October 6, 2024

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle B

Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16

In October of last year, the United States got a new Speaker of the House. He was a relatively unknown representative from Louisiana named Mike Johnson. Since this is a powerful position in its own right and second only to the Vice President in succession to the President, people naturally wanted to know more about this man. One of the things that was reported was that he and his wife Kelly, when married in 1999, entered into to a covenant marriage. Both are Evangelical Southern Baptist, and so they entered this relationship for religious reasons, but Speaker Johnson also told ABC News that he did so because he saw the devastation of divorce on a family first-hand when his own parents divorced.

Now it turns out that, by covenant marriage, they are talking about a legal procedure. Louisiana is one of three states that have a law that allows this special type of civil marriage that does not allow no-fault divorce. It does allow divorce but makes it more difficult since fault needs to be established and then only after counseling. And this sounds like a good thing, although as with any legal matter that the human mind can come up with, I’m sure there are downsides and loopholes that a lawyer could point to. However, my first reaction to this legal covenant marriage was: why would this be necessary in the first place? For a Christian, all marriages should be a covenant between the man and the woman, witnessed before God. This is the Catholic understanding of marriage, and it is based on the Gospel from Mark that we just heard, along with similar ones in the other gospels.

The Roman Catholic Church has many teachings, called magisterium, and those that are binding on people’s actions they collect in a rule book known as canon law. Where do all of these rules come from? Well, some come from scripture, straight from God, and these divine laws are binding on all people. Other rules are put in by the Church to help the people of God orient their lives towards God, and do not come from God directly but are still binding on Catholics. However, these latter ones can be temporarily suspended with what is called a dispensation, as Bishop Guglielmone did during the pandemic. He allowed the faithful to not go to Mass for a while, and he could do this because this is a Church rule. However, he could not give a dispensation for keeping the sabbath holy, since that is God's rule, a divine law, the third commandment. His statement at the time indicated that the faithful were still to find ways of worshiping God on Sunday even though they couldn’t go to church, although some people no doubt stopped reading his statement before getting to that point.

So knowing this, how does this inform our understanding of how the Church deals with marriage. Well, the Church, you and I, are faced with a rather stark statement from Jesus in the Gospel: “what God has joined together, no human being must separate" [Mark 10:9 NABRE]. Then he also says, quite clearly, that it is adultery if they do separate and choose other partners after that. This is a very clear directive straight from Christ, God, that the Church then dutifully puts into its rule book: no divorce. Those who think that the pope has the authority to overrule this, to suddenly decide that divorce should be allowed under certain circumstances, haven’t really thought through what they are asking for. A Church that is Christian follows the teachings of Christ – all of them. And certainly Jesus sets a very high standard on marriage, as he does with many things.

So where does that leave us? When marriages have problems which cannot be worked out, despite the good-faith efforts of the man or the woman or both to reconcile, and a civil divorce has occurred, is there an option? The Church has a process called a declaration of nullity, often mistakenly called an annulment, which is a civil law term, or worse yet, “Catholic divorce,” which it is not. A declaration of nullity is found when the Church looks into the circumstances of the marriage covenant itself and finds that there was some grave problem which prevented one or both parties from making a fully informed voluntary decision to enter into this covenant. And often, after a long process of talking with people involved in the decision, there is found some reason why the decision to enter into a covenant was faulty. When this happens, the Church declares that a marriage covenant never occurred. Either through willful or many times unknowing misunderstanding of what they were getting into, a true union of the two parties never really occurred, not that the man and woman are being separated but that they were never really joined in the first place.

Now, this may seem to be a mere technicality, but it is not. And it is important that everyone understand what it is and what it is not. My wife and I spend a lot of time with couples who want to get married here at Saint James discussing what they are getting into, what they are signing up for, what they are promising their future spouse as well as God when they make their wedding vows. I ask if there is something that they are not telling the other about themselves that is important. We go over many aspects of married life that in the euphoria of romantic love may not have been looked at objectively, aspects that down the road will cause problems. Later, during the process of investigation for a declaration of nullity if that becomes necessary, a problem that was ignored or papered over will come up and be examined in detail, and the Church has not only a right but a responsibility to do this. As painful as an investigation of what went wrong is, it is necessary to prevent people from making the same mistake again. Not just the same mistake, but the same type of mistake. And we all know people that have been married multiple times that fit this description.

So I encourage people that have gone through a divorce to seriously consider the process of getting a declaration of nullity. Even though it risks reopening wounds, if the wound is not yet healed, it is worth reopening, as with a doctor on a physical wound, to clean it out and promote proper healing. And it will return you to full communion with the Church. One person I heard once said that, during this process, someone finally asked, really asked, what went wrong? The Church forced him to do a hard examination that, in the end, was for him very healing and life-changing.

One final thing we all must discuss as well: we all are called to support those that are struggling with their marriages and whose marriages have failed. Jesus sets a very high standard, and it is a fact of life that many struggle and fail to meet this standard, as we all do in other aspects of life since we are all sinners. Many are facing or have faced partners that were unwilling to live by this standard, or were abusive, or abandoned their responsibilities. I read the long form of the Gospel because Jesus seems to speak to this. He said, “whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it" [Mark 10:15b]. Children know that they are vulnerable and subject to the forces of nature and the actions of the adults around them. When someone is trapped in an unhappy marriage or knows a relative or friend that is facing this, we often feel like children faced with forces that we cannot control, that seem hopelessly capricious. Jesus tells us, like a child, to have faith in him, to turn it over to him. God will walk with us as we deal with all the problems we face, including marriages and divorces. The Church has a rule book which reflect the teachings of Christ, but we must never lose sight of the fact that the greatest rule, the greatest teaching that Jesus left us, is to love and forgive one another, for that is loving God.

As we continue with our celebration of the Eucharist, the new and everlasting covenant Christ made between himself and his bride the Church, may it give the grace to deepen the covenant of all married people. May those who struggle with their marriage be guided by the Holy Spirit in faith, hope, and charity to work through the issues that at times can seem so insurmountable. May those who have gone through divorce always sense the presence of God in their lives, working to promote healing and forgiveness. The feast day of Saint Francis was last Friday, so we ask for the intercession of this saint who is so identified with peace and love: Saint Francis, pray for us.