Helping a divorced friend at work

[fermat]

Here is the situation:

I have a friend at work who is divorced with his first wife and five year old son living about seven hours away. He has remarried and has a three year old daughter.

His first marriage ended when his son was less than a year old. At the time of the divorce, my friend and his ex were living in the same city and the divorce papers called for him to have his son twice a month. In the meantime, they both have moved seven hours apart and my friend had curtailed his visits to once every other month. He would absolutely love to see his son more often, but the logistics are tough. His son and daughter get along great and he would love it if there together more often.

Over the past six months, his first wife seems to have become very mean spirited about letting him see his son. I say ‘seems’, because I only get his side of the story and it really helps him to have the ability to talk to someone about the whole thing without feeling judged. So I listen and I realize that I only get his take on an emotional situation.

Anyway, over the last six months, she has started to insist that he follow the divorce documents to the letter. The most recent turn is that she insists that he follow the documents and take his son every other weekend when she knows it creates a real hardship. He is trying to look at it as a blessing and is trying to work out a way to make it happen, even though he knows that she is just being petty.

The reason for my question is that he describes himself as Evangelical and she is Catholic. She goes to Mass every week and is raising their son in the Catholic faith. (He has no issue with this, just as long as he is taught to love Jesus.) With the proviso that I only get one side of the story, I have to think that her behavior is not a good representation of what our faith teaches. Can someone recommend or suggest any source of Catholic teaching that would prescribe how a Catholic should act in this kind of situation?

Just to be clear, I am not looking for ‘ammo’ that my friend can use against his ex. I am not trying to arm him with the ability to say, ‘Your church teaches xyz, so you had better starting acting Catholic!’ I want to be able to address this as a well informed Catholic so he will know what the Church would say about his situation and hopefully give him some peace.

I know he would also appreciate any prayers offered up for the situation.

Did I mention that I only get one side of this story

 

[puzzleannie]

Here
The reason for my question is that he describes himself as Evangelical and she is Catholic. She goes to Mass every week and is raising their son in the Catholic faith. (He has no issue with this, just as long as he is taught to love Jesus.) With the proviso that I only get one side of the story, I have to think that her behavior is not a good representation of what our faith teaches. Can someone recommend or suggest any source of Catholic teaching that would prescribe how a Catholic should act in this kind of situation?

the whole situation is not what the Church teaches since we don’t believe in divorce and fathers not raising their own children.

just to recap your story, your friend complains when his ex does not let him see his kid often enough
your friend complains when his ex insists he see the kid on the days and times established by the court

seems to be a contradiction

my first thought is that this is a whole lot of concern about a non-work topic on the boss’ time
my second is, what is his purpose in airing this whole private situation to coworkers?

 

[fermat]

the whole situation is not what the Church teaches since we don’t believe in divorce and fathers not raising their own children.

just to recap your story, your friend complains when his ex does not let him see his kid often enough
your friend complains when his ex insists he see the kid on the days and times established by the court

seems to be a contradiction

my first thought is that this is a whole lot of concern about a non-work topic on the boss’ time
my second is, what is his purpose in airing this whole private situation to coworkers?

Granted that this is not what our church teaches. But does our church teach anything about how this kind of situation should be handled? Google doesn’t seem to know, so I’m stumped .

For what it’s worth, many of these conversations are lunch time talk. The guy in question used to be my boss and it was obvious in my interactions that something was causing him some pain in his life. His opinion of Catholics wasn’t super high and when he found out I was Catholic, the friendly grilling began. I was the first Catholic he had met who could answer his questions using scripture and history. In our conversations it became clear what had been happening in his life and he was appreciative of the fact he did not feel like I was judging him. This is a great chance to led someone closer to Christ.

 

[puzzleannie]

I don’t know that the Church has a teaching on what divorced parents should do when they are using the child as an excuse to extend their quarrel by working visitation as a weapon. The 4th commandment in general on family relationships seems to apply. I don’t think you are going to do your friend any favors by comparative religions on this point, or by encouraging him to play the religion card.

 

[1ke]

Just to be clear, I am not looking for ‘ammo’ that my friend can use against his ex. I am not trying to arm him with the ability to say, ‘Your church teaches xyz, so you had better starting acting Catholic!’ I want to be able to address this as a well informed Catholic so he will know what the Church would say about his situation and hopefully give him some peace.

Just to be clear: stay out of it!

 

[Joe_Kelley]

From years of teaching CCD and RCIA I advocate RULE 1:

Never believe what a divorced person tells you about their ex, or a teenager tells you about their parents.

Listen, be sympathetic to their pain, but do not judge the situation.

 

[Beth_Cecilia]

It is not your job to wonder whether or not the ex is a Catholic in good standing. You cannot possibly know. Divorce is always ugly, because it is not natural. As painful as it must be for him, your friend seems to be doing the best he can to make the best of a bad situation. Going out of his way to make sure that the Mother of his children is more involved in the children’s lives is hard, but awesome. Maybe she is acting petty, or maybe through the years she was seeing the children less and less and decided to do something about it. Maybe she thought that the best way to avoid confrontation was to go back to the original agreement, rather than just start making demands. Like you said, you just don’t know.

Either way, your job is not to speculate about whether or not she is a good Catholic. Your job is to be a good Catholic. Be a model of the faith. If you can teach about the faith, than do. He is clearly not judging Catholicism by the worst behavior of his ex, or he would not allow her to choose that faith for their children.

I am not entirely sure what your question is.

“Can someone recommend or suggest any source of Catholic teaching that would prescribe how a Catholic should act in this kind of situation?”

That seems to be the only question you have asked, but I cannot tell who is meant as the Catholic. Are you asking what your behavior should be? You should be a friend and listen. You should stop your friend, as ever, when their comments stray away from charity or into gossip.

Are you asking about your friend? He is not a Catholic, but from what you said it seems to me he is making the best of a bad situation. Keeping the wife in the lives of his children, and everyone on good terms- even at a great inconvenience to himself- is what he should be doing. That is what selfless love for his children looks like in this case.

Are you asking about his wife? If so, you should not be. You will not advise her about her behavior, you have no relationship with her. Wondering how she she should act, when you only have a second hand account of how she is acting is an odd activity for your mind. It is not a healthy one.

 

[fermat]

I don’t know that the Church has a teaching on what divorced parents should do when they are using the child as an excuse to extend their quarrel by working visitation as a weapon. The 4th commandment in general on family relationships seems to apply.

I didn’t think there was, but it was worth asking.

I don’t think you are going to do your friend any favors by comparative religions on this point, or by encouraging him to play the religion card.

Never intended to. For me the important part is that I have a friend who is suffering. Like all of us, he suffers because of some very poor judgement on his part. The reason he suffers doesn’t really matter to me because it’s not my position to judge the situation.

The added wrinkle in this is that the ex is Catholic. I want to have the resources to defend our faith should he decide that the Catholic church doesn’t care about how divorced people
treat each other. And if such a document or teaching existed, it would probably have lots of footnotes referencing scripture. Since he is Christian, he would probably take some comfort in mediating on those passages.

 

[Catholic1954]

Being or not being Catholic really has nothing to do with this situation. Do you suppose that she is complaining to her co-workers that her ex is not spending enough time with his child and wondering what the Evangelical teaching is on that point? If he is having difficulty fulfilling his side of the terms of the divorce, he needs to get a lawyer and go back to court and try to work out some other plan.