Scottish prelate: Church should work to reconcile separated, divorced spouses
October 08, 2014
As the Synod of Bishops convened on October 8, Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow praised the joys of a loving family and lamented the pain caused by divorce.
Preaching at Midmorning Prayer, he said that in the Church’s ministry to those wounded by separation and divorce, forgiveness does not entail “accommodation or indifference but genuine and sometimes hard-won reconciliation,” so that there may be “new faithfulness, a new page in the story of love of husband and wife and their children.”
“When husband and wife are happy together and are blessed with children, then love expands from two to three and four and five,” he preached. “There is every opportunity to renew faithfulness to one another by laughing together, crying together, supporting one another, saying sorry to one another, giving one another the benefit of the doubt, embracing one another, being happy for each other, just knowing the right word at the right time. And when those things happen, we are privileged to behold the beauty and simplicity and strength of married love and of family love, a love which truly through the grace of Christ endures all things.”
“But when families fracture, love is the first casualty,” he continued. “The love which was the glue between spouses turns to hate very quickly. Intimate communion of life is replaced with a terrible logic of division. Children's peace of heart is shattered and they find themselves both loving and hating their parents at the same time.”
He added:
Into this sadness, the Church has to find a way to speak St Paul’s words of love, which compassionately excuse and forgive, but which also heal and renew and lift up again; where forgiveness is not accommodation or indifference but genuine and sometimes hard-won reconciliation, engendering new trust, new hope, new endurance, and new faithfulness, a new page in the story of love of husband and wife and their children.
St. Paul’s inspiring words on love that we have heard today mean that we must have compassion for the pain and laceration of the human hearts caught up in separation, betrayal and divorce. St Paul’s words encourage us to find a way to uphold God’s holy purpose in marriage and in the family while also upholding those for whom that purpose has become almost impossible to attain. In times of distress and misfortune, people still instinctively turn to the Church for hope and consolation and inspiration. We must not fail them.
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