RU 52/2009 - FRANCE

FRANCE: The festive days of this end of the year may allow some sound and healthy thoughts. The best spiritual article which, through this year, passed over the table of our editorial office, is signed by Rev. Fr. Philippe Laguerie, entitled 'NEVER DIVORCE !’. It criticizes a major social scourge of our time, even under Christians. Here are some large extracts of this text written by a very experienced priest.

"Saint Augustine said: ‘Marriage is from God, divorce is from devil’. He is absolutely right, this giant of science, of holiness, and of common sense. The marriage is from God because it’s the institution of love, and God is Love. The divorce is from the devil (‘liar and homicide since the beginning’) because it’s the spiral of lie, murder, and hatred. Yes, of murder. There is, for this reason, no loophole and divorce is always, for a man, a woman, above all for Christians, the worst of the human scourges, the ruin of the Family, the apocalypse in daily reality.

It’s highly necessary to recall these elementary truths that thousand and one reasons seem to sublimate in the technical sense of the term: passage from the solid state to the gaseous state, without passing through a liquid state ! You have no reason, or even no excuse, and of course no right, to divorce, none. Even if there are extreme cases, where the Church tolerates the separation of the spouses, who thus remain married…

When I was young priest, I was listening at length to the complainants and felt rather sorry about their reciprocal grievances, so that I finally entered into their ridiculous and mortifying game. I was trying to save the situation by advice, certainly with some enthusiasm, but frankly speaking in a foolish way, as if a bit of paint was sufficient to avoid the sinking of a vessel. Now, when two spouses start speaking to me about divorce, I make them sit down and it’s up to me to talk. You want to go to divorce? O. K ! But you should perfectly know what will be happening to you. At least, you will have been warned.

Divorce is a spiral without end, without brake, without shame, ending up by pure hatred. When you only dare to think about finishing the very society that supports, establishes, and even constitutes you, love has disappeared for a long time (and this is the true reason of all the subsequent misfortunes), and hatred - not yet declared by some rest of civility and particularly by the fear to admit it to oneself - is already installed. It will not stop any more.

Because one must, of course, prove to oneself before making an as devastating thing, by justifying one’s shame, that it’s you who has reason, and the other one is necessarily faulty. This is wrong. The two are wrong, severely, and since long time, and they know it better than anyone else. The matrimonial responsibilities tend towards 50/50, all of them. One feels obliged to demonstrate that the other one is an unviable monster, and vice versa. The lie, bad faith, wickedness come to be erected into a system and, as naturally the other one will react in the same unjust fashion, the spiral of outbidding starts. The state of collapse of this couple is not static. Each one wants the fall of the other one, if this did not arrive yet, and I saw spouses who justified their adultery and pushed themselves reciprocally to adultery. After all, isn’t it the best justification of divorce? It’s a consolation of one’s turpitude by thinking one is not the only one...

Children multiply by ten this spiral of the devil. Even before divorce is granted, the parents who take lawyers and judges for witness of their decrepit, will immediately lose any authority over their children. This authority is by nature common to both and disappears with the discord. It’s the DDASS (French social assistance system), its social workers, the judges and all those gangs who decide in your place. It appears that none of the two sorcerer's apprentices who rush towards unfair divorce, have ever considered the forfeiture that this will cause to their household and family, and the abdication of any honour which will follow. To make enter third parties (that’s very fashionable today) who have nothing to do with your children in the atom of your couple, is to trigger an atomic bomb. But this is not all yet.
Parental love is instinctive. It still exists in those whom the virtue and the common sense have deserted. Exactly as in animals, who have neither this one nor that one. And look at all the effort they make for the little ones. Thus, for getting the custody of one’s children, or simply for retaining some ‘right’ to visit, each one will have to prove to the judge that the other one is a monster. The cleverest parents know that two grounds are easily selected, still today, by the judges to deter them from entrusting their children: belonging to a sect, and paedophilia. Well, I encountered the two of them. Yes, parents who were at the outset very pious (sometimes too much!) accused their partner to belong to a sect (follow my eyes!) to which they gave themselves their best! Others accused each other of paedophilia (while I knew very well that neither one nor the other was capable of that) in order to convince the judge not to entrust their cherubim to the other monster, but rather to themselves. We are laughing about the story of the two courtesans of Solomon and of the perversity of that one who preferred the child of the other one to die rather than to lose it for herself; but divorcing persons are equally pitiful and are heading towards the same crimes. When one has put his finger into the spiral of hatred, one becomes very quickly a ferocious beast.

I pass voluntarily over the collateral consequences to the couple itself. They are certainly countless and disastrous, but only consequential. When the couple works, everything works. When the couple is sick, everything degenerates. Sordid stories of money, omnidirectional transitivity of hatred, the need to convince all the family, friends, relations, even professional ones (up to organized unemployment of the enemy, l saw that), that your partner is the only guilty one and you innocent. Children are irreversibly traumatized, even in their intimate relation with God. How to teach them that God is ‘Our Father’ when the example of father that they have before their eyes, is a selfish cynical? Idem for the mother and the Mercy that she is supposed to embody. The children of divorced are, unfortunately and with no fault of their part, quite easily identifiable. Their fragility is irreversible, and they will never reach this natural and supernatural harmony already so difficult for the others. You have to 'educate’ your children, but you have no authority to do so, as your life is that of a permanent counter-example... Your children will quickly be convinced that, to succeed in their lives, they will have to do the opposite of what they are experiencing, and will never have the means to do so. There is atavism in divorce, and a terrible responsibility for those who inaugurate it by filiation.

Love is not a luxury in marriage ; it’s the engine, its fuel, its purpose. "Husbands, love your women". You ask why Saint Paul did not say the opposite, which would have been just as fair: "Women, love your husbands" ! This is obviously unnecessary, and people who love themselves, know it by experience. Husbands who love their women know that the reciprocal is acquired, let’s go on.

In this regard, the comparison of the two goals of marriage should not mislead anyone. If the first goal (procreation and education) is called in this way, it’s only because it vehicles the most remarkable common welfare of this society, and how much! Because of the surprising power that have legitimate spouses to extend the arm of God in the creation and ‘produce’ what they are themselves, nothing could exceed in value this prerogative and its well known consequences. The main asset of a society are its members, of course. One must have a big dose of bad faith for not seeing that. But attention: To succeed one’s marriage lies fully in obtaining the other goal, abysmally called ‘secondary’, because it isn’t secondary at all! Especially when some people go as far as calling it ‘assistance or mutual help’. One thinks immediately about old rheumatic couples with arthrose, the SAMU (State’s urgent medical help services), that’s to what we are comparing love ! It becomes in case of divorce the SMUR : the French Mobile Emergency Service for Resuscitation… The first story of Genesis (1.26) mentions in the first place fecundity. But the second one (2,18) reveals the immediate and daily reason of this union: ‘It’s not good that man be alone, let him a companion similar to him’. It’s reciprocal love which will change the life of this magic tandem. Love will allow first of all its existence, and then its prosperity, and ultimately its fecundity, and the prosperity of this fecundity under all aspects. And certainly not the reverse of it. To have a successful marriage, this obviously means to succeed in this very poorly called ‘secondary’ goal which is under all respects primary: chronologically, psychologically, existentially.... It means for the man to love his wife, and for the woman to love her husband. The rest will follow very well and easily.
Love, that’s not a minimum service ensuring a peaceful coexistence, more or less without too many incidents. Love is positive, undertaking, creative, surprising. It’s everything except undergoing. Love is a job, a work, an art, of each day, each hour and every moment. Exactly as in the spiritual life. And it’s for not having realised this primary task of your essential obligation, that indifference and finally hatred will take the relay. Yes, the first obligation of marriage is not to care for the kids, it’s love, and not minimal love, but substantial love, ‘as Christ loved the Church’... Your children will do very well, once you love your partner.

I see the enormous objection coming up. ‘But what can you know about the everyday life, the lengthy days, monotony, routine, the recurring and incorrigible defects, boredom, worries, of the past which weighs heavily, of uncertain future; what do you know about the regret, the covetousness, jealousy, laziness, selfishness, dirt... and I pass over the best, which are gnawing one’s spirit and besetting one’s soul in the life of a couple?’ … Answer: an anchorite may still have the luxury to sulk, to boycott, to complain, to groan against Providence: it doesn’t do any harm except to himself, and that’s very good so. But a married man, a married woman, not less than a priest, who are living in the community, cannot offer themselves the luxury of playing the role of erratic and unbearable kids. One always harvests what one sows, especially in marriage. Sow according to the spirit, and you will harvest life! Sow according to the Spirit and you will earn Eternity.”

Now, if you want to divorce, go ahead. You are going to create your hell on earth, with one foot in eternal damnation ? I warned you.»

END OF QUOTATION. Source (with the full text, in French only): http://blog.institutdubonpasteur.org , under the date of Oct. 20th, 2009.

And now we wish you a Good, Saint and Happy New Year 2010 - without divorce.