"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history." -Cardinal Francis George

Friday, December 9, 2011

St. Thomas on No-fault Divorce

The evil of divorce cannot be underestimated. The evil of a culture embracing no-fault divorce is exponentially worse.

St. Thomas Aquinas:
It seems obviously inappropriate for a woman to be able to put away her husband, because a wife is naturally subject to her husband as governor, and it is not within the power of a person subject to another to depart from his rule. So, it would be against the natural order if a wife were able to abandon her husband.
Therefore, if a husband were permitted to abandon his wife, the society of husband and wife would not be an association of equals but, instead, a sort of slavery on the part of the wife.
(Summa contra Gentiles III:124:[4]).


Our "advanced" culture:
No-fault divorce is a divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage requires neither a showing of wrong-doing of either party nor any evidentiary proceedings at all. Laws providing for no-fault divorce allow a family court to grant a divorce in response to a petition by either party to the marriage, without requiring the petitioner to provide evidence that the respondent has committed a breach of the marital contract. (From Wikepedia)
 
No fault divorce began in the US in the land of fruits and nuts (California) on January 1st 1970. In 1977, while living in San Fran-freako, my father left my mother destitute with their four children. You have to understand the situation though, he just didn't feel like having a family anymore. Needed to stretch his wings and not feel so cooped up. Yeah maaaan.

If divorce can be obtained by either party in a marriage without any regard to the marriage contract, then is does it even qualify as a contract? Which of the following are more important to a society than marriage:

  1. Obeying speed limits
  2. Using designated crosswalks
  3. refraining from urinating in an alley
  4. Refraining from drunk driving
  5. Paying your taxes
  6. Not smoking pot
Obviously none of them even come close to the foundational importance of marriage. Yet you will get in WAY MORE TROUBLE for violating any of these than for violating your marriage contract, which is hands down the most important contract anyone can enter into. Did men step up to the plate and defend marriage, womankind and children everywhere from the evil? Nope. Was there an outcry from feminists and women's and children's advocates about no-fault divorce? Quite the opposite actually.
Here is my point:
Compared to the lionesses of centuries past, the typical women from the modern, industrialized west is a subservient whore who has been dominated by the most grotesque mysogeny ever. And by the weakest generation of men ever as well! It is the worst ever because it is the women who willingly degrade themselves! They have silently given everything away for a greasy bowl of lentils. At least many a whore despises her own profession and her pimp*, but modern woman is eager to be pimped out for nothing more than money! (St. Augustine calls a wife a whore for using contraception, so take it up with him not me ;-) They have given up their God given, supremely fulfilling role of being help-meet to husband, mother, teacher, homemaker, for the bowl of foul lentils that is no-fault divorce and the broken homes that it leads to, abortion, contraception, childlessness, and taking a masculine posture by working outside of their calling: the home.

Remember the old saying "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"?

It happens to be quite true. Modern industrialized women has stopped rocking the cradle (and even looks down her nose at those who do) in favor of blandly pointing at a flow chart in a conference room somewhere in a shoulder padded pant-suit. Congratulations ladies, you are the stupidest generation of women in the history of mankind!


*"You [Manicheans] make your auditors adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom they copulate conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony by tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and then, fearing because of your law [against childbearing]…they copulate in a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago [1 Tim. 4:1–4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps.” Augustine, Against Faustus 15:7 (A.D. 400).

2 comments:

  1. http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2011/1214/America-s-rash-retreat-from-marriage

    ReplyDelete
  2. "The median age for marriage is now at its highest level as more young people put off tying the knot or cohabitate instead. And last year, only 9 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds were married, a big drop from 45 percent a half century ago.

    About 4 of 10 people under 30 now consider marriage to be passé or obsolete. And as a result, the share of adults who married over the past decade fell from 57 percent to a threshold-breaking 51 percent.

    Children of divorce are often afraid to tie the knot. Others put careers and education first.

    These trends are worse among the less educated, blacks, and Hispanics."

    As marriage goes, so goes the nation.

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