Marie:
UM! Alan…if God so chooses I would hope you could accept and learn to love more deeply your wife. As to saying they should shut up…Good grief! Where are your manners?
Maybe I better have phrased it, “if they set themselves up for this, then they should humbly accept it without arguing against it.”
We did “brother and sister” for nearly a year due to medical situation involving our youngest son, placenta previa, and then a C-section, and then some stuff you don’t even want to know involving mental illness.
Yes, I suppose I’d take it into account, but as far as I’m concerned my wife and I are one, and I’m not going to let anybody, no matter how religiously educated he is, to “dictate” to us what we do. Suggest, maybe, and even for spiritual development. If they say I must do this permanently because of something that it is in the past and in somebody else’s mind is inhibiting us from having a proper marriage now, then I say thank you for the kind advice. Then I go home and make the decision, together with my wife, as to how we plan to live.
If the Church actually forced me into making a decision between my herself and my wife, my wife would win. I don’t believe any advice that will separate us is from God, even if somebody with a funny hat or nice collar tells me – OK cheap shot, somebody with “credentials” in spirituality, as if credentials make one infallible.
If I go against “spiritual advice” from the Church, I am fully aware that I am now responsible for my own salvation, and I’ll have to answer to God for it. I am that confident in my marriage that I will, as I said, listen to spiritual advice, but ultimately nobody is going to find my marriage invalid and me believe it because that is out of bounds. I have no fear of telling God that I believe in my marriage, and that I did what I thought was best for us.
I’ve had some experience at professionals trying intervene in our marriage. It isn’t pretty. Some doctors who locked me up in a psycho ward without any basis to do so, were shocked after two days when I hadn’t signed myself in, and began to get nervous. They had a doctor call me in for an interview, while they called my wife at home and lied to her about how she must, for MY benefit, get down to the courthouse and have me committed. They told her that if she didn’t do it, it would only hurt ME because then the professionals would have to take me to court and it would get very ugly.
She called me, confused and frantic, and told me what they said. I told her, “as far as I’m concerned, if you sign anything that gives me away to an outside authority, then as far as I’m concerned we are not married.”
Then I raised some serious hell and got a straight answer to what they had told her. I was angry and frustrated, but I knew I was beaten. Who would listen to a psycho patient when there are several doctors with careers and images at stake? Maybe I did need psychiatric help but I did not need or allow them to take my civil liberties away because I was in no way a danger to myself or others. If it weren’t for my wife, (maybe this is one of the reasons why Jesus wasn’t married) I would love to go before a judge and see what garbage they spewed to show that they had justification to lock me up when they did so without a single doctor even talking to me, basing most of their observations on a third hand report from a stupid clerk at work – who thought I needed “help” against the better advice of my engineering coworkers who thought I was fine, and when my boss was out of town.
As I said, I knew I was beaten, and to protect Julie from having to go through any more of Big Medicine’s mental abuse – which they are quite good at serving up – I went ahead and signed myself in. This was even in a Catholic hospital, against the U.S. Bishops’ policy against proper treatment of Catholic hospital guests, but what are you going to do? I’m so impressed that she saw through their bullsh*t and
Another time, a counselor many years ago told my wife that she needed to work out her own problems, and that I was adding to them so she should get a divorce, when she only met my wife 45 minutes earlier. The counselor was pleased with her recent divorce, and apparently thought everybody should have one.
Sorry, but my wife and I are the final authorities over whether we let outsiders dictate our relationship. Others are welcome to their opinion, and may suggest, advise, whatever, but not dictate. What God has joined, let no man tear apart. If others don’t think God has actually joined us, then I’m sorry but that’s just too bad, and I don’t buy it as an “infallible” opinion. I’d never have a tribunal review my marriage for my benefit, so the situation is unlikely to happen.
Oh, by the way, the hospital collected nearly $15,000 from my insurance company for the whole deal. Everybody smiled, because I signed myself in so they were just supplying treatment I requested. I don’t suppose that factored money into their ideas about how nice it would be for me to cooperate with them even though they seemed to me like they “cut a few corners” on procedures. Mental health care is much better than it was in the middle ages, perhaps, but the procedures are clearly in place to protect the system, not the individual patient.
Alan
