I can sympathise with all points raised thus far.
I dont agree with adultery, let me make that clear.
However from a few angles Not telling makes a lot of sense, not just for the one who is guilty, but for the ones who would be devastated where the facts to be known.
The devastation comes from the adultery, not from the telling. That is what causes the pain in the first place. It is easy to predict the short-term consequences of telling, but it’s harder to predict the long-term consequences of not telling. And let’s be clear: secrets hurt.
Looking at the wisdom of King Solomon, who offered to cut the baby in two so each woman who claimed to be mother of the baby could have half each, the real mother backing down and saying let the other woman have the baby, Solomon descerning the real mother would rather let the baby go than have it killed. Maybe the wisdom of Solomon here would be to quietly repent by the guilty.
Solomon’s wisdom was not in his actual ruling, but in his fact-finding. He offered to have the baby cut in order to hear the real mother give up the child so no harm would happen to it. And when he did, he gave the child to the real mother and there was nothing extraordinary in that ruling at that point. In the telling vs not telling case, we do not have a comparable problem.
Perhaps punishment ought to meted out in some way to the guilty party. maybe the priest could prescribe a penance that would tax the wrong doer sufficiently that he or she would have learned a lesson.
That would certainly help, but would not remove the fact that there existed a dark secret for 40 years or so.
However if confession were made to the spouse, the Innocent children would be scarred maybe irrevocably if the parents were to have a war, a divorce, or perhaps no divorce but long years of incriminations and recriminations.
Will children not be hurt by a dark secret? What if the dark secret turns the marital happiness into a lie, will then it not hurt the children?
ending in dysfunctional family resentment for the guilty one by the other.
In my view, the guilty spouse is in no position to judge the innocent spouse’s capacity to forgive, let alone judge it in advance, without allowing the innocent spouse to take a position in the matter.
Child psychologists, delinquencies, self esteeem problems in the children in later life.
Too far-fetched. One theory of fact-finding in court cases is proximate cause. The proximate cause is a normal, foreseeable resut of a given action. If you throw a cigarette into a barn and it burns, that’s a proximate cause. If the whole village somehow manages to burn, that was not a proximate cause. Fact-finding refers to the past or the present, not to the future. If we make the necessary adjustment, however, and apply a similar principle to judging the potential consequences of our actions in the future, we will draw a line between what’s a normal consequence of our actions or what is foreseeable to happen as a result, and what is just guessing and hypothetical scenarios that don’t need to happen.
All because the other spouse has a right to have justice.
Justice is important. Let us not sweep justice under the carpet. Charity trumps justice, but convenience does not.
If the guilty has resolved to try never to re offend, and is prayerfully sorry in his or her heart, then things can work out. It is true that it doesn’t get away from the fact that an adultery has occured. But God who forgives all, will be the judge. and lets face it, there is not one of us who has not, and indeed does not sin each and every day in some way or other.
Yes, but the spouse doesn’t need to know that we were mean to a co-worker, called a lousy driver a couple of names, came late to work or failed to show patience to a student or some other subordinate. The example that you describe is ideal in the sense that it relies on a presumption that not-telling happens as a result of concern for the other spouse’s and children’s well-being and not of fear of the psouse’s reaction. However, if the world were ideal, then firstly, the innocent spouse would be ideally forgiving as much as the not-telling spouse would be contrite and concerned for others, secondly, there would be no cheating anyway. What is more, in most situations, the innocent spouse is the stronger one in character. If the guilty spouse is able (hypothetically) selflessly to deal with the cheating on his own, then the spouse who did not cheat should be, as a rule, able to forgive selflessly as well. This is not a flawless rule, but simply indicates a certain probability.
I think it was Paul who said, he that is guilty of one part of the law is guilty of the whole. and again our Lord said “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”
That doesn’t give rise to saying that the spouse who kicked the dog also cheated.
We are as mortals predisposed to exposing those who do wrong, I think however we need to be a little more compassionate and understand how difficult it is to confess,
So that’s the deal? After all we’ve got to the poor situation of the one who cheated rather than the concern for the innocent spouse’s hurt feelings after learning of betrayal.
and in some cases emotionally impossible for some to confess, but that doesnt mean there is no sorrow and resolution to make amends.
There is no such thing as emotional impossibility.
“Emotionally impossible to confess,” is not selfless and is not concerned for the other spouse’s feelings. You cannot at the same time argue that not-telling is selfless because it protects the innocent spouse’s feelings, and explain that it would be too much to expect the cheating one to tell because of the emotional distress caused by such a confession. There is a stark contradiction there.
