by Francis Michael Walsh
This article was first published October 3, 2015, at Pacific Daily News.
We were told by the correspondent that the divorce laws in Guam are a win-win situation. “In my opinion,” he writes, “the law provides an important
service to Americans living abroad while at the same time safeguarding the process against the type of abuses that existed under the old law. This
is a win-win situation for Guam and for those who otherwise would be stuck in dead-end marriages.”
The family as a social unit is under unprecedented attack today. That attack is aimed at the heart of the family, the marriage. The forces that are
driving the culture today want us to think that divorce is a “win.” Thus, divorce is an answer to marital problems (when all else fails, of course,
and you are stuck in a dead-end marriage, as if there were such a thing), and it should be made accessible to all (no-fault divorce) and socially
acceptable by all.
Without an intact marriage, there is no family that can perform the essential task of socializing the next generation. What is that task? To put a
conscience into every child before it is too late.
Jennifer Roback Morse has summed it up very well: “The basic self-control and reciprocity that a free society takes for granted do not develop automatically.
Conscience development takes place in childhood. Children need to develop empathy so they will care whether they hurt someone or whether they treat
others fairly. They need to develop self-control so they can follow through on these impulses and do the right thing even if it might benefit them
to do otherwise.”
They also need the experience of being loved so that they don’t have to waste their adult lifetime looking for love, but can move on to do the loving
of someone else.
Without a family built on an intact marriage, we are all in trouble. The children are at risk to emerge from that broken home poorly socialized. They
have no one to love them by showing them what love really is — seeking the good of the other. Instead, all that they have seen are parents
whose marriage has nosedived in their frustrated search to get someone to love them.
Marriage is the brainchild of God and is built into the structure of the universe. According to this plan, the union of a man and woman in a lifelong
commitment of self-giving love was envisioned as the best way that human life could optimally be passed from one generation to the next. There
are some, however, who have thought that they had a better idea.
One of these “better ideas” is the illusion that the solution to a troubled marriage is “to call it quits and file for divorce.” This is also called
no-fault divorce (with its implied promise of marital and familial happiness). According to this idea, marriage should now be reconfigured to be
a personal choice that can be ended at will by an individual who no longer considers himself bonded to anybody. The reality backfires because when
one is completely free at will to walk away from a commitment if things do not work out to one’s complete satisfaction, no one can ever give himself
away in love to anybody.
The victims of the divorce scam are multiple. They begin with, but do not end with, those who you choose that option. Your life then becomes segmented:
my first wife, my first life; my second wife, my second life, etc. These victims of the sexual revolution no longer have a life that is one love
story from beginning to end. Their story instead becomes the tale of their frustrated search to find the right person who will love them.
The other victims include the children who never learn the value of self-sacrifice. As Morse rightly observes: “A free society needs people with consciences.
The vast majority of people must obey the law voluntarily. If people don’t conform themselves to the law, someone will either have to compel them
to do so or protect the public when they do not. It costs a great deal of money to catch, convict, and incarcerate lawbreakers — not to mention
that the surveillance and monitoring of potential criminals tax everybody’s freedom if habitual lawbreakers comprise too large a percentage of
the population.”
Eventually, the whole of society is victimized by divorce. When these damaged souls enter the educational system, they come with their home problems
and are not prepared to cooperate with teachers. The greater dysfunctional homes there are, the greater will be the dysfunctional schools.
Prisons, then, become the only way to segregate the misfits, but there is a limit to the number of lawbreakers with whom a society can deal before
it itself becomes dysfunctional.
Imagine, as we were asked to do in a column on these pages (recently), that “for any number of reasons, your marriage has taken a nosedive and both
you and your spouse realize that it’s time to call it quits and file for divorce.” I submit it is insane to try to solve one problem by creating
the conditions for another. If your marriage is in a nosedive, the problem is not the other. Emotional systems (and marriage is an emotional system)
do not work that way. To believe that problems are in any one person is scapegoating. Problems are between people. We all have our part to play.
By caving into the demands to make Guam a divorce mill, our legislators have shown they are willing to contribute to a much greater social problem.
We need a serious discussion on what constitutes a family law system that is family-friendly. The present one is definitely not.
Francis Michael Walsh is with the Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores Catholic Theological Institute.