An observation on "Marriage in Trouble" postings

[EasterJoy]

It is sinful to put a parent in the nursing home? While I don’t plan on dropping my mother or my mother-in-law off at a nursing home, I don’t see anything morally wrong with it. My grandfather had dementia. Our family tried very hard to take care of him. After he cornered my aunt in the laundry room and told her that he was going to kill her, we decided it was better if he were put in a nursing home. He was a threat to not only himself, but to the ones who, with no medical back ground, tried to care for him. I was the only one who he knew when we visited him. While I guess I could have cared for him, I was a college kid and I didn’t have the means or the house to do so.

It is not the same as euthanasia.

There are times when skilled and specifically-built facilities are in fact far superior to what can be offered in the home. They can be a lot more expensive, but sometimes that is what is necessary. This is particularly true when the families of the patient are all two-wage-earner families or if the stay-at-home members of the family have duties that would be in conflict with caring for a patient with dementia or very high physical needs, or when the patient is too big and too unable to help with their own movements for a single person to do transfers in a way that is safe for both patient and caretaker.

I have heard from a geriatric nurse that it is actually more common that a patient that was still capable of living alone was put into an assisted care situation that the patient didn’t want because the family was over protective of the patient. Rather than being uncaring, the family is afraid of the hazards of letting a frail or somewhat forgetful relative live alone. Just like the hazards of letting a teen or young adult have freedoms that carry a certain amount of risk, however, the nurse felt that the health benefits of giving seniors as much autonomy as possible were often worth it. (It isn’t as if the nursing home can keep patients 100% safe from every hazard.)

 

[IA_Catholic]

KendraDZ1902
I posted a follow-up to my original message:

Just a quick clarification on my comment about dropping mom in the nursing home. I did not mean to imply that there is something wrong with nursing homes, but rather to point out how some use them to avoid their responsibility to family. The intent was to draw a comparison between this behavior and one who uses divorce as a way to avoid the difficult times in marriage.

My mother was in a nursing facility for a few weeks while recovering from an accident. We looked at a having her either stay in her home or our home with a nurse but we could not work it out for such a short period of time. Either my wife or I were there almost every day and I think we moved in about 20% of her bedroom furniture so she would be more comfortable. The conversations we had with the staff & residents was that many people there were lucky to have monthly visits by family. About the same time my wife was a Eucharistic Minister at two other homes and unfortunately, there were similar trends there as well. Obviously this can vary from place to place but I wanted to give background as to where my comment came from.

 

[EasterJoy]

KendraDZ1902
I posted a follow-up to my original message:

My mother was in a nursing facility for a few weeks while recovering from an accident. We looked at a having her either stay in her home or our home with a nurse but we could not work it out for such a short period of time. Either my wife or I were there almost every day and I think we moved in about 20% of her bedroom furniture so she would be more comfortable. The conversations we had with the staff & residents was that many people there were lucky to have monthly visits by family. About the same time my wife was a Eucharistic Minister at two other homes and unfortunately, there were similar trends there as well. Obviously this can vary from place to place but I wanted to give background as to where my comment came from.

So you are not saying the problem is with *putting *Mom in the nursing home. The problem, rather, is in forgetting or even abandoning Mom in the nursing home. You are right: once family members learn how exhausting and grief-inducing it can be to see their parents or grandparents or other loved one under those conditions, they can forget how important it is to the person who is trying to make a new and sometimes less-than-personal place into a home. Even when a person doesn’t seem to know who they are with, the experience of time with a person who obviously loves them is very important. They may not “know”, but I’m convinced that their body does “remember” getting that special attention.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

(It isn’t as if the nursing home can keep patients 100% safe from every hazard.)

They use sedation of one sort or another, and although it’s not 100%, it is much easier to keep them safe through judicious use of medications.

I used to think of nursing homes as a last resort, and I still do, but there comes a time when an elderly person with dementia becomes a danger to him or herself and to the people caring for him/her. Then it’s a necessary option. If we didn’t have nursing homes, there is a segment within our society that would support euthanasia, as we put down our pets when they are too old and sick to have any quality of life. That day may yet come, perhaps in our lifetimes.

 

[EasterJoy]

They use sedation of one sort or another, and although it’s not 100%, it is much easier to keep them safe through judicious use of medications.

I used to think of nursing homes as a last resort, and I still do, but there comes a time when an elderly person with dementia becomes a danger to him or herself and to the people caring for him/her. Then it’s a necessary option. If we didn’t have nursing homes, there is a segment within our society that would support euthanasia, as we put down our pets when they are too old and sick to have any quality of life. That day may yet come, perhaps in our lifetimes.

We’re not talking about a patient who needs to be sedated (and there are charges against less-than-scrupulous nursing homes that they over-use sedation), let alone one who has shown that violence towards themselves or others is a real possibility. Medications are supposed to make life better for the patient, not “easier” for the staff. (I mean, would you want to be doped up all of the time when it wasn’t absolutely necessary? Who would? It can’t be good, just in terms for how much more inactive it makes the patient.) But yes, sometimes judicious use of medications prove to be the only way to keep a patient from injuring themselves or others. It would be wrong to condemn them entirely.

We are talking about a patient who has moderate issues with their memory or who is in some danger of falling, that kind of a thing. IOW, the nurse was talking about “preventative” institutionalization. She said that families are trying to protect their elder from having something bad happen to them, but that patients can still have falls at skilled care facilities, there are other patients there who can be unpredictable, and so families should not think of them as a place where nothing bad can happen. If a person can still handle some amount of autonomy, then she thought it unwise to take it away in the false hopes that the payoff is complete safety.

My point was that families sometimes institutionalize an elder with the best of intentions. Even if you visit every day, though, most of us would like to live in our own home for as long as possible, and if that means that we chance some bad outcome, so be it. That doesn’t change just because we get to be over a certain age or those chance rise quite a bit. Most of us still want to be in our own home, and all the more so the older we get.

With regards to this thread, some spouses hang in there and tolerate grave infidelities or grave threats to their safety or the safety of their children for longer than is good for anyone. Divorce is a grave matter to be avoided when possible, but that does not mean it ought to be avoided at all costs. When it is permissible, it is almost a necessity.

 

[IA_Catholic]

I’d have to see the threads you mean. People do post about some grievous offenses against marriage, and patterns of behavior that include the kinds of absence of integrity that really do make seeking legal advice sooner rather than later a prudent course of action. For instance, I know of wayward men who buy things like automobiles for their mistresses. The father in the story of the Prodigal Son did not give the wayward son the entire estate. He divided it, keeping back the portion that fairly ought to go to the other son when he died. For a valid marriage that goes through divorce, the legal ends being pursued by the innocent spouse are something like that. There is no way to stay married and to protect the portion of the couple’s estate that ought to be there to sustain the innocent spouse in his or her old age (or to educate the children, etc.) That is one of the big reasons that Catholics who do not want a divorce are finally forced to file for one.

I also think that there are times when the wayward spouse is not going to turn from their ways when their wayward behavior is normalized by being tolerated. Usually, after all, the OP does not post about behavior that was confessed to them and repented from, but instead posts about behavior that was denied, rationalized, or repeated many times after the wayward spouse was returned to a position of trust. IOW, sometimes when the aggrieved spouse does too little, the near occasion of sin is nearer to the wayward spouse than in the aggrieved spouse made the intolerable nature of the offense more clear.

I’m not sure of using the Prodigal Son story is a good analogy. General speaking parents raise thier children and they leave. After thier death, thier estate is divided among thier hiers. The father in the story choose to give the son his inheritance in advance. Marriage is designed to continue until death, and then the remaining spouse will inherit the whole estate (I know this distribution varies by state if the person dies without a will). While it may be prudent to divorce to protect assets, it is still a choice you make to value them more than your spouse. If your spouse had a medical condition would you withold treatment so that you can protect assets? I have two friends who divorced thier spouses due to alcohol issues. Clearly their problem was a threat to the family assets. In both cases the spouse’s condition dramatically worsed after the divorce and eventially led to thier early death. Both surviving spouses have great regret for thier decision but felt they were almost pushed into it by guidance they received from both inside and outside the church.

Besides, to be quite frank, there are adulterers who really are not struggling one bit. They’re brazenly continuing their offenses against their marriage. The impact on letting them think this is tolerable is like letting a bank robber have the master key to all the Wells Fargo vaults…nothing that is going to increase the robber’s likelihood of turning from their sin, let’s just say that.

I don’t suggest to tolerate the behavior, just as Catholics we sometime need to act differently. If it cost a person their entire fortune but in the end they had a spouse that was repentant and going to heaven would it be worth it? What if it cost them their pride? I’m probably misquoting but don’t we have to be willing to do the ridiculous if we want God to do the miraculous?

 

[EasterJoy]

I’m not sure of using the Prodigal Son story is a good analogy. General speaking parents raise thier children and they leave. After thier death, thier estate is divided among thier hiers. The father in the story choose to give the son his inheritance in advance. Marriage is designed to continue until death, and then the remaining spouse will inherit the whole estate (I know this distribution varies by state if the person dies without a will). While it may be prudent to divorce to protect assets, it is still a choice you make to value them more than your spouse. If your spouse had a medical condition would you withold treatment so that you can protect assets? I have two friends who divorced thier spouses due to alcohol issues. Clearly their problem was a threat to the family assets. In both cases the spouse’s condition dramatically worsed after the divorce and eventially led to thier early death. Both surviving spouses have great regret for thier decision but felt they were almost pushed into it by guidance they received from both inside and outside the church.

I don’t suggest to tolerate the behavior, just as Catholics we sometime need to act differently. If it cost a person their entire fortune but in the end they had a spouse that was repentant and going to heaven would it be worth it? What if it cost them their pride? I’m probably misquoting but don’t we have to be willing to do the ridiculous if we want God to do the miraculous?

Let me just clarify: You are not saying that it is pride to insist on absolute fidelity in marriage. To expect fidelity is not a vain jealousy. Rather, you are saying that there are times when a heroic degree of grace can turn a willingness to look past a humiliation into an opportunity for healing that is not of this world. Absolutely. An openness to heroic graciousness is the mark of a saint, and I do not disagree with that. I’m just defending the complementary consideration: that is, sometimes it is not even in the best interest of the sinner to look past a humiliation, and in some cases an unscrupulous spouse will imply that the refusal to tolerate their sin is evidence that heroic grace is lacking in the wronged spouse. Nothing could be further from the truth. So when we praise heroic forgiveness, we do have to be careful not to leave a forgiving soul open to non-redemptive manipulations that only harden the sinner in his or her sin.

No, the Prodigal Son analogy is not perfect, but I think the point that God doesn’t expect us to let the sinners in our lives squander everything is an apt one. We are not talking about a person with a physical illness. We are not talking about indulging a dissembling fear that a spouse might not prove trustworthy. We are talking about an issue in which there has been a hard-hearted decision in favor of gross infidelity towards the marriage, either by infidelity or by direct abuse within the family. Sometimes, letting that sinner have the natural consequences of their choices and seeking a legal division of assets is also the course most likely to lead to their repentance and to limit the temporal consequences of their sins.

After all, if the wayward spouse takes years to repent, it will have been good for someone in the marriage to have preserved some of the marital assets before the prodigal spent them all on momentary pleasures. In that way, the reconciled couple would have *something *to left to live on, if the couple ever reconciles. If the spouse who is forced to file for divorce is willing to say, “We can get a civil marriage again if you ever renounce your infidelities”, I do not see anything wrong with that, either.

As for being willing to do the ridiculous so that God can do the miraculous, I don’t think that can be found in the Scriptures. No, it is more that we have to ask ourselves what fidelity requires. When fidelity bankrupts us, so be it, yes. Still, God himself withdrew when Israel was unfaithful, even as much as he was eager to have her back. The Lord told the disciples not to throw their pearls before swine and to shake the dust from their feet when they were not heard. Yet who thirsts for the soul of sinners more than Christ? The truth is, it doesn’t do the sinner any good to give the impression that they have an infinite number of chances in this life to turn from evil and do good. It would be one thing if waiting it out had some track record of leading to repentance, but the truth is that spouses are more likely to wake up and turn from their infidelities when they realize that they really are going to lose their children and their wealth if they don’t wake up.

As surely as canon law gives the victim of marital infidelity the right to separate from the common conjugal life even with the bond remaining because of infidelities, it also earnestly encourages that it be ascertained if “the innocent spouse can be moved to forgive the fault and not to prolong the separation permanently.” That is the ideal, but it is not expected when the fault is not repented from.

What I find interesting is this:
Can. 1152 §1. Although it is earnestly recommended that a spouse, moved by Christian charity and concerned for the good of the family, not refuse forgiveness to an adulterous partner and not disrupt conjugal life, nevertheless, if the spouse did not condone the fault of the other expressly or tacitly, the spouse has the right to sever conjugal living unless the spouse consented to the adultery, gave cause for it, or also committed adultery.

IOW, if both are unfaithful, then neither has a right to separate. They are duty-bound to forgive each other, as both are guilty.

 

[hurting]

I’m not sure of using the Prodigal Son story is a good analogy. General speaking parents raise thier children and they leave. After thier death, thier estate is divided among thier hiers. The father in the story choose to give the son his inheritance in advance. Marriage is designed to continue until death, and then the remaining spouse will inherit the whole estate (I know this distribution varies by state if the person dies without a will). While it may be prudent to divorce to protect assets, it is still a choice you make to value them more than your spouse. If your spouse had a medical condition would you withold treatment so that you can protect assets? I have two friends who divorced thier spouses due to alcohol issues. Clearly their problem was a threat to the family assets. In both cases the spouse’s condition dramatically worsed after the divorce and eventially led to thier early death. Both surviving spouses have great regret for thier decision but felt they were almost pushed into it by guidance they received from both inside and outside the church.

I don’t suggest to tolerate the behavior, just as Catholics we sometime need to act differently. If it cost a person their entire fortune but in the end they had a spouse that was repentant and going to heaven would it be worth it? What if it cost them their pride? I’m probably misquoting but don’t we have to be willing to do the ridiculous if we want God to do the miraculous?

It is important to note that the Church’s teaching as to the reasons that civil divorce may be tolerated if such action is necessary to protect assets, etc., is woefully out of synch with today’s domestic relations courts which do not dispense any form of justice than can be be reconciled with true equity from the Church’s view. This is due to the de jure and de facto ‘no fault’ (read: man at fault) jurisprudence practiced.

There is nothing equitable whatsoever about civil divorce in that it all but ignores fault for all intents and purposes in most states. There are huge perverse incentives for filing for divorce that benefit one party at the expense of the other.

 

[IA_Catholic]

Easter Joy,

Thank you for the time spent in composing these posts. Your knowledge of the faith and desire to help other with your knowledge is evident.

The comment about being willing to do the ridiculous if you expect God to do the miraculous is from Mother Angelica.

And God did withdrew from Israel in the old testament. Also in the old testament he allowed divorce. Jesus changed that in the new testament.

My post was about marriages in trouble, not just one’s dealing with infidelity. My point, maybe not too well stated, was that there is great value to Catholic marriage. Having a successful marriage should be your second highest goal, second only to your faith in God. I believe people post here looking for not only knowledge of cannon law, but also for emotional support from other Catholics. It is very easy to find support for divorce today, it is not as easy to find support for marriage. If you believe God choose your spouse for you and that he is working in your marriage you need to be willing to try everything before you leave. When I read the postings I cannot tell what is in the heart of the offending spouse, and therefore I don’t know what they need to bring about their change. I don’t know if the poster has been abusing them for years, only to now post about their spouse’s current infidelities. The best I can do is provide emotional support by reminding them of the value of their bond and that all things are possible with God.

God Bless

 

[EasterJoy]

Easter Joy,

Thank you for the time spent in composing these posts. Your knowledge of the faith and desire to help other with your knowledge is evident.

The comment about being willing to do the ridiculous if you expect God to do the miraculous is from Mother Angelica.

And God did withdrew from Israel in the old testament. Also in the old testament he allowed divorce. Jesus changed that in the new testament.

My post was about marriages in trouble, not just one’s dealing with infidelity. My point, maybe not too well stated, was that there is great value to Catholic marriage. Having a successful marriage should be your second highest goal, second only to your faith in God. I believe people post here looking for not only knowledge of cannon law, but also for emotional support from other Catholics. It is very easy to find support for divorce today, it is not as easy to find support for marriage. If you believe God choose your spouse for you and that he is working in your marriage you need to be willing to try everything before you leave. When I read the postings I cannot tell what is in the heart of the offending spouse, and therefore I don’t know what they need to bring about their change. I don’t know if the poster has been abusing them for years, only to now post about their spouse’s current infidelities. The best I can do is provide emotional support by reminding them of the value of their bond and that all things are possible with God.

God Bless

If there is no infidelity, no objective defects, and no abuse, yes, both spouses ought to hang in there.

 

[EasterJoy]

If there is no infidelity, no objective defects, and no abuse, yes, both spouses ought to hang in there.

And yes, “hanging in there” can seem very foolish. It is very important to find outside support, especially if your spouse is going through one of those temporary-insanity infidelities. That can turn the whole world upside down.

Also, when posting on the kind of thread you’re referring to, I often cite the advice I got from a man I knew who was divorced and remarried. One day, when his second wife was not around, we were talking and he told me that he had been foolish to get his first divorce. It had been awful, and he had stormed out, and then later he remarried. Before long, he and his second wife were also having problems. This time, he got marriage counseling. He realized through this counseling that he had been part of the problem in why his first marriage had gone bad, and based on the similarities between his first marriage and the second and on similar situations he had seen many times over the years since, he was convinced that he could have made it work with his first wife, if only he’d gotten counseling the first time.

This was his regret: Because of that mistake, he did not get to be with his children growing up. He had both a wife and an ex-wife, and two families to be concerned about. He was split, not just his marriage to his wife, and all because he hadn’t faced up to the possibility that he was the problem. He said he had seen many times that a couple would split and then one or both of them would marry someone very similar to their first spouse, and very often would split for similar reasons, because they had never done the work to see the wrong-headed patterns in their thinking and acting.

Dr. Phil used to say (and maybe still does stay) that a couple owes it to themselves to work their way out of the their marriage before they split up. If the marriage has to end, it ought to end with them knowing why it ended, how they got there, how they can keep from getting into another relationship with the same problems, and how to be decent ex-spouses to each other. I think he’s right. Even if one spouse is so toxic than joint counseling isn’t possible, the emotional work ought to be done before the attempt at marriage is considered over, before the parties “clear themselves to fly” again. It is only prudent.

I have seen on more than one occasion, that work saved the marriage, and it was far better before and went on to last and last. Absolutely, you are right, the couple ought to do the work to make sure their marriage cannot be saved.