This past summer, we read deeply from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, the Bread of Life discourse. We did so using the parallel series of readings from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians as a key that showed us how the Lord’s teaching on the mystery of His Body present in the Eucharist teaches us about the meaning of the human body and the mystery of human sexuality.

          Just as His teaching that we must eat His flesh and blood in order to have eternal life prompted many to walk away, His teaching today on divorce catches many of us by surprise, and did so in His own day too. The Pharisees want Him to take sides in an ongoing dispute about the sufficient reasons for divorce. A stricter school held that serious causes like infidelity were necessary for a man justifiably to divorce his wife. Another school, held that spoiling his dinner was sufficient reason for a husband to send his wife away.

          Christ’s response, as usual, is to blow up the whole wrong-headed way of thinking about this issue. The right question is not, “What is a good enough reason to get a divorce?” but rather, “What is God’s plan for marriage?”

          In our own day, divorce seems like an inevitable part of life and culture. 41 percent of marriages “end” in divorce – the number skyrockets for second and third marriages. Divorce became much easier after the introduction of no-fault divorce (first, by the Communists in Russian in 1918, in an intentional effort to undermine the stability of marriage as a “bourgeois institution,” and in the US starting in California in 1970). This meant that rather than one party suing the other and establishing who was at fault, states simply allowed the couple to “dissolve” their marriage by mutual consent.

          One of the justifications offered for no fault divorce is that it would be better for the couple’s children. Yes, you heard that correctly. The idea was that if children were constantly subjected to their parents fighting, they would be happier in a more peaceful home. Happier parents were supposed to lead to happier children – “trickle down happiness.”

          As no fault divorce began in California, a psychologist named Judith Wallerstein began a 25 year, in depth study of what would happen to the children of the expected divorce wave. No study like this has been done since, because the results were extremely inconvenient for the sexual revolution. Happiness does not trickle down from happier, divorced parents to their children. The children Wallerstein studied were universally happier, even in volatile homes, with unhappy parents who stayed together than they were after their parents’ divorce. Wallerstein, not a person of Christian faith, but possessed of a penetrating psychological mind, discerned that children identify themselves with their parents’ marriage bond – they naturally intuit a reality known by Christian faith: that openness to new life is an essential part of marriage, that children are not an optional add-on to a marriage, but flow from its very essence. When that bond with which the child identifies herself seems to break, her identity breaks with it. Wallerstein did not flinch from reality: Divorce is the one time when we deem it acceptable for children to suffer, so that adults can be happy.

          Wallerstein and many other academics have noted another inconvenient reality: While seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women, it is men who are more likely to express being happier after divorce, and it is men who are financially better off afterwards. After divorce, women and children are much more likely to lose access to healthcare and rely on public assistance for housing and food. Children are less likely to go to college after divorce due to the heavy financial cost, and since a college degree increasingly determines who makes it to affluence and who doesn’t, and since the standard of living for working class Americans continues to fall, that means divorce becomes another factor of being trapped in a cycle of poverty.

          Divorce also disproportionately affects the working class. While no fault divorce was pioneered by wealthy, progressive elites, they are the least likely people to eat the bitter fruits they have grown. Upper class Americans not only have access to relationship counseling: They have a picture-perfect life worth saving. Divorce is more common among working class people, where it does the most damage and leaves the most people in poverty: Arkansas is the state with the highest divorce rate; Vermont has the lowest. Anyone who cares about income inequality and the growing gap between the rich and the poor ought also to care about divorce. (And anyone who cares about the stability of marriage ought also to care about getting people out of a cycle of poverty.) [Also taboo is the role of divorce in the housing shortage, since divorce obviously necessitates separate accommodations, and rising housing costs are yet another factor in the cycle of poverty.]

          Regarding divorce as anything except a liberation for women is practically forbidden today, with even a sober recognition of the actual economic facts of life after divorce being looked down upon. It is little wonder that a study like Wallerstein’s has not been initiated these past 25 years.

A few years ago, I was invited to an event with other religious and non-profit leaders in Elkhart County to learn about data that had been collected on child welfare trends. Unsurprisingly, the number of children being raised apart from their parents was never mentioned. After a good deal of vacillation, I decided to go for it: I raised my hand and mentioned what I had recently read in Judith Wallerstein’s book about the adverse effects of divorce on children, and suggested that they should be tracking how many children were being affected by divorce. The response in the room was electric, but not in the way I expected. It was like a cloud lifted. Most of the people were thrilled at the chance to talk about this. They had firsthand experience, both as social service agencies, and even from progressive Protestant churches that had embraced the sexual revolution, and were ready to talk about how we could support marriages for the good of the children. The silent ones during all of this were the pastors of supposedly conservative evangelical congregations, the ones with skinny jeans and stylish-ten-years-ago haircuts. In that world, this discussion is taboo, because those pastors know that their easy toleration of divorce is contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

          Divorce is a part of many people’s reality. It is important to keep in mind, though this is obscured by the legal structure of no fault divorce, that there can be a guilty party and an innocent party, one who fought to preserve his or her marriage but was ultimately abandoned by their spouse. It is also true that the Church recognizes the legitimacy of separation in certain cases, such as abuse and infidelity, although this is not license to attempt remarriage with another party, as Christ makes clear in the Gospel today. St. Matthew’s account of this same episode includes the important caveat that “unless the marriage is unlawful,” which is why the Catholic Church allows people, through the annulment process, to investigate whether a marriage truly existed in the first place, sometimes recognizing that, without establishing fault for the breakdown in the relationship, one or both of the parties lacked the ability to get married in the first place for a variety of possible reasons.

           Judith Wallerstein’s research revealed that divorce has effects far beyond the immediate consequences for children. The accepted idea in 1970 was that children are resilient, and though it will be difficult for them in the short term to see their parents splitting up, they will quickly “bounce back.” Not only did divorce turn out to be more damaging for young children than people realized, but its effects turned out to be much more long-lasting. Adult children of divorce were less likely to get married themselves, more likely to cohabit before marriage (a leading indicator of future probability of divorce), and while deeply desirous of a life-long romantic relationship, were often scared of failure. (Yet another contributing factor to the artificial shortage of housing, since young adults who stay single longer also require more housing.)

          While we certainly should not assume that this is the case for every unmarried young adult, there can be little doubt that the situation created by no fault divorce has led to a culture in which many people are afraid of marriage. You might even be one of those young people hesitating on the brink of commitment, but worried that your marriage might end up like your parents’. To that, the Lord has a message of hope in the Gospel today: You were made for this.

          Because of the hardness of the Israelites’ hearts, “Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce,” but in the beginning it was not so. In Jesus Christ’s plan of salvation, marriage holds a central place. He has come to make all things new, to release those held captive by sin, to inaugurate a new era in which men and women are restored to friendship with Him. Marriage forms an essential part of that plan, because marriage, in the ancient words of the Roman Nuptial Blessing, is “the one blessing not forfeited by original sin nor washed away by the flood.” Marriage is the light that shone through the endless centuries of darkness and sin from Adam and Eve’s fall until Christ’s birth. It was a sign and a prophecy that reminded the Israelite people of what had been lost, and what the Messiah was to restore.

          You were made for this. God has written into human nature this capacity for love, this ability to mirror the very love of God into the world, to show that God is faithful and will not be outdone in His promises to help you in times of distress. Other people’s past never has to be your future. He makes all things new.

          The Church cares deeply about marriage because God cares deeply about marriage, not just as a series of rules to be followed, but as a privileged instrument in His plan to restore what was lost by sin and renew the face of the earth. The vocation of marriage is not for all – we’ll hear more about that next Sunday. It is not the easy way out in comparison with the priesthood or the religious life. It is a true calling from the Lord, to be lived with the fidelity of His marriage to His bride, the Church. To do so is not easy, but if He has called you to this life, then He will be faithful to His promises as well, because after all, “the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

XXVII Sunday through the Year, A.D. MMXXIV