Answering questions about divorce to 6th grade class

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Ahoy-hoy,

I am a teacher of 6th grade catechism. We are covering the sacraments, and today we talked about marriage.

I wanted to impress upon the kids the holiness of marriage and how we couldn’t dissolve it.

Of COURSE one of the kids had divorced parents, and wanted to know if the parents would go to hell etc.

I wanted to let the kids know that divorce isn’t a good thing in the eyes of the Lord, but I also didn’t want to foster disrespect for the divorced parent from the child.

So I kinda redirected and regeneralized the conversation to the whole “is it a mortal sin if you don’t know it’s a sin?” topic… pretending for the sake of argument that the child’s father didn’t know it was a sin.

Don’t know if this was the best way to handle this. This is my first year teaching catechism I need some tips from all you catechist jedi masters.
 
Hi! I’m a fellow 6th-grade catechist. You’ve probably noticed that you generally don’t have to convince kids that divorce is undesirable-- they know it all too well, even if they accept it is a part of life. Often the most important thing to do is to affirm the value of marriage to them-- if in their experience it only ends in divorce and bitterness, they can easily come to the conclusion that marriage, not divorce, is the basic problem!

Anyway, I think that if you don’t know the circumstances, it’s not a good idea to say anything too specific. Obviously Jesus taught that a marriage is essentially an unbreakable bond, and kids need to know that in Catholic eyes divorce is an end only to the legal marriage, not to the sacramental one. If you can communicate this distinction the kids will be well on their way to thinking hard about it, since it’s so obviously in contradiction to what society tells them.
 
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bengeorge:
Ahoy-hoy,

I am a teacher of 6th grade catechism. We are covering the sacraments, and today we talked about marriage.

I wanted to impress upon the kids the holiness of marriage and how we couldn’t dissolve it.

Of COURSE one of the kids had divorced parents, and wanted to know if the parents would go to hell etc.

I wanted to let the kids know that divorce isn’t a good thing in the eyes of the Lord, but I also didn’t want to foster disrespect for the divorced parent from the child.

So I kinda redirected and regeneralized the conversation to the whole “is it a mortal sin if you don’t know it’s a sin?” topic… pretending for the sake of argument that the child’s father didn’t know it was a sin.

Don’t know if this was the best way to handle this. This is my first year teaching catechism I need some tips from all you catechist jedi masters.
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Divorce is not a sin when it is necesary. A divorced Catholic can still participate in the full reception of the Sacraments. A second Marriage is what is not allowed. I used this when teaching about Marriage in RCIA.

We have two identical glasses of water, “A” and “B”. I pour them into one new glass (which will hold the contents of both) This symbolizes the union of two people in Marriage. The two become ONE.

True dissolving of the Marriage would require the returning of the water from glass “A” back to glass “A” and the water from glass “B” to glass “B”. This is impossible!!

Divorce is removing half the water, which is still mixed into glass “A” and the other half still mixed into glass “B”.

Part of the water is physically separated from the other but not truly back the way it was. The “A” water is still united to the “B” water and can never be truly separated.
 
Love the glasses of water explaination, very good.

I guess my main problem in the class was that the child looked quite upset, but I didn’t want to just say, “divorce and remarriage is fine, your dad is a-ok.”
 
Bro. Rich, I love your analogy of the two glasses of water. Having been divorced with two daughters, I can really relate to it!

As far as teaching divorce to children (and adults!), I think what needs to be emphasized is that divorce in and of itself is not a sin. There are circumstances in which it is better for two people to live apart, and the Catholic Church recognizes that.

A sin is committed, however, when a divorced person “remarries.” And I put “remarries” in quotes because there is really no such thing in Catholicism. The “remarriage” of a divorced person is really nothing more than two people living in sin without the benefit of marriage.

I think most people (children and adults alike) don’t understand this concept. Unfortunately, it is not usually explained correctly by Catholics, which only adds to the confusion.

As a divorcee (doesn’t that sound glamorous?!), I have full rights and responsibilities within the Catholic Church. It would only be if I would “remarry” that I would be in sin.
 
Yes, divorced people can certainly be fully Catholic. But in a general sense, we must be careful of saying that divorce is a morally neutral thing. A lot of people, even some Catholics, get divorced for very trivial reasons, even when there are children involved. I think that’s too bad, and possibly sinful sometimes. Of course it’s not for us to judge any individual case, but I think it’s also important not to give the idea that sin is never involved in a divorce.
 
I, too, loved the glass of water explanation!

If one knows the question will come up (and can therefore prepare ahead of time instead of just describing the glasses of water as a thought experiment), one might use food coloring in one of the glasses to drive home the point that it’s impossible to truly put things back the way they were.
Of course, using food coloring in only one glass might give some the idea that marriage somehow “dilutes” someone; and using different primary colors in each glass (thereby creating a third color in the “marriage glass”) might give some the idea that after marriage each spouse can no longer have his/her own separate activities/friends/whatever. Guess I’ll just stick with verbal descriptions :o
 
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Erich:
Guess I’ll just stick with verbal descriptions :o
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Haha… like you, I immediately started thinking logistics… how am I going to present this in class without it being a big ordeal…

Anyway, so, since we are not to divorce except adultery (as Christ said), then if your spose leaves you, and marries someone else, are you then free to remarry? Because the old spouse is now comitting adultery, no?
 
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bengeorge:
Haha… like you, I immediately started thinking logistics… how am I going to present this in class without it being a big ordeal…

Anyway, so, since we are not to divorce except adultery (as Christ said), then if your spose leaves you, and marries someone else, are you then free to remarry? Because the old spouse is now comitting adultery, no?
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Take care when reading the Scriptures!

Christ does say in one Gospel account that a person may divorce because of unfaithfulness on the part of the other. He does not however say anything about being free to marry another. St. Paul does clear this up and say’s that if one is separated and finds it necesary to be joined to another let them be rejoined to their husband or wife from who they separated.
 
as a general rule, when teaching children and youth about morals and the commandments, begin by laying down some groundrules, such as, your family’s personal situation is not a topic for class discussion. Christian charity demands that we not make judgements about individual’s actions or living situations. In charity we assume that even if the outward appearance may seem wrong they are working with the priest or the church to make things right. We are to worry about our own conduct, not that of others. In particular, we are to honor our parents, another commandment, and while we would never deny the truth of God’s law, and would never obey a command of a parent that goes against that law, we do not make judgements about our parents or family members, because we don’t know the whole story about their situation.
 
I used to borrow a line from the old show “Touched by an Angel”. They were “wedding planners” in one episode and the couple was having a horrible time making it to the altar. So many obstacles were in their way and they were sure “someone” didn’t want them married. In the end, they realized that the problem was that no one remembered to invite Jesus to the wedding.

The problem with marriage today (and kids do understand this) is that it’s all about the party. But the reality is that it’s supposed to be about the Holy Spirit bringing two people together permanently. If God has brought us together, then there’s nothing we can’t work out. But when we forget to invite God to the wedding, we are still two separate people and we never grow into one strong “person”.

That can then segue you into discussing annulments and how the Church is going back to see if you ever invited God to the wedding and help you figure out how to fix things so you don’t make the same mistake again.
 
In the 7th grade, one of the parish priests who helped out with religious instruction in the parish school taught us all about the nature of Catholic marriage, divorce, annulments. No big deal. In retrospect, I think it probably really helped to have that information as we all grew older and could better digest it, maybe coming to understand the signifigance of the Sacrament.
 
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