no evidence that marriage is disintegrating in American society...
...In one episode, for instance, a dirty old man gives a girl a pack of picture postcards, which she blithely passes on to her parents at home...
...part of that effort was to extract laws from the Gospel words of Jesus...
...and Father Martin Morgan, from the Tulsa metropolitan area...
...The liberty really is only "apparent" here, and the film remains extraordinarily single-minded, the work of an undeniable auteur...
...It cannot be proved that we have more unhappy marriages today because we have more divorce...
...The Church of today must relate, not to an absolute divine law which is in practice inaccessible to our scholarly research, but to the process of identifying what is of Christ and what is Christian and entering into that discerning process for our own day...
...our experience tells us that the only thing constant is change...
...That it exists for us at all---exists for us as visibly as it does for the boy--is what this episode shares with 22 November 1974:190...
...Many theologians and Church lawyers are questioning today whether every couple who marry in the presence of a proper Church minister do establish a marriage bond...
...Once we get that perspective together, then it will be obvious to us that many marriages that have ended in divorce never were sacramental marriages in the first place, and there was never any marriage bond...
...They do sit down at a long, elegant table, but instead of eating they sit on commodes with their braces and garters down and read magazines...
...The first generation of Christians understood the Lord well and reported him clearly and preached a much higher ideal about marriage than that which prevailed in the Jewish and pagan societies in which the Gospel was preached...
...I predict that within a generation the Roman Catholic Church will change its present discipline and will begin to bless the second marriages of divorced Catholics...
...3. When Catholics marry an indissoluble bond is formed between them which can be broken only by death...
...or when we were told Catholics would never be permitted to eat meat on Friday...
...02108...
...Or as Paul argues so powerfully in the New Testament, law is not enough---law does not go far enough--law cannot save...
...Marriage Tribunal, in reflecting upon his own experience, said that things had changed rather substantially since he joined the tribunal in 1966...
...That process . . . is one of accommodation to circumstances that were not the context of the preaching of Jesus himself...
...Clearly, what had begun a few years ago as an informal association had now become a national movement, responding to people's need for moral guidance and support during a special and trying time in their lives...
...For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh...
...Father Paul O'Connell from the Worcester (Mass...
...When they have failed, they should be offered healing and the opportunity to try again...
...4.75 GYPSY MOTH Its History in America by Robert M. McClung Illustrated by the author A complete, up-to-date report on the gypsy moth that explains the ecological dilemma it poses and weighs the techniques being developed for Its control...
...I would insist that on this point the people are much farther ahead than the clergy and the bishops...
...but it is also certain from our experience that many others have not reached that point on the day they marry, and it is equally certain that some, despite their best attempts, never realize that kind of loving commitment...
...Paul, where members of diocesan tribunals and other church lawyers heard Father Charles Curran, Professor of Moral Theology at Catholic University, recommend similar changes in the Church's attitude toward divorce...
...Because the expectations are high, many men and women are not finding what they want...
...The beauty of her exists for us to see only as an earnest of his feeling...
...This fascinating book explains how they happen, why, and what use we make of them...
...And often during the history of the Church, the Church has adapted when men and women were faced with broken marriages and permitted them to marry again...
...In the meantime, throughout the United States, these groups provide the kind of support and opportunity for spiritual guidance that Catholics with marital difficulties cry out for...
...Many theologians reflecting upon our experience argue that 22 November 1974:188 a marriage bond is present when a man and woman achieve a union which is marked by love and fidelity and commitment or when they achieve a community of love...
...Although Bunuel's ostrich may not actually stick its head in the sand for us, that older woman in love with the young boy does...
...Kelleher suggests, in his informative and superbly written book, Divorce and Remarriage ]or Catholics...
...2. The words oJ Jesus in the New Testament are divine law and Jor this reason the Roman Catholic Church could not permit divorce and second marriage...
...we have a long tradition of describing in law what a marriage is, when it takes place, what impediments stand in its way...
...In fact a case can be made that we are facing a crisis not of marriage being treated lightly in American society, but rather a crisis of rising expectations in marriage...
...Divorce cannot sever that bond...
...Which raises the more substantive question: what does it mean to be married...
...As Father Young said in one of the major addresses, divorce, a time of suffering, is sometimes the crucible by which men and women are brought to a deeper spiritual life...
...Kirkus Reviews $5.95 Children are interested in the same things you are...
...From a theological and human point of view, we can say, "No...
...Illustrated with photographs and diagrams...
...there is evidence that more and more women are putting off matriage till they complete their education or realize their career ambitions...
...Then later one of them retires discreetly to a bathroom where a meal is served in privacy...
...The position of Jesus is clear in the New Testament, but what is equally clear is that the Church MICHAEL TRUE is chairman of the English Department at Assumption College and lecturer at Clark University in Worcester, Mass...
...Jesus in taking as his own the insight of Genesis proposes marriage that is permanent, lasting, faithful, till death...
...Further, how can we talk of indissolubility in a world in which everything dissolves...
...They asked the bishops "to welcome back into full membership in the Roman Catholic communion all women and men who have been separated because of divorce and remarriage...
...I think it would be better if we called Christians to attempt to realize an indissoluble fidelity and love in their marriage, while recognizing that some are not going to achieve that goal...
...4.95 Ages 8-12 UBBY SHADOWS A LADY by Catherine Woolley Illustrated by Don Almquist A tightly plotted sleuthing exploit set in New York City...
...The tradition that says the bond cannot be broken has held the day in the Roman Catholic Church up until this time...
...It is obvious that popular Roman Catholic religious education about divorce and remarriage has been presented with a rigidity that causes a lot of problems when we talk about change...
...In order to explain a change in the Church's understanding of marriage and divorce, we first have to give our people a richer, more biblical understanding of what marriage is...
...This is the long tradition of the Church from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians [5/21-33] through the Fathers of the Church down to the present time...
...Ages 10-14...
...The water is already coming over the dike...
...WILLIAM M O R R O W ~ lOS Madison A venue Divorce has now touched almost every American Catholic family somewhere in its immediate experience...
...Man must not separate what God has joined together...
...1. The Catholic Church cannot permit divorce because it is expressly forbidden by Jesus in the New Testament...
...seemed to be, "He also serves who only stands and waits...
...Is there a runaway divorce rate...
...I'd like to catalogue some of the popular mis-impressions among to prepare for change...
...Doubleday, $5.95, 1973), the Roman Catholic, as opposed to OrCommonweal: 185 thodox and Anglican tradition, ignores a long history of divorce in the first twelve centuries of the Church...
...Catholics cannot marry a second time since they were first joined together by God and he does not join them together a second time...
...We've heard for years now the often repeated assertion that if the Church changes on this issue it will destory its credibility to speak at all about marriage...
...In Msgr...
...From this perspective it is obvious that we are holding many men and women to marriages begun before a priest which never really happened...
...The canon lawyers came directly from the recent annual convention of the Canon Law Society in St...
...The Roman Church in the post-Reformation era attempted to codify Christian life with a whole new set of precepts and requirements...
...In our popular teaching on marriage we have connected the wedding ceremony with a bond established by God...
...5. "What God has joined together let no man put asunder...
...Though she protests that even her husband has never seen her naked, she undresses for this boy...
...Now is the time for our Bishops to call for a change in the authoritative interpretation of Church teaching on the indissolubility of Christian marriage...
...I do not think the Roman Catholic Church is going to decide what marriage will be like in American society or even have a major say in what marriage will be like...
...Kirkus Reviews $5.50 Ages 10-14 BE A WINNER IN FOOTBALL by Charles Coombs A basic guide to the fundamentals of this popular team sport that will be useful to both the would-be player and the spectator...
...In some cases the relationship grows stronger and more mature with time...
...Father Henry Mascotte, from an inner-city parish in South Bend, Indiana...
...A significant effect of the movement thus far is the increased involvement of professional lay persons, from various backgrounds, on the work of the marriage tribunals as they now stand...
...In the opening scene, set during the Napoleonic wars, a funeral statue of a Spanish nobleman hits a French soldier taking perverse liberties with a companion statue of the nobleman's wife...
...The marriage rate continues to go up in American society...
...What is new about marriage is the fact that most Americans marrying today feel that if a marriage does not work out, they should not stick it out...
...The film does indeed come across as a mischievous hodgepodge...
...I am convinced from talking to hundreds of Catholics in parish groups around the country that most people see the capacity to respond imaginatively and compassionately to a new situation as a sign of strength...
...A corker of a story...
...At the end of the conference, in addition to sending the Kelleher resolution to American bishops, people representing fifteen states and Canada issued a call for amnesty for divorced and remarried Catholics...
...Contemporary scholars point out that Matthew felt free to permit the Palestinian Church to keep its Jewish custom of divorce on grounds of infidelity, and Paul felt free to accept divorce in broken pagan-Christian marriages...
...Ages 4-8 THE BATTLE OF THE WIND GODS by Judy Verge Illustrated by the author A brightly illustrated picture book, based on authentic Indian weather lore, in which South Wind and North Wind struggle for the control of the prairie land of the Blackfeet...
...The challenge they issue has important implications for a variety of subjects and touches many disciplines: theology, church law, psychology and medicine...
...There is a new kind of marriage emerging in American culture...
...6. If the Church were to change, it would lose its credibility in speaking ot marriage...
...48 to 51...
...Matthew in his Gospel presents Jesus as the new Moses...
...All the marriage counselors and marriage enrichment groups point to the high expectations Americans have of marriage...
...As sociologist Andrew Greeley insists in the Wrenn-edited book: "The principal crisis in the American family comes not so much from the fact that the family is going out of fashion as from the fact that Americans have such great expectations for the happiness to be achieved in marriage...
...Bunuel has never been so much of an anarchist, a practitioner of "apparent liberty," as he likes to boast...
...22 November 1974:186 of the New Testament felt free to adapt the counsel of the Lord to the concrete pastoral circumstances in which Christians found themselves...
...it has been said that Americans are the most marrying people in the history of mankind...
...The problem has been further complicated, according to Sister Helen Wright, S.N.D., in her response to Father Young, by modern Catholics' mistaken attitude that Church laws, on marriage and on other subjects, are "indissoluble...
...Kelleher's words, "Now is the time for the Bishops of the United States to acknowledge the injustices which are being inflicted upon millions of persons in broken marriages in the United States and throughout the world...
...Gradually they took a public stand, helped to initiate similar groups throughout the country, and published a newsletter called Divorce, available through the Paulist Center, 5 Park St., Boston, Mass...
...The exchange of the obscene and decorous here seems very like what occurs a bit later on when another set of characters arrives at a fashionable home, presumably for a dinner party...
...Jesus sets a high standard for husband and wife--the love of God himself...
...When Pharisees tried to trap Jesus into taking sides in the divorce dispute of his day, he refused...
...it is changing...
...Several generations ago many unhappy marriages were resolved by desertion or the man moving into the attic or heroically sticking it out for the sake of the children...
...The Israelites had known divorce throughout their history, and it was permitted in the Law of Moses...
...One tradition says that the bond of matrimony cannot be broken, while another tradition says that it is unlawful to break the bond of marriage...
...The Catholic people have increasingly had the experiences of more and more friends and relatives growing up through the sad experience of a divorce and then finding real happiness in a second marriage...
...Sociologist John Scanzoni has written, "There have been gradual, long-term increases in the United States and elsewhere...
...As Greeley says, "If there is to be any contribution at all from the Church to sustain a man and woman in marriage, it seems to me that it ought to be of the sort which helps them to acquire the confidence and skills--and the realism--they need in their search for interpersonal vulnerability...
...As has happened so often in recent years, we will find ourselves then in a position of trying to explain how something which we were taught would never change, actually changed...
...Publishers Weekl~ $5.95 YOUR SILENT LANGUAGE by Elizabeth McGough Illustrated by Tom Huffman "A stimulating glossary of common eye language, facial expressions, and postures combined with a responsible discussion of the human need for touching and the societal taboos that regulate its expression...
...Father Joachim Lally, recently appointed chaplain to divorced Catholics in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, diocese...
...I call this the "boy with his finger in the dike" theory...
...Now we are asking, is every couple really married on their wedding day...
...It is as if she felt that by not looking at the boy she would prevent his looking at her too...
...Marriage in any age, in any culture, is an institution shaped by complex social, economic, religious and cultural forces...
...Marriage is not of its nature indissoluble nor does it necessarily effect an unbreakable bond...
...All that links the episodes is a tendency for a minor character in one to be the major character in the next...
...Kirkus Reviews $4.95 SEARCH THE WILD SHORE ~)y Jean Montgomery The scene of this action-filled novel is the California coast in 1818, where a young Russian boy comes searching for his long-absent father:' *Superior...
...Those attending the Divorced Catholics Conference in Boston represented a growing constituency, a new and increasingly visible Catholic ministry, including Penny McDaniels, a member of the year-old Divorced Catholics Group in Atlanta...
...Th!s is a radical counsel which Jesus proposes to his hearers just as he proposed radical poverty, radical nonviolence, radical service of the Kingdom of God...
...4.75 JOYRIDE by Betty Cavanna In this story, set against the background of the "roaring twenties," a sensitive teenager learns to cope with the problems of a physical handicap...
...The soldier, furious, has the wife disinterred, intending to violate what is left of her in retaliation...
...Into the void created by the older woman's want of seeing rushes her lover's excess of it...
...The love of husband and wife for one another should be like the Covenant love of God for his people...
...Her eyes are as blind as the eyes of the dead noblewoman whose head would fit her body...
...4. Marriage is disintegrating in American society...
...It may well be that some couples have achieved that community of love on their wedding day...
...Persons married before they are 20 have three times as great a chance of getting divorced...
...His answer to the question posed by divorced Catholics, "Why, on the basis of the theological and psychological evidence, doesn't the Church do something...
...Our theology of marriage or our understanding of what a marriage is has been weak...
...This resolution, from the National Divorced Catholics Conference, was proposed not by a disaffected lay person, but by Monsignor Stephen J. Kelleher, J.C.D., former presiding judge of the Marriage Tribunal of the Archdiocese of New York...
...The Church proposed the ideal but pastorally cared for men and women whose marriages had broken down, permitting them a second opportunity to try to achieve the ideal of Jesus...
...As disparate and fragmentary as the episodes seem, however, we can't help feeling in the end that they all go together somehow...
...or that Catholics would never be permitted to be married in a Protestant Church" ceremony...
...Out of the welter of free association and fancy a unique wholeness emerges...
...As Scripture scholar George McRae insists, " . . . we must discern the process by which the teaching of Jesus was remembered, communicated, interpreted, adapted and enshrined in the practice of the early Christian communities...
...The final shot that fades from the screen at the end is of an ostrich's head, and it seems a surprisingly apt, summary image...
...It is evident that our view of marriage has been too legalistic...
...Trial marriage, whatever may be our moral judgment of it, is providing a brake on hasty marriage and giving couples time to test their compatibility...
...What is sacramental about marriage is the love of man and wife for one another...
...When is a marriage bond present...
...and when she sinks onto the bed, her arm thrown across her face in modesty and fear, the body that Bunuel reveals to us is that of a peerless twenty-year old--a body to match the face of the longdead nobleman's wife...
...Girls will hurry along with Libby on her p e r i p a t e t i c search for clues...
...As Christian believers committed to an ideal of permanent, faithful, loving marriage, I think we must realistically assess what is happening to marriage in our times, and look upon the result with eyes of hope...
...One oJ the last proponents oJ stable and lasting marriage is the Catholic Church...
...The feminist movement is challenging the notion that a woman is not a woman until she lassos a man...
...From these perspectives, the allegation of widespread 'marital breakdown' is, at this time, virtually impossible to justify...
...A useful overview...
...MICHAEL TRUE II--Miximp r e x x i o n x About Marriage I would like to begin with a prediction...
...Aside from that the episodes seem to have only the most chancy and arbitrary relationships...
...lJ the Church were to ever give in and permit divorce and remarriage, that would be the end oJ marriage as an institution...
...as Canonist Lawrence Wrenn has pointed out in his book, it is a tradition that is ancient and honorable and one endorsed by saints and popes and bishops and was widely held during periods of Church history...
...The punch line, when Bunuel at last gives us a peek at the cards too, is that they are all pictures of famous sights like the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal...
...New Testament Perspectives on Marriage and Divorce," in Divorce and Remarriage in the Catholic Church, Lawrence G. Wrenn, ed., Newman $7.50...
...But then so is her young lover blind in a rather glorious way--as blind as the statue of the noblewoman's husband, who watches over his wife even though his eyes are of stone...
...There is more divorce today because Americans are dealing more openly with their marriage problems...
...There are some signs that things may be improving: the initial marriage age of Americans now at 23 and 21, is continuing to rise...
...Moses gives the negative strictures, the Ten Commandments, but in Matthew Jesus presents the expansive idealism of the Beatitudes...
...They may have lived together and may have attempted marriage and may have gone through a ceremony, but a union never came about...
...Often when I ask this question of audiences they tell me it is the vows which are the sacrament or the ceremony in Church...
...Kirkus Reviews $4.75 Ages 12 up MASTER ROSALIND by John and Patricle Bealty An exuberant historical novel in which the heroine meets adventure In London's underworld, the theater of Shakespeare, and the court of Elizabeth I. "Rousing entertainment...
...That cannot be proven either...
...The rate is increasing slowly, yet one cannot prove that it is going to continue to increase...
...but where the old Moses laid down commandments, the new Moses lays down ideals or counsels much stronger and far more demanding than that which Moses asked of the Israelites...
...2) to be largely accounted for by the young, the less well-off, and the black, a trilogy of variables that are often found together...
...They know that the causes of these marital breakdowns are complex and that many tried very hard but could not make it...
...It is clear from the New Testament itself that Jesus is not a lawgiver...
...We are laced with a runaway divorce rate...
...Today we have the wonderful opportunity to draw on all the sciences of human behavior to describe in concrete human terms what it is to have a loving union patterned after the love of Christ for the Church...
...It is a popularly held concept and one which I often hear when addressing Church groups about divorce...
...I think we Roman Catholics should take our fingers out and learn how to swim in this new human era...
...Not surprisingly, however, Father O'ConneU seemed content to let someone other than the canon lawyers or the chancery carry the weight, the burden for further change, when he declined to endorse Monsignor Kelleher's resolution...
...5.95 FRIENDS AND STRANGERS ON LOCATION by Hila Colman The problems of an eighteenyear-old girl caught up In the friendships, loves, r~vatries, and conflicts of a film crew on location in Mexico...
...Initially, they gathered as a support group, trying to accept themselves in the midst of the anxiety, fear, loneliness, confusion and guilt that characterize a Catholic's experience when his/her marriage disintegrates...
...More and more Catholics know that the reasons for these divorces are not all bad character and lack of moral fiber...
...The legal problem of divorce and remarriage for Cathofics centers on Canon Laws 1119 and 1120, among others, which permit annulment on some grounds, but which are based on a somewhat narrow understanding of Christ's teaching on marriage...
...Lorraine Knudson, presently organizing a similar group in Plattsburg, New York...
...Were they really married...
...As Alex Weidman, co-chairperson for the Third National Conference said, the growing strength of the movement is reflected in the progressive outspokenness of the participants...
...It is clear that marriage is still held in high esteem in American society, and more Commonweal: 187 and more people believe that they will find the fullest human happiness with a marriage partner...
...They have had an ostrich's capacity to react t9 what they see with both obsession and oblivion...
...What strategies---be they marriage preparation, marriage enrichment, marriage counseling, separation and divorce counseling--should we encourage to deal with the stresses of a changing institution...
...Outraged, they interrogate her and fire her governess...
...But the other developments, including the abolition of the "tribunals, in favor of a less legalistic and bureaucratic manner of dealing with troubled marriages, are the work for the future...
...But when the coffin is opened all the soldiers are stunned by the sight of a face, buried a hundred years, yet preserving the perfect beauty of the youth in which the woman died...
...And in a curious way that unexpected face seems to belong to an equally unexpected body we are to see a few scenes later, when a teenage boy brings an older woman to an inn to consummate an affair they have been having...
...I think there are many features to the new marriage that we Christians should endorse: a more mature and freer role for women, greater sexual adequacy, better family planning, more social commitment...
...Marriage is fragile . . ." At this point, Catholic divorce, along the lines established by the Anglicans and the Orthodox, seems a real possibility...
...Rather it is generally accepted that if a marriage proves unworkable, if the couple turn out to be incompatible, if they turn out to be combustible, if they can't find happiness together--they will divorce and look for another mate...
...paper, $4.95...
...No greater distortion could be done to the message of Jesus than to codify his demands...
...However, when looking at valid ways to assess these rates, they appear (1) to be comparatively low...
...In study sessions, workshops, conferences such as the one in Boston, they provide opportunities for conversation on "Growth Opportunities for the Divorced and/or Single Man and Woman," "The Religious Education of the Children of the Divorced," "Marrying a Divorced Catholic," and "Can the Divorced Receive the Sacraments...
...Many divorced persons in speaking of their marriages insist that they never achieved in their time together anything approaching a genuine loving commitment...
...So it has been recognized often in Church history that marriages break down, that the bond is often dissolved...
...There are two traditions in the Church on this point...
...DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE MICHAEL TRUE & JAMES YOUNG A report and a text from a recent conference I--A JVIeeling o f Divorced C a t h o l i c s "Be it resolved that the Bishops of the United States, through our Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, call upon the Church to change the authoritative interpretation of her teaching concerning the meaning of Christian marriage and to change the law so that the rights of Catholics to divorce and remarry wholesomely and publicly in Christ and in His Church will be acknowledged when, in fact, their first marriages are irreparably broken...
...An eye-opening narrative and dozens of "moving" illustrations show how our minds distort the information reported by our eyes and how we use optical illusion in sc!ence, art, and industry...
...Other episodes seem to match up in ways that are even more tenuous and eccentric...
...I believe that we have more people accepting divorce as a solution to marital problems, and it can be shown that many people who were most unhappy in a first marriage found great happiness in a second union...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 7
