Love & Marriage
A post about things I believed
A friend picked up on the following sentence from my previous post “A Time for Grief”:
I grieve everything I gave up because I believed in the Catholic model of marriage, including my authenticity and my sense of self.
She asked me: “Do you think the Catholic marriage truly doesn’t let you be your authentic self? Or could it be Paul's vision of what a Catholic marriage “should be”?
She is not the first person asking me a variation of this theme.
Answering the second question first, I think that there were elements and teachings about Catholic marriage that supported Paul’s personal beliefs about relationships and dovetailed nicely with his own personal hopes and expectations of what marriage should be. I never felt a strong attachment on his part to Catholic teachings as Catholic teachings. Paul was raised in a traditional Catholic family and came to our marriage with a stronger cultural identification to what the Church believed. My struggle with finding authenticity in Catholic marriage came in part from not being raised in a community and culture where complementarism was the norm.
That said, there were also aspects of Catholic marriage that gave comfort to my fears and insecurities, fuelled by spiritual guidance that ratcheted up my codependent tendencies. As a young mother, I soothed deep anxieties by conforming to an ideal that promised peace and fulfillment. In other words, I came by my beliefs about Catholic marriage honestly and I cannot blame my husband or his family for any of them.
I also believe that Catholic marriage truly doesn’t let me be my authentic self, and it’s not for lack of trying.
I came to the practice of the faith during my third pregnancy. I grew up in a French-Canadian family where faith was more a matter of cultural practice than belief. My mother, an immigrant, was looking for community in the different Catholic congregations that we joined. When the community or the leadership failed, we were out of there. There wasn’t a supernatural power that survived failure by the humans who embodied it.
Like my mother before me, I came to the faith looking for somewhere to fit in. Paul’s family was associated with a close-knit conservative organization inside the Catholic Church and while conservatism didn’t come to me naturally, the ready-made community did. As a young woman with a law degree and a growing family, I longed for a sense of certainty. I wanted to be sure that I was making the right decision. Communities of faith celebrated my choice to prioritize family over career. The further I went down the conservative spectrum, the more certainty I encountered. Scripture’s promise of a “peace that defies all understanding” was extremely compelling. For someone with an anxious inner buzz, inner peace is a powerful pitch.
The promises of faith were initially a balm to my wounded heart but it didn’t take long before I realized that inner peace would be harder to come by than I thought. Nothing felt right, nothing came easily, my natural inclinations and interests seem to be calling me anywhere but in the fold. In a faith system, when living a faithful life doesn’t live up to its promises, the problem can never be the faith, it has to be your life. On the advice of trusted mentors and friends, I launched headlong into the practice of the faith hoping that more prayer would open me up to more graces, that grace would lead to more faith, and that faith would lead to that coveted peaceful heart, forgetting that faith — by definition — includes an element of not knowing.
Faith is a belief in something for which there is no proof. In Catholic practice, aesthetics and rituals are meant to give legibility to the intangible. The bells, the smells, the special hats, the shoes, the candles, the music, all these things are -- like the Sacraments -- tangible signs of a divine reality. They give our limited minds a sense of the Divine. We can’t grasp the omnipresence of God but we can look at a candle and understand that something invisible (the air) allows it to burn, providing light and warmth. Incense smoke coils and uncoils, rising as we hope our prayers will. As it disappears, the smell reminds us that something may be impossible to see and still exist. Baby steps toward shedding our dependence on senses to guide us to the essential.
For a religion that puts so much importance on aesthetics and the need to cut the grandeur of God down to chewable morsels, the Catholic faith also talks a good game about how our senses and impulses lead us away from our divine nature. The mixed message of “follow your senses but only inasmuch as they lead you to God, otherwise mistrust them” permeates every teaching about Things That Feel Good, from sexuality, to food & drink, friendships, revelry, art, and leisure. The question of whether our senses are leading us toward or away from God is at the root of the oft referenced “Catholic guilt” and I have no doubt that the quip “If it’s so wrong how can it feel so right?” was coined by a Catholic falling in love with someone they weren’t married to. This simmering conflict between senses and salvation has produced scores of academic and spiritual literature and a cottage industry of Catholic thinkers who have taken to the task of helping the faithful sort it out. Painted nudity on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: Artful. Two-piece bathing suits: Sinful. Bryan Duncan covers Paul McCartney: Artful. Paul McCartney covers Amazing Grace: Nice try, but no. Lord of the Rings: yes. Harry Potter: No. Toxic manipulative relationship with someone you are married to: To be pursued at all cost. Loving and respectful relationship with someone you are not: To be avoided at all cost. Friendships with people of the same gender that inspire and uplift you: Holy. Similar friendships with people of the opposite gender: Emotional adultery, might as well be sleeping with them. Halloween costumes: ghosts, no; Angels, yes. Should we even celebrate trick-or-treat? What about yoga? Am I enjoying this banana too much? Am I looking forward to my morning coffee more than my morning prayers? Coffee is leading me astray, I must cut it off. Wine: good in moderation. Cannabis: Bad in any quantity. Smoking: in poor taste, unless the men are having cigars at family camp. Body piercings and tattoos: do not honour your body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. Personal purification rituals that mortify the senses: redemptive. Disagreeing with the Pope on contraception: self-serving disobedience. Disagreeing with the Pope on the Latin Mass: Righteous disobedience.
The confusion between where my senses and feelings were leading me and where the Church was pointing to was a constant source of turmoil. Spiritual guidance and readings always led me to more blind obedience. Of course you have free will but unless you use it to go through this very narrow doorway, your free will is leading you astray. Let us tell you exactly how to use your free will. Your will is absolutely free to act exactly as we tell you. You are, of course, free to burn in Hell if you don’t. Never question whether you are leaning your ladder on the right wall: just keep climbing until you reach the top.
In my pursuit of salvation, I leaned my ladder on two passages from St. Paul’s letters (emphasis mine):
(to the Phillippians) …Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things.…
(to the Romans) And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.…
According to St. Paul, if I strive to be faithful and keep my mind on what the Church tells me is lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy, then my choices will inevitably lead to “the peace that surpasses all understanding.” When peace eluded me, I prayed harder, obeyed more, submitted more. The big picture would come together someday, showing me how things had “come together” for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
In the case of my marriage, this meant following the complementarian model described in the Catechism. Now I must make something abundantly clear: I always wanted a big family and I wasn’t using birth control before I started practicing. I had horrible experiences with the pill and the IUD before and after starting my family. People still ask me if I had 9 children “for religious reasons” and the answer is a clear no. It is the loveliest of ironies that the biggest tell of being a Catholic is the one thing I didn’t do in the pursuit of salvation.
There is more to Catholic marriage than a call to “be fruitful.” Coming back to the Catholic aspiration to make God’s love tangible, marriage is also believed to be a way through which Heaven touches earth. From the Catechism:
1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful (…)
In his instructions for Christian households, St. Paul also presents a model of union that calls spouses to submit to each other in a way that reflect Christ’s selflessness:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy (...)
In ideal terms, this model works when both spouses approach the marriage with a selfless attitude. The wife is called to submit but the husband’s headship is defined by the needs of his wife and children. In other words, both can safely submit to each other because their vocation in marriage is a commitment to each other’s full realization. The problem with this ideal for someone like me -- consumed by the turmoil of making the wrong choice and in a full contact fight to annihilate uncertainty -- is that it offers a perfect hiding place from the two things that make me feel the most insecure: having boundaries, and making hard decisions. The problem with this ideal for someone like my husband -- consumed by self-reliance and an inability to trust people -- is that it offers a perfect home for his need to control his environment and define his family’s culture and identity according to his needs.
What I’m trying to say here is that faith is often the answer to a question. And the stricter, the more prescriptive the articles of faith are in any belief system, the most certainty they offer. For me, embracing complementarism, childbearing, and homemaking calmed my anxieties about being enough for my children. It calmed my fears about childcare and it prevented me from getting overwhelmed by the demands of harmonizing career and family. It was also acceptable to Paul, whose needs and expectations about marriage would change over the years but always remained motivated by a need to control his environment and protect himself from needing others.
Walk with me as I connect the dots will you? Since you’ve made it this far.
The Bible and the Catechism tell us that our senses mislead us. What feels good is often bad and what feels bad can free us. To discern the good and the bad, we must keep a prayerful attitude, surrender our senses to God’s guidance which will not lead us astray. When in doubt as to what that might be, lean on the experience and writings of the Saints, the Fathers of the Church, and trusted spiritual advisors. If faith in God doesn’t bring you peace, your pride and your senses are still overwhelming the true leanings of your free will, which longs to rest in God. You should therefore follow harder through more obedience, more prayer, more thankfulness, and more submission to the will of God as wiser people understand it. And the will of God for married couples is selflessness and submission. Marriage and childbearing is the conduit through which God’s love for humanity comes alive. If your spouse fails to deliver on their end of the bargain, you are still responsible for your own vocation and, ultimately, your own salvation. God never fails at marriage, humans do. So what if your relationship is falling short of Heaven touching earth? What you need is more God and less human frailty. For women, this means more submission, more obedience, and more effacement.
Almost 20 years ago, my marriage went through its first major existential crisis. I recently pulled out my journals from that season and read them again for the first time, amazed at how much I had forgotten, but also how much they paralleled what I wrote this year in the aftermath of my separation. There I found not only the description of some interactions with my husband that should have been huge red flags going forward but also a pretty systematic deconstruction of my fears and apprehensions using Scripture and the spiritual writings of Eugene Boylan in the excellent This Tremendous Lover. My journals read as a masterful exercise in denying my own thoughts and feelings, violently repressing my anger and sadness, and responding to my husband’s contempt for my qualities as a wife and mother with love and a commitment to do better. It worked in that we stayed married for 15 more years and had 5 more children. But I was never myself again.
The prescriptions of Catholic marriage surrounding complementarity, openness to life, male headship and female subservience are theological concepts that can, in theory, leave room for everyone to be their authentic selves in marriage. But it ignores the influence of attachment patterns and relational psychology on how we live out this ideal. When you have a woman who tends towards codependence and a man who tends towards entitlement, the Catholic model can lead to toxic enmeshment and a really bad place.
Selflessness might be good theology but it is awful psychology. To be selfless, you need a self to give and most of us come to faith and relationships with a wounded self that we would be well advised to tend to first.