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Moral Dilemmas

I. The Muddled Marriage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Gerald Vann O.P.
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One of the pastoral problems which loom very large in these days is that of the Catholics who, having entered upon a marriage which the Church cannot recognise as such, then find themselves tortured in mind by their consequent separation from the sacramental life of the Church, and long to return to it but see no way of doing so. What is to be done for them? How are they to be advised?

It is as useless as it is heartless to say simply that they have only themselves to blame: that they sinned in contracting a marriage which is no marriage at all, and that the Church will receive them back when, and only when, they renounce it. In practice this is harmful, since it may well drive them completely and finally away from the Church. In theory it is bad theology, because it simplifies what is in reality complex, and refuses to face all the facts of a human situation. Ethics is not an exact science, precisely because its business is with the complexities and untidiness of human action in the concrete; and indeed the ultimate ethical judgment, as to what A is to do here and now, is not a question of science merely but of art, the art of prudence. We might well recall here some wise words of M. Maritain: ‘Some people imagine that morality measures our actions, not in the light of the just human ends which they ought to be aiming at in the given circumstances, but by a forest of abstract formulae which life must copy like a book. ... In reality the principles of morals are not theorems or idols: they are the supreme rules governing a concrete activity the aim of which is something to be done in certain definite circumstances, and governing it through more proximate rules and above all through the rules, which are never set down in advance, of the virtue of prudence. . . . They do not seek to devour human life; they are there to build it up.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 34 , Issue 402 , September 1953 , pp. 374 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © 1953 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Humanisme Intégral, pp. 221-2.

2 The pastor cannot of course condone, still less encourage, the continuance of things which are sinful, What he can do, and what if he is a realist he must do, is to accept the facts as they are and then go on from there to see what can be done to make the best of a bad job—or, rather, to bring good out of the evil.

3 Between the complete apathy of the lapsed Catholic who ‘couldn’t care less’ and the burning longing to return to the sacraments of one who has really found faith and love and been overwhelmed by them, there is of course an infinite variety of degrees of sincerity and insincerity, of fervour and carelessness. It is for the pastor to judge as best he can of each case as it comes to him, and to plan accordingly. In this article, however, we are concerned, as seems right, primarily with those of the depth and strength of whose sincerity and sorrow there is no question.