By Mark Regnerus, Public Discourse. (Image: Unsplash)
We have a choice. We can look at the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage as burdensome, or we can look at it as Görres describes, “as protection, preservation, guarantee, rootedness, as the greatest earthly security of all which one person can give to another.”
When the presidents of the world’s episcopal conferences gather for a week in Rome in October, at Pope Leo’s invitation, it will mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of Amoris Laetitia, his predecessor’s apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family. In English, the title means “the joy of love.” There was perhaps more struggle than joy in its development; it emerged as the product of a testy pair of synods in 2014 and 2015 that featured stolen books, leaked documents, letter campaigns, manipulated agendas, accusations, and wrestling over the working document that eventually yielded a Relatio Finalis and then (in March 2016) Amoris Laetitia. It nevertheless remains a significant contribution covering considerable territory and is worthy of our attention.
In it, Pope Francis seemed to wrestle with twin impulses around marriage. He wished to honor and protect fundamental marital and family goods enshrined in the magisterial teaching of the Church, and yet sympathized with those whose relationship situations are anomalous or “irregular,” of which there are many. This tension is in keeping with his entire papacy, in which grace consistently wrestled law, such that many Church observers expected—either with hope or dread—direct confrontation with Catholic teachings on marriage and sexuality. Instead, what resulted was more indirect: in-flight remarks, personnel-as-policy, and institutional changes.
While we anticipate joy in love, acknowledging amoris patientia—or suffering in love—is necessary. “Interaction breeds conflict,” after all, is the closest thing to an iron law of the social universe. Too few recognize, and almost no one honors, this side effect of sharing a life and domicile with someone quite different from themselves. Suffering is absent in no marriage, periodic for most, and long-term for some.