Did I Marry Hagar the Horrible?

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 13, 2025

In the old newspaper cartoon, Hagar the Horrible sits at the dinner table, gobbling a huge turkey drumstick. Across the table, Helga, his Viking wife, watches with a look of complete disgust, eyes rolling at her husband’s barbaric table manners. She sighs and says, “Isn’t that disgusting?” Without missing a bite, Hagar cheerfully answers, mouth half-full, “Yes, but the mashed potatoes are great.” Alas, the scene resonates all too easily with many households. Our everyday habitual courtesies—including table manners—undergird Christian morality.

Hagar and his wife were probably not Catholic. Even so, if they were, they might have chosen the same Scripture passage that, as history demonstrates, every single couple selects for their wedding Mass since the death of the last Apostle (look it up). We’ve all heard Saint Paul’s litany of love (1 Cor. 13): “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful….” Our hearts melt when we hear these words and pray that the love of our life responds in kind to our love.

St. Paul’s description of love prompts us to look outward, offering ourselves to God and others instead of succumbing to self-seeking narcissism. Living by this divine love heals and transforms the soul, restores the peace disrupted by sin, and draws us closer to the example of Jesus—moving us further away from the likes of Hagar the Horrible. Rejecting his love leads us away from God.

In the Gospel, Jesus cures ten lepers. This disease not only disfigures and robs its victim of sensation and mobility, but also brings emotional suffering: isolation, shame, and rejection. Throughout history, leprosy’s social stigma and exclusion have resulted in a profound sense of loneliness and despair.

Leprosy is a metaphor for sin and its effects. The virus of moral leprosy is the result of Original Sin. Like the leprosy virus, the virus of sin subtly corrupts and disfigures the person from within. Leprosy numbs the body, and the victim is unaware of injury or decay. Similarly, sin dulls the conscience, and a person remains unaware of moral and spiritual harm. Leprosy isolates the victim from others and religious worship just as sin separates us from God and neighbor. Just as Jesus healed lepers through the ministry of the Church with compassion, He also forgives sins and restores sinners to a state of grace and communion with God.

The physical and moral beauty of their future spouses attracts young people. Each attribute—patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness, rejoicing in truth—directly counters ugly, sinful tendencies that threaten the marriage bond, such as the leprosy of pride, anger, envy, and resentment.

Many couples discover over time that their spouses are not the saints they imagined but has flaws. Endearing quirks may become annoyances. We often hear, “He (or she) is not the person I married!” Sometimes a wife may feel she married Hagar the Horrible, or a husband finds himself with a Horrible Hag.

After a few years of marital bliss, it may be helpful for battle-weary husbands and wives to return to St. Paul’s litany of love that they heard on their wedding day as an examination of conscience:

• Love is patient. But I have been impatient, easily irritated, or quick to anger.
• Love is kind. But I have been unkind, harsh, or indifferent to my spouse’s needs.
• Love is not jealous. But I have envied others’ success, gifts, or happiness.
• Love is not boastful. But I have sought attention or praise for myself.
• Love is not proud. But I have been arrogant, self-centered, or unwilling to admit faults.
• Love is not rude. But I have been disrespectful, inconsiderate, or sinfully crude in speech or action.
• Love does not seek its own. But I have been selfish, putting my sinful desires over the good of others.
• Love is not easily angered. But I have nursed grudges or lost my temper.
• Love keeps no record of wrongs. But I have refused to forgive, brooded over past injuries, and waged a cold war with the silent treatment.
• Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. But I have found satisfaction in others’ failures or ignored the truth when it was inconvenient.
• Love bears all things. But I have complained or failed to endure difficulties patiently.
• Love believes all things. But I have been cynical, distrustful, or assumed the worst about others.
• Love hopes all things.But I have given in to relentless sorrow or failed to trust in God’s mercy.
• Love endures all things.But I have lacked perseverance in faith, prayer, or charity.

Are these resolutions of patience, perseverance, joy, and kindness achievable? Certainly, with God’s grace, as we encounter Jesus in the Sacraments. What are some practical tips that will direct us over the next few minutes and hours?

The same newspapers that carried the Hagar the Horrible comic strip also published the Miss Manners column (Judith Martin). Miss Manners wrote that politeness is the foundation of morality, or at least closely related to it.

Good manners, showing respect, consideration, and self-control, are tiny and practical expressions of morality. Etiquette requires thoughtful consideration of others before acting. Good manners are antibodies that protect us from moral leprosy.

The amusing High Church Episcopalian heresy—that we achieve salvation by good taste alone—need not apply. However, the essential moral debates raging today—from war and peace to questions of human sexuality and life in the womb—are manifestations of the tiniest of viruses rooted in bad manners and disrespect for the human person.