OK. Anyone who has not been living on another planet has probably heard that Kim Kardashian has filed for divorce just 72 days into her marriage with sports star Kris Humphries. On a certain level my attitude is, if you find out you made a colossal mistake, better to admit it upfront and cut your losses. Certainly better to deal with it before there are children involved.
On the other hand this only adds to a culture that is fast reducing marriage to something of a joke. There was a time when once you said "I do" that was it. There was no waking up one morning and seeing your honey in curlers and face cream for the first time and asking if maybe you need to go see a lawyer. For better or worse meant just that. And divorce, quite properly IMHO, carried a social stigma.
No, I don't want to go back to the days when it was all but impossible to get a divorce. There are legitimate reasons for it. Even Roman Catholics, while maintaining the indissoluble nature of marriage as a sacrament, have in recent years accepted that there are some grounds where a civil divorce may be justified. But we need to find some sort of middle ground between forcing people to remain in a poisonous or abusive marriage and those for whom you need a stop watch to keep up with their marriages.
To whit I have a few modest proposals.
First, limit "no-fault divorce." That should be a one time deal only. If I were czar I would do away with it entirely, but I am trying to keep my proposals within the realm of the realistic given our polity and culture today. Secondly require anyone under the age of 21 to undergo some form of marriage counseling BEFORE they marry. Third, impose a 90 day cooling off period from the time a couple applies for a marriage license until it is granted. Exceptions can be made for unusual circumstances. But no more drive-thru weddings. And finally, no more serial wedding and divorces. There should be a firm number of times you can divorce and remarry. In the Orthodox Church that number is three, though we apply that also to cases where the spouse died which I don't support extending into civil law. Still I think three is a reasonable number. It should sober someone up if they have been twice married and divorced knowing that there will be no hubby number four. Let's call this the Eddie Fisher rule (after Liz Taylor's fourth husband).
Will this put the breaks on our divorce happy culture? Probably not. But it might act as a speed bump. I would settle for that at the moment.
John - looking at this from another direction, I think the happy couple broke up precisely because marriage is no joke.
ReplyDeleteWhen the parties, the ceremony are over and it's just the two of you stuck in a life together, then things get real serious, real quick. Individuals raised to be atomized, superficial adolescents cannot handle it.
This is a 30-year old woman who has played the field in a very public way. In the modern matriarchy, this is known as "empowerment." She is the poster girl for a very unfortunate generation.
I'm not sure why the State has to be involved in the marriage business at all. It may be a holdover from our primitive past wherein the marriages of ruling families and concepts of conquest and bloodlines were official state matters.
ReplyDeleteThe Church's representatives tend to maintain this barbaric state of affairs by stressing how degraded "the culture" becomes by not marrying according to religious principles or historical Church/State symphonic practices.
My proposition is pretty simple. Civil unions are a contractual matter between any number of any-sexed consenting adults. The parties themselves should determine each contract's provisions, including termination.
If we were to posit the existence of the State, then the State's role in these contracts would be solely to protect minors', incompetents' and foetal interests, since they're incapable of consent. The State could easily accomplish this role by establishing the norms for custody, support, and property settlement for these dependents. The State could also establish a common form for the contract itself.
Christians, however, would be obliged to abstain from participating in civil unions that aren't identical to the matrimonial Mystery. The abstention would be a religious, not civil, matter.
By keeping Church and State separate, our hierarchs wouldn't have to jump through hoops deciding how many divorces are "really" in keeping with Christ's teachings. Moreover, the heterodox wouldn't be forced to adhere to an Orthodox matrimonial standard.
Vis
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of what you wrote. Point in fact I have been urging the government to get out of the marriage business for a long time. Let people who want their particular domestic arrangements recognized by the state go get a civil union from the town or city clerk, and those who want to "marry" can then go to their respective place of worship, speak with their respective clergy person, and ask to be married if their religion will permit it.
That said I don't see that happening. My proposals are intended to deal with the our current polity and cultural morass. Not the one I would prefer.
I am very sympathetic to the idea that there should be no provision for divorce in the Eastern Orthodox Church. What God has joined let no man separate.
ReplyDeleteAnd I believe that everything about Orthodoxy, especially its praxis, being among other things quite ascetical, lends itself much much more to 'no divorce' than does Roman Catholic praxis.
In our (Ethiopian) Oriental Orthodox Church, divorce is not permitted save for adultery. Not considering the neglect, abuses, and workarounds on this law, I believe this is about as permissive as I think the Church can faithfully be.