Conjugal love is merciful and encouraging

Commentary

Once again, I apologize for selecting three closely linked passages. Pope Francis seems to address them to pastors and priests in The Joy of Love. However, I understand that they can be applied to situations that might arise in our families. My analysis is centered, above all, on the attitudes, behaviors, and reactions that parents have regarding their child´s path in life and the drifts that might occur them; it is also centered around the drifts that occur between siblings and of course, grandparents in relation with their grandchildren.

What Pope Francis is proposing is not a change of moral principles in sexual and marital matters by any stretch of the imagination. Nor does he introduce a “morality relative to each situation,” a subjective morality à la carte under which whatever each person decides to do is good. Those who accuse him of proposing that what used to be wrong – for example, to divorce and remarry a third person – now becomes good, defame him.

What he maintains, on the contrary, is that it is necessary to discern each case concretely, because what might occur, for some people, is that while being in an “objective situation” of sin – they have divorced, they live with another person and have children with them –this “objectively grave matter” might have come to be without “full warning” of its seriousness and “without express and deliberate consensus in transgressing it.” Everyone knows that there are extenuating and even exonerating circumstances. Moreover, in these subjective circumstances, some people genuinely wish to improve their relationship with God and open themselves to an authentic conversion of heart. They need help to walk in that direction of improvement without being condemned or marginalized but embraced. It does not occur to anyone sensible to maintain that “in zero time and at infinite speed”- in a flash – one can go from an irregular situation to the fullness of the marital ideal and that if this does not occur, we must marginalize and condemn the person who failed. Everything – any conversion – has a process that demands time, “gradualness,” as St. John Paul II said, straightening out step by step through improvement. These steps should not be impossible but within reach for each particular case. That is what is real. And to love is to infuse these steps with warm mercy and exquisite personal respect.

If I have a sick child, grandchild, or relative, I do not withdraw from them precisely because they are in poor health, but quite the contrary: that is when they most need my attention, care, and personal closeness. Moreover, when he begins to show signs of improvement without ceasing to suffer from his illness, even if they are small, I encourage him and encourage his hope and desire to continue to heal instead of reproaching him because he is not cured all at once.

These passages of Pope Francis must be read under the prism of love to our relatives with vital drifts or irregular situations. I give two examples from my experience as a counselor.

Some parents, not a few, suffer the experience of seeing that a son or daughter does not want to marry before the Church but only civilly, or not even that, and begins to live with his or her partner, or gets divorced and perhaps marries or lives with someone else. In these cases, it is imperative to be clear that one thing is the moral principle -including Catholic doctrine- that the parents uphold and that inspires their lives, norms that the children mentioned above turn their backs on or fail to comply with; and another thing is the attitude, behavior, and reactions of such parents -I emphasize, as parents who must always love their children- aimed at maintaining, under challenging circumstances, a climate of affection and trust with their children, an environment essential to advise them, help them, prevent their lives from worsening, and contribute to improving the situation. In short: to be a doctor and take care of our patients in that real and possible way that favors their comfort, company, and improvement. Never, in the name of doctrinal principles, can we stop being loving fathers and mothers and become prosecutors, judges, jailers, and executioners, banishing our children from family life. Probably, in some cases, it will be most prudent and reasonable -precisely to safeguard relationships, as well as the hope of improvement, and the criteria where the truth lies, instead of falsehood- to agree on some rules of reciprocal behavior. However, to reach a consensus is to converse instead of imposing with a deaf ear that listens to no one else, it is to reason and respect each other, and it is to make it very clear that loving ties persist and are experienced, which does not mean agreeing with our children´s lack of direction in life. The parents’ home must always be a hospital, not a prison, nor a dictatorship, for it is in hospitals where the sick are cared for, and they know well what health is. For that very reason, they take care of the ill, relieve them and make them better.

Among several examples that could be mentioned, I want to refer to the catastrophic effects of a divorce between the spouses and a divorce in their children´s marriage, which affects several families. Christian parents, because they are Christian and due to the love they owe their family, should never allow themselves to be devoured by the hostilities and conflicts that occur within their child´s marriage, hostilities which can lead to divorce; parents must be watchful so as not to add more fuel to the fire and contribute to a tribal war with their in-laws. Let us not look for excuses if we play the role of fanatical arsonists setting fire to one side against the other. Those excuses do not stem from love but offended anger and hatred, revenge, and the desire for evil directed towards “the others.”

Despite a divorce, there are countless good things left to do. We must soothe, accompany and avoid breaking the heart of the divorcees’ children, our grandchildren. We must avoid fanatical and tribal warfare between families. It is necessary to salvage as much as possible from the wreckage. That means a difficult but profound experience of good love – as parents – which in ordinary, everyday life takes the form of reuniting instead of dividing, of soothing instead of aggravating, of accompanying instead of excluding, of showing mercy instead of cold, harsh hearts, of embracing instead of taking revenge and punishing.

In short, we can love, which is to “reunite” again and again to the extent that is possible and should never be abandoned. Given enough time and faithful persistence, this loving attitude’s harvest is always extraordinary. The grandchildren, for example, will be grateful for as long as they live, that instead of causing them more harm, they have found in their grandparent´s home that peaceful space, selfless and unconditional affection, comfort and refuge from their problems, secure advice, an atmosphere of respect and open freedom, without fanaticism and poisoning. This home, their grandparents´ home, is an experience and a testimony of true and good love, which will be essential for the future love life of our grandchildren.