Divorce survivors and the Catholic Church: "When bitter memories freeze the tongue and songs of love are left unsung"

When burning embers in the darkness
Bring cold comfort to the heart
When bitter memories freeze the tongue 

And songs of love are left unsung

Hot Buttered Rum
Lyrics by Tommy Thompson (sung by Red Clay Ramblers) 

If you have any doubt about how fatuous the New York Times has become, then read Austin Ruse's essay in Crisis titled "The New York Times Loves a Good Love Story." Ruse began his story with this riveting paragraph:

A few years ago, the New York Times told the incredibly moving story of Robert Kennedy Jr. courting a woman who became his third wife but only after he divorced his second wife who later hung herself in the family barn after being harassed by Kennedy apparatchiks. None of this was included in the Times story.

More recently, the Times wrote another gushy story about Michael Ruhlman and Ann Hood, two accomplished writers, who crossed paths when they were younger and finally reunited and got married. However, the Times glossed over the fact that Ruhlman and Hood were both married and had children when they got emotionally evolved.

Ruse used these two New York Times stories as a springboard for his impassioned defense of marriage--marriage as the Catholic Church understands it. And I agree with everything Ruse said. Divorce is a psychological and spiritual disaster, and no divorced person who has children ever gets over it.

And as Ruse said, the harm divorce causes the children themselves is catastrophic and irreparable. "[N]o matter what the situation in the marriage, it is always best for the children for the parents to stay together." Indeed, Ruse writes, "[t]here is voluminous data that supports even the notion that it is better for a child to live in a broken home than to come from one."

But then I read Kate Hennessy's biography of Dorothy Day, titled The World Will Be Saved By Beauty. Kate Hennessy is the youngest daughter of Tamar Hennessy, Dorothy Day's only child; and Kate is Dorothy Day's youngest grandchild.

 The World Will Be Saved by Beauty is a beautifully written book. After reading only a few pages, I could see that Kate had inherited her grandmother's gift for writing.  As I turned the pages I began to see that the book is as much about Dorothy's daughter, Tamar, as it is about Dorothy.

As Kate Hennessy relates, Tamar was immersed from childhood in the Catholic Worker movement, which was started by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Although Peter and Dorothy called for a radical Catholic response to social injustice, they were both orthodox Catholics--orthodox in every way.

When she was 15 years old, Tamar met David Hennessy at the Catholic Worker farm in Easton, Pennsylvania. David was 13 years older than Tamar, and Dorothy would not allow her daughter to marry until she was 18. David waited patiently, and the two were married in 1944.

David and Tamar Hennessy lived a Catholic marriage. They had 9 children together and one miscarriage. In fact, for 14 years, Tamar was either pregnant or nursing.

But David Hennessy was a deeply troubled man. Even before he met Tamar, he got into some kind of altercation with his best friend, who shot David's ear off with a .30-30 rifle.  Not long after the wedding, it became apparent that David drank too much; indeed he eventually became an alcoholic. He was quarrelsome and only intermittently employed. He stumbled from one minimum-skill job to another and was never able to adequately support his wife and nine children.

When David got older, his mental health deteriorated and he was institutionalized for a time. Tamar finally left him, although as good Catholics, Tamar and David never divorced.

David died at the age of 92 after having lived for a time with another woman who may have been a prostitute. After his death, Kate Hennessy discovered and read her father's diaries and came to the conclusion that he may have been a homosexual.

Some Catholic marriage!

I have a Catholic Catechism in my home. I haven't read it all, but I agree with the Church's stance on marriage, family life, and the dignity of human life in all stages.

But I came from a family that did not live by Catholic values. In fact, my parents suffered from severe mental health problems and were physically and psychologically abusive to their children.

I see friends--good and decent people--who are struggling with all kinds of serious life issues: divorce, drug addiction, alcoholism, unemployment, mental illness, alienation from their children, cancer, and even violence.

God help me, but I don't think the Catechism is very useful for dealing with the harsh realities of life in postmodern America. Jesus didn't operate from a catechism. Basically he just called on us to respond with love and kindness to the human suffering we see around us every day.

But a lot of scholars, theologians, priests, and bishops disagree with me. So what in the hell do I know?

Dorothy Day and daughter Tamar

References

Kate Hennessy. The World Will Be Saved By Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother. New York: Scribner, 2016.

Austin Ruse. The New York Times Loves a Good Love Story. Crisis Magazine, May 5, 2017.

Hypocritical scholars criticize Amore Laetitia and Pope Francis: Jesus and the Pharisees

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites."

I have perused several scholarly critiques of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation about marriage and divorce.  Frankly, most of what I read comes across to me as pharisaical.  

Some old dudes in Brazil, who call themselves the Plinio Correa de Oliveira Institute,  published a turgid document (95 footnotes) claiming that Pope Francis' papal exhortation "Opens the Gates of the Church and Society for a Programmed Demolition of Marriage and the Family." Managing to be both hysterical and utterly boring at the same time, the document compares Pope Francis' pedagogical model to Jean Jacques Rousseau (!) and calls on the Pope to revoke Amoris Laetitia outright.

Father Regis Scanlon, writing in Crisis Magazine, says the document "has many Catholics thinking they are living in a nightmare." Father Scanlon asks his readers to reflect on a seventh-century doctrinal controversy during the papal reign of Honorius I, which he thinks might  help Catholics weather the Amoris controversy. 

Honorius, it seems, got too cozy with the Monothelitists; and he got a theological slap on the wrist by his successor, Leo II. Honorius, Leo charged, "did not illumine this Apostolic Church with the doctrine of the Apostolic tradition, but allowed it, while immaculate, to be stained by profane betrayal."

Thanks, Father Scanlon, for sharing that story with us. I'll bet you give great homilies!

Then there's Richard A. Spinello, a research professor at Boston College, who laments the fact that the church hierarchy is unwilling to speak out against Pope Francis's blow to "doctrinal integrity." Spinello ends his essay in Crisis Magazine by saying it is up to the laity "who must face reality and speak with candor about the deficiencies of this alien papal teaching." 

Let me get this straight, Professor Spinello. Are you saying it's Joe Six-Pack's job to tell Pope Francis what to do?  Good luck with that!

In another Crisis essay, Spinello sums up his view of Amoris Laetitia by saying: "At best, this is an imprecise work that needs clarification; at worst, it is a subtle repudiation of Veritatis Splendor and two thousand years of Catholic moral Tradition." 

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

God knows I am no theologian, but I was raised a Methodist so I can read the Bible. And this is what Jesus said in the Book of Matthew:

Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter.

Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites. You traverse sea and land to make one convert, but when that happens you make him a child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves.

As I said, I am no theologian, but that passage reassures me that Pope Francis was on the right track when he wrote Amoris Laetitia. It is, after all, a message of love and mercy.

 But then what do I know? I'm just a back-pew lay Catholic who lives in Louisiana, and I know absolutely nothing about Honorius I and those wretched Monothelites.

References

Plinio Correa de Oliveira Institute. 'Amoris Laetitia' Opens the Gates of thke Church and Society for a Programmed Demolition of Marriage and the Family, September 29, 2016.

Fr. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M. CAP. What History May Tell Us About Amoris Laetitia. Crisis Magazine, January 26, 2017.

Richard A. Spinello. Debate Continues Over Amoris Laetitia. Crisis Magazine, May 25, 2017.

Richard A. Spinello. On Rocco Buttiglione's Defense of Amoris Laetitia. Crisis Magazine, August 9, 2016.