Amoris Laetitia apologists rely on kids from second marriages?

[cominghome1966]

I may be too personally involved in this issue to see clearly, so I would like your (name removed by moderator)ut.

It seems that people who advocate for a more liberal/lenient interpretation of AL will invoke the necessity to care for kids in the second marriage. It is hypothesized that the parents cannot split up, since this would disrupt those kids’ lives.

It seems that I’ve seen that a few times.

I have never seen them say that people need to provide a unified home for kids born into the first marriage. Kids from the first marriage seem to be left out of the discussion entirely.

It’s as if it is perfectly OK to tear their families into two pieces so that their parents can be happy in their second marriage.

AL is being used as a way to encourage parents to not do that to kids born into second marriages. These parents can remain together and even be sexual with each other, for the kids’ sake.

But the needs of the kids born into the first marriage to have a unified home with both mother and father present on a daily basis are not even taken into account.

So my questions are these: are the kids from second marriages being given some sort of moral preference in discussions about AL? To the extent that the needs of children are invoked in discussions about AL, is it the needs of the kids of the second marriage that are the primary concern, not the needs of the kids of the first marriage?

I posted this in the social justice area since I believe it is an issue of justice.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

I may be too personally involved in this issue to see clearly, so I would like your (name removed by moderator)ut.

It seems that people who advocate for a more liberal/lenient interpretation of AL will invoke the necessity to care for kids in the second marriage. It is hypothesized that the parents cannot split up, since this would disrupt those kids’ lives.

It seems that I’ve seen that a few times.

I have never seen them say that people need to provide a unified home for kids born into the first marriage. Kids from the first marriage seem to be left out of the discussion entirely.

It’s as if it is perfectly OK to tear their families into two pieces so that their parents can be happy in their second marriage.

AL is being used as a way to encourage parents to not do that to kids born into second marriages. These parents can remain together and even be sexual with each other, for the kids’ sake.

But the needs of the kids born into the first marriage to have a unified home with both mother and father present on a daily basis are not even taken into account.

So my questions are these: are the kids from second marriages being given some sort of moral preference in discussions about AL? To the extent that the needs of children are invoked in discussions about AL, is it the needs of the kids of the second marriage that are the primary concern, not the needs of the kids of the first marriage?

I posted this in the social justice area since I believe it is an issue of justice.

I’ll be interested in the answers here as well.

 

[gardenswithkids]

First off, my condolences on whatever situation made this feel personal for you.

In many situations, there are no children from the first marriage. I suspect those are frequently the circumstances that some people have in mind when they advocate for the couple to stay together for the sake of the children.

If there are children from the first marriage, often they are considerably older, perhaps by ten or twenty years. The children from the first marriage may no longer be minors living at home by the time one of the parents seeks to return to or join the Church.

It may also be that case that both partners from a first marriage have remarried others, so that someone giving guidance and pastoral advice sees the chances of re-unification to be very, very slim to none. Again, this is often prompted by one half of the first married couple seeking to join or return to the Church.

It may also be that while the first marriage was valid, there may have been abuse to cause the divorce. The second civil marriage may provide a loving step-parent who has been raising the child as his/her own with a stable, two-parent home, where there would otherwise be just a struggling single-parent after a second divorce.

Those are some of the situations that come to my mind that might help you understand why it’s not inherently unfair to children from the first marriage. There may be more examples that I didn’t mention. It’s really very messy trying to make things right once people have stepped so far off the proper path.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

First off, my condolences on whatever situation made this feel personal for you.

In many situations, there are no children from the first marriage. I suspect those are frequently the circumstances that some people have in mind when they advocate for the couple to stay together for the sake of the children.

If there are children from the first marriage, often they are considerably older, perhaps by ten or twenty years. The children from the first marriage may no longer be minors living at home by the time one of the parents seeks to return to or join the Church.

It may also be that case that both partners from a first marriage have remarried others, so that someone giving guidance and pastoral advice sees the chances of re-unification to be very, very slim to none. Again, this is often prompted by one half of the first married couple seeking to join or return to the Church.

It may also be that while the first marriage was valid, there may have been abuse to cause the divorce. The second civil marriage may provided a loving step-parent who has been raising the child as his/her own and providing a stable, two parent home where there would otherwise be just a struggling single parent after a second divorce.

Those are some of the situations that come to my mind that might help you understand why it’s not inherently unfair to children from the first marriage. There may be more examples that I didn’t mention. It’s really very messy trying to make things right once people have stepped so far off the proper path.

And then there are the cases where the children in the first marriage are still only tweens at best. And where the one parent (say the mother) never remarried and struggled on with little support and often outright hostility, while the other parent (let’s say the father) decided to get a ‘younger model’ and then raise a second family while ignoring the first except where he could try to cause trouble, didn’t pay child support, had good lawyers, the house, lots of support because he was a ‘dad’ and ‘dads have been so unfairly treated’ yadda yadda.

So the woman who tried to ‘do the right thing’ and had to deal with all the abuse and flak pretty much gets, "well, you COULD have remarried and given your family a ‘stable father figure’, "It’s your problem’, "tough break for you’, and the man who did all the abuse and caused all the trouble gets to walk away with all the goods, the trophy wife, the happy second home, none of the stress, none of the mess, and everybody bends over backward because it is SO important that the ‘child of the second marriage’ doesn’t suffer. . .

And on top of that, because it’s so important that the father in the second marriage get to receive communion, it’s going to be OK for him because his conscience tells him that he’s done everything just fine?

I do find it a little hard to wrap my head around that. God knows that one will be called bitter and hateful, and it’s really not even the fact or the truth; one learns to accept injustice on one’s own behalf, and when the children (now adults) are still suffering their own fallout, there does come a point where it does become something that they deal with as well as you, you’re not doing all the dealing for them, and one tries very hard to give up any animus and truly wish the person well no matter what. . .but as the OP said, mercy can’t exist truly without justice, and it does seem as if at times there is no justice for innocents based simply on their being perceived as ‘not as important’ as other innocents.

 

[jeannetherese]

I may be too personally involved in this issue to see clearly, so I would like your (name removed by moderator)ut.

It seems that people who advocate for a more liberal/lenient interpretation of AL will invoke the necessity to care for kids in the second marriage. It is hypothesized that the parents cannot split up, since this would disrupt those kids’ lives.

It seems that I’ve seen that a few times.

I have never seen them say that people need to provide a unified home for kids born into the first marriage. Kids from the first marriage seem to be left out of the discussion entirely.

It’s as if it is perfectly OK to tear their families into two pieces so that their parents can be happy in their second marriage.

AL is being used as a way to encourage parents to not do that to kids born into second marriages. These parents can remain together and even be sexual with each other, for the kids’ sake.

But the needs of the kids born into the first marriage to have a unified home with both mother and father present on a daily basis are not even taken into account.

So my questions are these: are the kids from second marriages being given some sort of moral preference in discussions about AL?** To the extent that the needs of children are invoked in discussions about AL, is it the needs of the kids of the second marriage that are the primary concern, not the needs of the kids of the first marriage?**

I posted this in the social justice area since I believe it is an issue of justice.

In some cases, the kids in the second marriage will be the kids from the first marriage.
The pressure seems to be (in my mind and I may well be mistaken) to engage in sexual activity rather than risk having an activity desiring partner abandon a second relationship over imposed celibacy and thus negatively affect the children.
I hope the posts of others will help me to better understand the issues involved.
May God bless all who visit the thread.
Amen.

 

[cominghome1966]

Hi, thanks for the responses. Let me clarify the situation I am talking about.

I’m talking about when there are minor children from a first marriage. I didn’t mean to address adult children of divorce, people who are grown when their parents divorce and/or remarry, although it is well known that divorce hurts them too. I specifically meant minor children who are still at home.

I also am talking about children who were born before the second marriage, with different marriage partners. I wouldn’t say that these kids are in the second marriage. Structurally, they are outside of it. This is especially true if they are doing the back-and-forth thing between “two homes.”

I want to know if liberal AL proponents believe that kids born in the second marriage provide some sort of moral weight in making decisions about what to do, sort of like a positive moral guidepost that kids from the first marriage somehow do not provide with respect to those marriages.

If those kids do give a moral weight that somehow reduces culpability for sexual activity even given the presence of kids from a first marriage, then why? How is it that the moral weight from kids born into the second marriage has more influence on decisions than the moral weight from kids born into the first marriage? Especially given that the first marriage is the presumptively valid marriage.

 

[gardenswithkids]

And then there are the cases where the children in the first marriage are still only tweens at best. And where the one parent (say the mother) never remarried and struggled on with little support and often outright hostility, while the other parent (let’s say the father) decided to get a ‘younger model’ and then raise a second family while ignoring the first except where he could try to cause trouble, didn’t pay child support, had good lawyers, the house, lots of support because he was a ‘dad’ and ‘dads have been so unfairly treated’ yadda yadda.

So the woman who tried to ‘do the right thing’ and had to deal with all the abuse and flak pretty much gets, "well, you COULD have remarried and given your family a ‘stable father figure’, "It’s your problem’, "tough break for you’, and the man who did all the abuse and caused all the trouble gets to walk away with all the goods, the trophy wife, the happy second home, none of the stress, none of the mess, and everybody bends over backward because it is SO important that the ‘child of the second marriage’ doesn’t suffer. . .

And on top of that, because it’s so important that the father in the second marriage get to receive communion, it’s going to be OK for him because his conscience tells him that he’s done everything just fine?

I do find it a little hard to wrap my head around that. God knows that one will be called bitter and hateful, and it’s really not even the fact or the truth; one learns to accept injustice on one’s own behalf, and when the children (now adults) are still suffering their own fallout, there does come a point where it does become something that they deal with as well as you, you’re not doing all the dealing for them, and one tries very hard to give up any animus and truly wish the person well no matter what. . .but as the OP said, mercy can’t exist truly without justice, and it does seem as if at times there is no justice for innocents based simply on their being perceived as ‘not as important’ as other innocents.

:hug3:
The thing about these “pastoral approaches” is that they need to look at each situation in a case-by-case situation. A “one-size-fits-all, everyone-in-a-second-marriage-gets-a-pass” approach is neither merciful nor just. While looking like an opposite approach to “rigidity”, that loose pastoral approach swings the pendulum so far to the other side that the pendulum pretty makes a full circle that ends in the same place!

That’s not mercy! :nunchuk:

Believe me, I also have a hard time wrapping my head around how some promote societal acceptance of serious sin in the name of “mercy”. It seems to me that the priest will have a great deal to answer to God for telling a man whose first wife and family await his return that he’s okay staying in an adulterous situation. I pray for God’s mercy for that priest when he answers to God on judgement day! And just because a priest told someone it’s okay to receive Communion, that doesn’t mean that person also gets an automatic, get-out-of-purgatory-free card to show St. Peter when he approaches him at the pearly gates!

For some background, I read Amoris Laetitia from the viewpoint of a Catholic woman who married a Protestant man. I actually liked the document, (although I don’t like how some have interpreted it) and in reading it, I recalled some early difficulties in my marriage. Mine was a first marriage for both of us in the Catholic Church, but to a Protestant, so it’s far different from the original situation but still a situation where he couldn’t receive Communion. I remember the raw emotions that denial of Holy Communion stirred. We entered into our marriage without fully grasping the situation and by the time we met with a priest again to discuss the situation, we were holding a baby. My husband and I have both grown in our faith since then, and my husband eventually converted many years later.

As I read AL, I think the pope hopes to find a starting point for some in difficult situations to enter or re-enter the Church and then to continue to grow in their faith–not a stopping point for people to remain with an immature faith and serious sin. Perhaps as people grow in their faith and as their children grow, there will be reflections, with corrections made and apologies given for past wrongs done to innocent first spouses and children from the first marriage.

Those who hope to find quick solutions to complicated situations rarely find easy answers. There really aren’t easy answers once someone has strayed that far from where God intended. The opportunities for righting wrongs may slowly come, over the years in ways that no one imagined.

 

[cominghome1966]

I don’t have a problem with AL either. I think it’s entirely possible to read it in continuity with historic Church teaching.

 

[Corki]

I may be too personally involved in this issue to see clearly, so I would like your (name removed by moderator)ut.

It seems that people who advocate for a more liberal/lenient interpretation of AL will invoke the necessity to care for kids in the second marriage. It is hypothesized that the parents cannot split up, since this would disrupt those kids’ lives.

It seems that I’ve seen that a few times.

I have never seen them say that people need to provide a unified home for kids born into the first marriage. Kids from the first marriage seem to be left out of the discussion entirely.

It’s as if it is perfectly OK to tear their families into two pieces so that their parents can be happy in their second marriage.

AL is being used as a way to encourage parents to not do that to kids born into second marriages. These parents can remain together and even be sexual with each other, for the kids’ sake.

But the needs of the kids born into the first marriage to have a unified home with both mother and father present on a daily basis are not even taken into account.

So my questions are these: are the kids from second marriages being given some sort of moral preference in discussions about AL? To the extent that the needs of children are invoked in discussions about AL, is it the needs of the kids of the second marriage that are the primary concern, not the needs of the kids of the first marriage?

I posted this in the social justice area since I believe it is an issue of justice.

IMHO, AL does not address the first marriage at all. This is true not only for the children of the first marriage but also the spouse, who in many cases was the “innocent” spouse in a divorce.

I have seen this happen several times. One spouse (usually the husband) has an affair and decides to leave his wife and kids for a younger model. He eventually gets married to the new “spouse” and starts a new family. The first wife usually has primary day-to-day responsibility for the kids and often does not remarry. Under the provisions being proposed by AL, the original (“innocent” in Church terminology) spouse is still prohibited from entering into a valid marriage since the original sacramental bond is still intact. But the other partner and his/her new spouse are welcomed into the Sacraments as if the first marriage, along with the spouse and kids from that marriage, never happened.

If the offending spouse is readmitted to the Sacraments, I feel the Church has a grave obligation to extend the same mercies to the innocent spouse and to allow her (or him) to remarry without it being considered a sin.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Hi, thanks for the responses. Let me clarify the situation I am talking about.

I’m talking about when there are minor children from a first marriage. I didn’t mean to address adult children of divorce, people who are grown when their parents divorce and/or remarry, although it is well known that divorce hurts them too. I specifically meant minor children who are still at home.

I also am talking about children who were born before the second marriage, with different marriage partners. I wouldn’t say that these kids are in the second marriage. Structurally, they are outside of it. This is especially true if they are doing the back-and-forth thing between “two homes.”

I want to know if liberal AL proponents believe that kids born in the second marriage provide some sort of moral weight in making decisions about what to do, sort of like a positive moral guidepost that kids from the first marriage somehow do not provide with respect to those marriages.

If those kids do give a moral weight that somehow reduces culpability for sexual activity even given the presence of kids from a first marriage, then why? How is it that the moral weight from kids born into the second marriage has more influence on decisions than the moral weight from kids born into the first marriage? Especially given that the first marriage is the presumptively valid marriage.

Answering questions like this will inevitably box out another person from the very thing that all who desire too celebrate, should have access to.

 

[angell1]

IMHO, AL does not address the first marriage at all. This is true not only for the children of the first marriage but also the spouse, who in many cases was the “innocent” spouse in a divorce.

I have seen this happen several times. One spouse (usually the husband) has an affair and decides to leave his wife and kids for a younger model. He eventually gets married to the new “spouse” and starts a new family. The first wife usually has primary day-to-day responsibility for the kids and often does not remarry. Under the provisions being proposed by AL, the original (“innocent” in Church terminology) spouse is still prohibited from entering into a valid marriage since the original sacramental bond is still intact. But the other partner and his/her new spouse are welcomed into the Sacraments as if the first marriage, along with the spouse and kids from that marriage, never happened.

If the offending spouse is readmitted to the Sacraments, I feel the Church has a grave obligation to extend the same mercies to the innocent spouse and to allow her (or him) to remarry without it being considered a sin.

AL is not intended to throw the door open to communion for the divorced and remarried unless there is some serious reason where the culpability would be lessened with very careful discernment from the priest.

not for something like your example, I really doubt it

 

[RCinMT]

Hoping somebody will be kind enough to answer a few questions that follow on from this and several discussions:

1. Are there implications for priestly celibacy or even celibacy for the unmarried if indeed AL posits that some people need to be in a sexual relationship?
2. Is there any justifiable concern that this may lure people who are tepid about their faith (e.g. Maybe even being weekly mass attendant but not necessarily receiving the sacrament of reconciliation or attending holy days of obligation) to give into desires that they may have otherwise resisted because they feel they have a pass?
3. Am I only the one who feels that perhaps this pastoral approach should be open to people married before 1/1/17 but should be closed off with focus on better cathechisis from now on?
4. Again, in all charity to the Holy Father, but is he a little demanding on priests? I know my parish priest is over the age of 70 and is stretched VERY thin. Unless he decides to forgo sleep he has no time to conduct investigations and accompaniments to decide if divorced and remarried people should be receiving the Eucharist. Does anybody else feel this way?

 

[cominghome1966]

Answering questions like this will inevitably box out another person from the very thing that all who desire too celebrate, should have access to.

I just want to know if kids in the scenario I proposed are considered in an unequal manner by people who view AL in a liberal/lenient way.

 

[MaryT777]

…subscribed to learn more and hear the thought of posters; thanks for an interesting discussion so far.

 

[St_Francis]

I don’t have a problem with AL either. I think it’s entirely possible to read it in continuity with historic Church teaching.

Can you explain how?

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

I don’t have a problem with AL either. I think it’s entirely possible to read it in continuity with historic Church teaching.

Really? I can’t believe that, unless I am willing to do a lot of mental gymnastics.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Really? I can’t believe that, unless I am willing to do a lot of mental gymnastics.

AL leaves lots of room for interpretation. When there’s room for interpretation, it’s not mental gymnastic to interpret a Church document in the light of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. I believe the Christ established the Church and promised us the Holy Spirit would protect her from formally teaching error. Believing that a Pope wrote a document that formally teaches error in matters of faith and morals requires far more mental gymnastics from a faithful Catholic than believing the pope wrote a document that contains some vague and unclear wording. People have asked Pope Francis to clarify the document because the document is unclear and open to interpretation.
**
Can you site a specific quote from AL where it explicitly permits Holy Communion for those people who are sexually active while in invalid marriages? **(It’s a long, wordy document. If it really formally says that they can, I have yet to find it.)

With all the build-up to this document, I was mentally prepared to face a crisis of faith. I didn’t experience that because I read what he wrote in line with established Church teachings. For all the discussion AL provoked on what it didn’t formally or explicitly say, people generally ignore the beautiful things that it did say that are clearly in line with established Church teachings.

 

[Ender]

The pressure seems to be (in my mind and I may well be mistaken) to engage in sexual activity rather than risk having an activity desiring partner abandon a second relationship over imposed celibacy and thus negatively affect the children.

Is this not a choice between sin and suffering? All of these imagined situations are based on the assumption that there should be a limit to how much difficulty we should have to endure, that if things are really bad we may freely choose to sin in order to make things better. That in fact we may do evil if enough good comes of it. Am I missing something here?

Ender

 

[St_Francis]

AL leaves lots of room for interpretation. When there’s room for interpretation, it’s not mental gymnastic to interpret a Church document in the light of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. I believe the Christ established the Church and promised us the Holy Spirit would protect her from formally teaching error. Believing that a Pope wrote a document that formally teaches error in matters of faith and morals requires far more mental gymnastics from a faithful Catholic than believing the pope wrote a document that contains some vague and unclear wording. People have asked Pope Francis to clarify the document because the document is unclear and open to interpretation.
**
Can you site a specific quote from AL where it explicitly permits Holy Communion for those people who are sexually active while in invalid marriages?** (It’s a long, wordy document. If it really formally says that they can, I have yet to find it.)

With all the build-up to this document, I was mentally prepared to face a crisis of faith. I didn’t experience that because I read what he wrote in line with established Church teachings. For all the discussion AL provoked on what it didn’t formally or explicitly say, people generally ignore the beautiful things that it did say that are clearly in line with established Church teachings.

From the text: Because of an objective situation of sin – which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.351

Foornote 351: In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy.” … I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” (references removed)

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

Believing that a Pope wrote a document that formally teaches error in matters of faith and morals requires far more mental gymnastics from a faithful Catholic than believing the pope wrote a document that contains some vague and unclear wording.
**
**

This exhortation doesn’t go under infallibility. Pope Francis makes that clear. This is not official Church teaching but his opinion. It is not crazy to question whether his personal opinion is problematic. It has happened in the past, no reason to think it can’t happen today. St Francis de Sales made that point in “The Catholic Controversy”.