Question

Dear Father Angelo,

I am a 42 year old mother and I have three daughters, two of them attend elementary school and one attends middle school.

I was married, though only as a civil marriage, and after more than 20 years my husband left me claiming he was no longer getting along with me and found himself another woman, long before our separation, whom he calls “his new partner”.

The act of separation was issued in November 2017 and the judge mandated shared custody of the children according to a detailed timetable. I did everything I could to save the family, also by undergoing therapy with a psychologist who followed our case until the separation, but there was nothing to do.

Now we attend a psychologist who supports us about parenting, but who cares little about Christian values. The problem I would like to ask you about is this: the father would like to be able to meet his daughters with his new partner, because by law he can do so, while I am against it because the law does not protect the greater good of children, but only protects the whims of adults, and I know that it is not good for little girls to see their father dating this woman. He has always agreed to have all three girls take the path of catechism and of partaking of the sacraments, and I do not see as consistent with my Christian values ​​the wish to normalize this situation, as he would like. This is why I kindly ask you for advice on how to properly educate my daughters in this confusion generated by the separation. I do not want the girls to consider what their father did as “normal” and neither is the relationship with this woman normal, that is, it does not follow Christian morality, which instead sees family as the place of forgiveness, reconciliation, faithfulness, communion. How can I teach these Christian concepts to my daughters, while they have in front of them the example of a father who is doing the opposite and who wants to convince them that it is all right to do so? I do not intend to turn the girls against the father, but against the misleading behavior of the father, in order to transfer to their conscience the right discernment of good from evil. In your opinion, in what terms can I talk to my daughters to make it clear that their father must be loved despite his mistakes, but his mistakes must be acknowledged and cannot be justified, and absolutely must not be considered normal practice? In fact, I would like to avoid that my daughters one day prepare to create a family while thinking that it is normal to get married, have children, and then separate and reunite with other people, forcing the children to bear the consequences of that… I wait for your kind answer, as I strongly feel the need to seek help in order to educate my daughters correctly, in Truth.

Thanks, V.

Answer from the priest

Dear V.,

I beg your forgiveness, first of all for the long delay with which I answer you.

1. Certainly, your daughters feel some discomfort because of the divided family, because their father does not live together with their mother.

The discomfort undoubtedly increases when they have to be together with a woman who perhaps (and maybe there is no doubt) was the cause of the separation of their parents and of their suffering.

2. I believe that the best and most nurturing act towards your daughters is to tell the whole truth.

And first of all to admit that on your part and on their father’s part there was an error from the start: a marriage that was only a civil one.

Withdrawing from sacramental marriage is the same as withdrawing from many aids that come from God.

3. The aids that come from God are these:

1- spouses with sacramental grace “are fortified and receive a kind of consecration” (Gaudium et spes 48), that is, they receive a new strength to love each other as God loves man and Christ loves the Church;

2- spouses with sacramental grace “help each other to attain to holiness in their married life” (Lumen gentium 11);

3- spouses with sacramental grace are accompanied by a special blessing or grace, the one for which “as God of old made Himself present to His people through a covenant of love and fidelity, so now the Savior of men and the Spouseof the Church comes into the lives of married Christians through the sacrament of matrimony” (Gaudium et spes 48);

4- with the grace of the sacrament the spouses “open up for themselves a treasure of sacramental grace from which they draw supernatural power for the fulfilling of their rights and duties faithfully, holily, perseveringly even unto death” (Casti connubii 42).

5- the grace of the sacrament gives them “in fine right to the actual assistance of grace, whensoever they need it for fulfilling the duties of their state” (Casti connubii 43).

4. So, the first teaching that you must give is that of not repeating your mistake and that they be well convinced that “unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build” (Ps 127:1).

And that “unless the Lord guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch” (Ib.). In other words, if the Lord does not guard the unity of marriage, the spouses alone cannot succeed.

5. You must also say that “the constant fulfillment of the duties of this Christian vocation demands notable virtue”(Gaudium et spes 49) and that this strength is given by the Lord through the Sacraments, prayer, a spirit of self-sacrifice and the exercise of virtues.

6. After having convinced your daughters of this, you must go on to say that you cannot become fathers and mothers out of wedlock, because a sound education of children requires the simultaneous presence of their parents.

You, to tell the truth, were civilly married to the father of your daughters.

But according to the Church that marriage was null and void, because it was not celebrated in the Lord and therefore remained devoid of very important goods which you could not do without.

7. You must also remind your daughters that marriage by its very nature requires the indissolubility of the bond,because in marital consent the spouses totally surrender themselves to each other, so that there is no way to revoke the gift they have given.

They expropriated themselves to definitively and eternally belong to each other.

Even if they went to live with another man or woman, that man or woman would never become husband or wife, because before God the previous way of belonging remains intact and is irrevocable.

8. I am convinced that your daughters will understand the truth of what I have told you, because it corresponds to what they desire in the bottom of their hearts.

9. However, knowing things is not enough to avoid mistakes.

The exercise of virtue is also always necessary.

And this cannot be possessed with adequate fullness if one does not trust God more than oneself, without his constant help to be drawn from the Sacraments and prayer, and without that protection of sanctifying grace which neutralizes the incursions of the one whose name means “divider” (satan means divider) and who does everything he can to divide.

Therefore, insist that they tend towards the holiness of life.

This is where the secret of success in everything lies.

I assure you and your dearest daughters of my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo

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