Tag Archives: Divorce

Guest Post: On Trinitarian Symbolism in the Family

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By Connor Szurgot

When speaking of the Blessed Trinity, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself.” (CCC 234) Beyond even that epic and truly awe-some reality is the reality that, since every cause is in some way in its effect, all of created reality is in some way Trinitarian. One of the clearest examples of this Trinitarian symbolism in created reality is the family. As such, the devil seeks to attack the Blessed Trinity through His image: the family.

A Community of Persons, United by Love

Through the mystery of the Trinity is not able to be fully comprehended by man, certain facts about the mystery can be understood. Some of those facts are: 1) There is one Divine nature, 2) there are three distinct Divine Persons in the Godhead, 3) each of these Divine Persons is co-equal, co-eternal, and fully God, 4) each of the Divine Persons is only differentiated from the others by their relations to the other Persons. These relations are as follows: 1) the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, eternally begets the Son, the second Person of the Trinity and 2) the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. Without delving too deep into this mystery, it is important to understand that all three Persons are united in love. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and this eternal perfect love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.

With that understanding established, it is not hard to see how the family images this. A man and women love each other so much as to give themselves to each other in the life-long bond of matrimony and the fruit of their married love is a child. What unites them in the child on a material level are their shared genes. (Indeed, the father and the mother are in a way now more completely united since the child is the product of both of them.) Yet, beyond the material level, the are united in mutual love, one for another. Also, each member is distinct in their role within the family. They are a community of persons, united in love, that images the community of Persons, united in eternal love.

The First Attack: Gender Theory

Progressive gender theory advances the idea that men and women are the same. This positions leads to two conclusions: 1) to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ has no actual meaning and 2) that one can switch between being a man or a woman at will because what you are is defined only by what you think you are. In addition to the obvious absurdity of this claim, a problem with this is shown by a passage from Genesis, “So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) Notice two things: 1) that God clearly created two distinct sexes and 2) that He created them in the image of God. Clearly, the complementarity of man and woman are supposed to reveal, in a subtle way, something about the Trinity.

The complementary of man and woman is supposed to model the relationship of the Father and the Son. The Father (the man) eternally loves and gives Himself to the Son (the woman) Who receives Him and gives Himself back in return. The man is the giver in the relationship while the woman receives him and gives herself back in return. The natural inclinations in man and woman show this to be true and to attempt to defy this is not only to make oneself miserable, but to destroy this image of the Trinity in man.

The Second Attack: Divorce

Divorce is the first of these three attacks that has found its way into mainstream acceptance among Protestant Christian circles. This is strange since Christ is very clear that, “[husband and wife] are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Matt. 19:6) This practice attacks the Trinity by destroying the Love that binds the Father and the Son together, the Holy Spirit. When a man and woman give themselves to each other in marriage, something new is created even before they step away from the altar. The objective reality of their marriage comes into being and exists in a way that is separate, but dependent on the two people in the marriage. This dependency is not upon the will of the two people joined, but upon their lives. Their marriage will objectively exist until death do they part.

When a couple divorces, they tear apart and divide what God has created to be the symbol of His Unity in the Trinity: the family. The painful effects of such a rupture are often far reaching. It can be particularly damaging to the children of their marriage, who have lost what was supposed to be their image of complete and unconditional love—their image of God on earth.

The Third Attack: Contraception

The second attack of the three that has broken through the walls of the broader Christian kingdom and proceeded to pillage and destroy the interior of that kingdom is contraception. At the beginning of Creation, God gave all animals the blessing of the ability to produce another being like itself. Only in man, however, can we call this blessing procreation instead of reproduction. Only man has been given the privilege of assisting God in the creation of new souls. It is a privilege so important and sacred that it has always been entrusted to two people and marked with a degree of pleasure befitting the goodness of such an act. Moreover, it is a power which makes man truly God-like in the love which motivates it. To will to bring into existence a creature that you will care for and sacrifice for and who has done nothing for you, is indeed incapable of doing anything for you at the beginning, is an act imaging the love that drove God in the act of creation.

The act of contraception, however, opposes the image of the Trinity by removing from a man and woman the natural end of their love and the damage caused by this removal is proportional to the good it damages. While a single contraceptive act, even between a man and wife, is gravely sinful as it opposes the end set forth by the natural law, the effects of a contraceptive mindset are even more terrifying. Through the adoption of a contraceptive mindset, our culture has separated marital love and the creation of children into two separate camps. The fruits of such a separation are bountiful in our culture: pre- and extra-martial relations, masturbation, pornography, abortion, fatherless children, the acceptance of homosexuality and numerous other sexual disorders. It paves the way for marital love, which is supposed to express perfect self-giving to another, to corrupt into selfishness and mutual use. The Trinity shows that love is fruitful by its very nature. The love between the Father and the Son spirates out from them and is another Person. To act contrary to the natural end of love is to act contrary to love itself.

The family is the building block of society and God has will that it be the building block of the supernatural society of the Church as well. He has also made it the natural image for His very Nature, the greatest mystery of the Catholic faith. We must defend this great gift from God which has been entrusted to us by living and proclaiming the truth.

On the Heresy of Marriage

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In a previous post, the logical and theological necessity of the Development of Doctrine was discussed.  One of the points made was that corruption of doctrine, normally what we label as heresy, always leads to a dead end and ends up destroying the very doctrine it was trying to explain.  But there is a sense in which heresy also can be an impetus for the development of authentic doctrine by “forcing” the Church to elaborate more fully on the doctrine in question.  History is replete with examples, but we are faced with a prime example today in the attack within the Church on the Sacrament of Marriage.

We do not need to go into the details of the attack specifically other than to say the widescale acceptance of contraception, remarriage, and even gay marriage within the Church all signal an attack on the Sacrament itself.  Part of the reason why the response has been so slow is that there is still a lack of clarity within the theology of the Sacrament of Marriage.  St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body was a beginning, but it remains just that—a beginning.  His teaching is so dense that there remains much work to be done to clarify and expound on what he hoped to accomplish.  This essay is an attempt to move the discussion forward by clearing up some common misconceptions.

Natural Marriage vs Sacramental Marriage

The first distinction is between natural and Sacramental marriage.  Marriage by its very nature is something sacred because it is ordered towards the co-creative action of procreation.  Even in its natural state it acts as a sacrament (note the small s) pointing to God’s covenant with mankind.  But this natural state of marriage is different not just in degree but in kind from Sacramenta Marriage.  So often people see the Sacrament as something added on to natural marriage but in truth it is a different reality.  It is a different reality because it has a different end.  Natural marriage is for the propagation of the species, Sacramental marriage is for the propagation of the Church.  Natural marriage is for the mutual help of the spouses, Sacramental marriage is for the mutual sanctity of the spouses.

Because natural marriage and Sacramental Marriage (for ease we will call it Matrimony moving forward) are distinct realities we must resist the temptation to lump them together.  It would be akin to not seeing bread and wine as essentially different from the Eucharist.  They may look the same from the outside, but the interior reality makes all the difference in the world.  Matrimony is not just a Catholic way of getting married, but instead its interior life becomes a cause of grace in the souls of the spouses.  In other words, its sacramentality is a direct participation in the mystery of Redemption.   

The Fruits of the Sacrament

Failing to grasp this and thinking that something like divorce is possible is not just to disobey a commandment of Christ.  Instead it is a denial of the Sacrament and threatens the entire Sacramental structure.  Matrimony, like all Sacraments has specific fruits.  The first fruit is the unity of the spouses.  Rather than trying to “hold it together”, Matrimony is a cause of their unity.  They are bound together as Christ is bound to the Church and their union continually approaches this ideal.  And in so doing, it brings about the thing it signifies by uniting them closer to Christ as members of His Church. 

Secondly, the Sacrament also bears the fruit of indissolubility.  As St. John Paul II puts it in Familiaris Consortio, “the indissolubility of marriage finds its ultimate truth in the plan that God has manifested in His revelation: He wills and He communicates the indissolubility of marriage as a fruit, a sign and a requirement of the absolutely faithful love that God has for man and that the Lord Jesus has for the Church” (FC, 20).

The Church uses the term fruit very purposefully.  For fruit comes about when a tree is matured and it is always sweet once it is ripe.  The fruits of Matrimony are felt more deeply as the marriage matures.  Lacking this maturity, the fruit often tastes bitter.  In other words, the gifts of unity and indissolubility do not guarantee that things will be easy, even if they guarantee they will be possible.  Before the fruits are matured the couple will have to have their faith purified.  His commands—“you shall not divorce and remarry another”—are not made in a vacuum, but instead ought to be read as promises—“because of the power of the Cross you shall not divorce and remarry another.”  As an they grow in faith in God, their faithfulness to each other increases likewise.  The fruit day by day matures until it becomes sweet.

Even tolerating divorce and remarriage is not just a practical issue but has theological consequences as a denial of the power of the Sacrament.  It says that the Sacrament really doesn’t do anything and ultimately Matrimony is no different than natural marriage.  To deny this ultimately is to deny the power of the Cross to save.  And this is ultimately why we are facing a heretical crisis.  Marriage in all appearance is impossible.  Matrimony however is not because “nothing is impossible for God.”  It is, as JPII put it, “permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross” (FC, 13).  The Church is facing a great modern heresy about the Theology of Marriage and the Faithful must respond in both their living and understanding of Matrimony as a Sign of Contradiction.

A Culture of Divorce

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Once, when Our Lord was speaking with the Pharisees, they tried to test Him by asking Him about the lawfulness of divorce.  In response, He invited them to return to the beginning when, in God’s plan, man and woman became one through marriage.  In revoking Moses’ concession to man’s hardness of heart and outlawing divorce, He announced the indissolubility of marriage as a key aspect of the New Covenant.  This teaching however has become a source of controversy among Christians to the point where only the Catholic Church has remained faithful to Our Lord’s teaching of marriage as indissoluble.  Moses may have allowed divorce outright, but this is not the only way to “allow” divorce.  There is a second, more subtle way, that many within the Church would like to adopt—the “yes, divorce is wrong, but it doesn’t really matter” approach.

Remarriage is not the Only Problem

A point of clarification is necessary at first.  At first it seems the issue is really about remarriage after divorce.  But the Church, echoing Christ’s words is really against divorce.  In Matthew 19:9 Our Lord issues an exception opening the path to divorce because of “unchastity.”  The actual Greek word used by St. Matthew is porneia and has remained rather elusive as to an exact translation.  All of the ink spilled on a proper translation of this word is pointless unless we understand two things.

First, regardless of whether it refers to serious sexual sin or other forms of infidelity such as abuse, divorce is only a legal arrangement of living apart.  The marriage bond is not, nor can it ever be, broken.  Nowhere throughout the history of the Church did this ever mean that the person was free to remarry.  This teaching comes directly from St. Paul who taught that the separated couple has two options: reconciliation or remain single (1 Cor 7:10-11).

Second, the exception proves the rule.  This needs to be mentioned because we now live in a culture where the exception becomes the rule.  GK Chesterton said that because we have an “incapacity to grasp that the exception proves the rule, …silent anarchy is eating out our society.” He goes on to say that “if you treat a peculiar thing in a peculiar way, you thereby imply that ordinary things are not to be treated in that way…Anything in a special situation shows by implication that all things are not in that situation.”  In other words, the argument that there is an exception for “unchastity” says that divorce is normally wrong.  There can be no such thing as “no-fault divorce” because it takes the exception and makes it the rule.

That being said, divorce really does matter and we should not merely turn a blind eye to it.  Divorce really matters because of its effect on the Family.  When I say capital F Family, I mean the social reality that is the Family.  Yes, obviously, it has profound effects on those families touched by it directly, but no family remains immune to it.  Divorce leads to a divorce culture; a culture born not just by imitation, but also by intimation.

Marriage and Children

To see this, we must first acknowledge the relationship between marriage and children.  Most of us know these things are intrinsically connected but would struggle to articulate it.  Even the most ardent supporter of same-sex marriage knows this and often goes to great lengths to simulate it as part of their relationship.  The purpose of marriage is the mutual perfection of the spouses.  Marriage is an end in itself—it is not a means to have children.  A man and a woman desire marriage with each other, not because it will bring children into the world, but because they desire to be completely united to their spouse so that the two become one—spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

What does the Church mean then when she says that “Procreation and education of children is the end of marriage”?  What this means is that when the two become one, children naturally follow.  In other words, children are the fruit of conjugal love.  Procreation and education of children is the end of marriage not as the reason why spouses come together, but as a result of their coming together.  Marriage is the natural place in which a child is brought into and up in this world.  Yes, there are exceptions and courageous ones at that, but the exception proves the rule.  A child brought up with only one parent is at a disadvantage.

Clarity as to why this is a disadvantage emerges when we examine our brokenness.  As a result of the Fall, conflict and division emerges between men and women (c.f. Gn 3:16).  Their relationship becomes mainly one of competition.  But, “in the beginning, it was not so.”  Humanity is not man or woman, but both.  A child brought up with only a father(s) or mother(s) is really only half-educated on what it means to be a human person.  They need, and therefore have a right to, both parents.

But not any man and any woman will do.  They must be indissolubly united by love because each child must know that they are not a result of some random encounter, but through an act of everlasting love.  They remain incomprehensible to themselves unless they know they were loved into existence.  This is why their security always rests in the stability of their parents relationship and the love between the spouses must be the primary catalyst for the love of the parents for the child.

The Hidden Effects

In this setting, the child intimates what becomes a very important belief that puts structure his whole life.   A child needs a father and a mother not as separate or competing influences but as cooperating influences in their complementarity.  The world, especially today, says that men and women are mostly competitive and will only come together when, and for as long as, there is mutual benefit.  By remaining indissolubly united, the children learn that men and women are not naturally competitive but cooperative.  The minute divorce enters the picture, the child only sees the competitiveness.  When this happens enough and divorce within society gathers a certain momentum, indissoluble marriage becomes the exception and society built upon the Family crumbles.

Chesterton calls divorce, especially when there is remarriage, the height of superstition.  Can we really expect someone who broke a vow at the altar to keep a vow the second time at that same altar?  Vows mean very little and within a divorce culture integrity becomes an anti-value.  We are married at an altar because an altar is a place of sacrifice.  Marriage leads to the fulfillment of spouses because each learns to truly love.  It is a sad world where happiness (in the worldly sense) and love must co-exist.  Marriage is the school where love is learned and taught, and not just to the children.  Divorce says all of that was a lie.