A Line in the Sand

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/03/13/pope.vatican.ap/

For many of it's failings the Catholic Church has stood firm on many issues, some I agree with and some I don't. The main one I have a problem with is the whole divorce issue. I don't understand the RC stand on this issue, especially if one spouse walks out on the other one. At that point the marriage is over, and unless the RC Church has an efficient means of annulling such marriages they do themselves and their parishioners a great dis-service.

It's one thing if you do the walking out for no good reason, or because you found a young hottie or cabana boy. At that point I totally agree with the RC church that you've sinned against God and need to make it right. I totally agree that if the marriage can be saved every effort needs to be made to make the marriage work. I know that marriages go through rough patches. I've been married for almost 14 years, and we've had some VERY rough patches, but we worked through it, and our marriage is stronger than ever.

It's a totally different scenario if one spouse is addicted to drugs, or is abusing the spouse or kids. That happens more often than not and it's not fair to punish one for the sins of the other. Your husband is raping your kids and abusing you? Too bad stay married is the message the Church is sending and that is very very wrong.

All or Nothing

One of the disturbing trends I've noticed in many discussions, well cyber-shouting matches, is this concept of all or nothing.

This concept means that it's 1 or 0 black and white. You're either with us all the way or you're the enemy. There's no room for discussion with all or nothing because there is nothing to discuss. The problem with this is that you can reach any sort of compromise and in real life it means that you can't get as many people as you like on your side because you only want people who agree with you 100% of the time.

Let me give you an example. Recently I was involved in a discussion of gay marriage. One gentleman who is gay subscribed to this all or nothing mentality. To him you were either 100% for gay marriage or you were a homophobic bigot. To him, civil unions, domestic partnerships etc. were not good enough because they treated gays like second class citizens even though gay couples would then have all the rights that my wife and I have as far as tax breaks etc. In addition he demanded that anyone of faith accept without question that nothing gays did in bed were immoral. Needless to say he gave people no wiggle room and I was sad because there are people who would stand with gays on certain issues and not others. Things like hate crimes, stopping the spread of AIDS in the gay community etc... But for him it was, you guessed it, all or nothing...