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The Muddled Marriage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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Having heard that some persons involved in ‘muddled marriages’ thought they could find a justification for their condition in an article written by my English confrere, Father Gerald Vann, O.P., and had so quoted it to their parish priests, I am reminded of the old story of the prisoner at the bar who at the question of the Court: ‘Guilty or not guilty?’ promptly replied: ‘Your Honour, I always thought myself to be guilty; but after listening to my lawyer’s plea I am beginning to wonder if I did any wrong’. The accused was misled by his counsel’s speech, and those Catholics have been misled by Fr Vann’s article.
In each case, the source of the error lies in a misinterpretation, a misunderstanding over who is being addressed. The plea of the counsel for the defence was addressed to the court, and Father Vann’s paper was addressed to the clergy. The defendant thought his lawyer was speaking to him; and the Catholics in ‘bad marriages’ thought that Fr Vann was writing to them.
St Thomas, in drawing a comparison between a judge and a lawgiver, shows that the latter is in much the better position in that he deals with human actions as future, while the former must deal with them as present; towards that which is present one is easily moved by love or hate, whereby one’s judgment becomes vitiated.
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- Copyright © 1954 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1. ‘Moral Dilemmas. I. The Muddled Marriage’, in Blackfriars, September 1953, pp. 375–380. A partial reprint was given by Catholic Digest, January 1954, pp. 13–16. I shall follow the original article.
2. Though the lawyer has to speak in the presence of the accused, Fr Vann could have published his paper in some of the magazines exclusively devoted to the Clergy.
3. ‘Lawgivers judge in the abstract and of future events; whereas those who sit in judgment judge of things present, towards which they are affected by love, hatred, or some kind of cupidity; wherefore their judgment is perverted. ‘(Summa Theol., I‐II, 94, 1, 2m.)
4. There are two questions. First, whether the one who promised, say, one thousand pounds for a murder, is bound to pay that amount after the murder is committed. Second, whether a man can bind himself to commit a murder. Some theologians have answered negatively to the first; but how could a theologian give to the second an affirmative answer? Nobody can contract a moral obligation to do an immoral act.
5. Of this much she is aware at the moment; hence her sufferings. So I do not insist on the question whether or not a momentary aberration could have made her initial union, subjectively, no mortal sin.
6. Connell, ‘The Proper Attitude Toward Muddled Marriages’ in American Ecclesiastical Review, January 1954, p. 54.
7. Of apostasy St Thomas says: ‘The more a sin severs man from God, the graver it is. Now man is more than ever separated from God by unbelief, because he has not even true knowledge of God’ (Summa Theol., II‐II, 10, 3). And of desperation: ‘When hope is given up, men rush headlong into sin, and are drawn away from good works’ (ibid., 20, 3); and he quotes this sentence of St Isidore: ‘To commit a crime is to kill the soul, but to despair is to fall into hell.’ (ibid.)
8. Summa Theol, I‐II, 40, 7.
9. The situation is rather that of one who is in a continuous and proximate occasion of sin; an occasion which cannot practically be removed but by physical separation. To this situation are fully applicable our Lord's words: ‘If thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell …’ (Matt. 5, 29f.).
10. The divorcee is urged to put into God's hands the texture of her daily life, compounded of good and evil, of happiness and sorrow, assured that God, he who takes upon himself the sin of the world, will not repudiate it. I wonder how this offering could be pleasing to God, since it is made by one who is disposed to keep offending him, by one who prefers human love to his divine love. The only thing that may please God is the fact of her taking the sufferings consequent on her own fault without murmuring against divine Providence, as some would do.
11. ‘As all things, whether temporal or eternal, are bestowed on us by the bounty of God, no one can acquire a claim to any of them, save through charity towards God: so that works done without charity are not condignly meritorious of any gqod from God, either eternal or temporal. But since it is befitting the goodness of God, that wherever he finds a disposition he should grant the perfection, a man is said to merit congruously some goods by means of good works done without charity. Accordingly suchlike works avail for a threefold good, acquisition of temporal goods, disposition to grace, habituation to good works. Since, however, this is not merit properly so called, we should grant that such works are not meritorious of any good, rather than that they are.’ (Summa Theol., Suppl. 14, 4.)
12. Fr Vann himself wrote in Blackfriars (p. 376) a note which was not reproduced in the Catholic Digest. It reads thus: ‘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.’
13. ‘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.’ (Blackfriars, p. 374.)
14. It has been said that ‘at a time when the unity and the indissolubility and the sacredness of matrimony are already under attack, the best possible service to American Catholics is to encourage them to heroism in regard to the divine and immutable laws of marriage’. (Carr, Pity vs. Principles, in The Priest, February 1954, p. 13f.). Circumstances must be considered by prudence.
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