Soon Forrest walked into his wife's hospital room with Leo in his arms.The philosophical problem here is a dilemma of duty. You have an explicit duty of loyalty to your wife that lasts until death. You have a natural duty of loyalty to your child.
Her reaction was unlike one he ever expected.
"I got the ultimatum right then," he said. "She told me if I kept him then we would get a divorce."
Attempts to reach the hospital for comment weren't immediately successful. The baby's mother, Ruzan Badalyan, told ABC News that she did have a child with Down syndrome and she has left her husband, who has the child, but she declined to elaborate.
It's easy to condemn the woman, who violated both duties. I wonder if there's unanimity among us that he was right to choose his natural duty over his sacred oath?
I completely disagree with your characterization of the husband’s situation as a choosing between his oath and his fatherly duty. The wife is the one seeking the divorce, not him. In fact, the article makes it clear that he does not want a divorce. It seems he is trying to honor both his oath to his wife and protect the life of his son. She is the one insisting on a new term to the marriage oath, one that will lead to the death of his innocent son. All he has done is refuse to agree to her new, and unreasonable, change to the terms of the marriage.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that he's refusing to agree to something she's demanding, and the decision to leave is hers. I also agree that the demand is unreasonable.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's an alteration of the terms of the oath. The oath doesn't really say anything about raising children you happen to create, although of course that is principle end of marriage according to Aquinas. It's similar, maybe, to the case of a mafia wife: should she still feel bound by the oath if her husband embarks on a life of crime? There's nothing in the oath that says, "Unless my spouse should do or demand something morally horrible." Jesus' comments on the subject seem to be limited to adultery, though I have no doubt he would want you to love for and care for the child with Down's syndrome.
In any case, I think the guy is doing the right thing here. But it means accepting an end to his marriage in spite of the explicit "until death do us part" terms. The question is when it's OK to violate the terms of an oath. Maybe your position is that he's not electing to violate it, so the violation is not something for which he's morally responsible? That's plausible.
That is my position, he is not electing to violate his oath. She has declared that she will leave him if he does not surrender the child to be killed. Short of kidnapping her or forcibly preventing her from leaving he can't make her stay. His refusal to recognize the wife's demand in this situation does not mean he is breaking his oath. She is.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Joel. He's not failing to uphold his end of the oath. She is. He's not the one leaving. She is. He's not the oathbreaker. She is. Her ultimatum is not a test of his oath, it is her saying that she doesn't feel oathbound to him unless he surrenders his son.
ReplyDeleteThe control over her leaving is not in his power. If he refuses to give up his son, the choice is hers if she stays or not. If he agrees, the choice is STILL hers if she stays or not. His power is only to leave or stay in the marriage himself. He had placed no conditions upon the marriage with regards to his son. If she wanted to stay if he kept his son, he would still be married to her. I don't know that this could be clearer.
Where in that article is any suggestion that anyone should *kill* the baby?
ReplyDeleteI re-read it and didn't see anything like that. "Give up the baby" < > "kill the baby", nor is adoption or surrender of parental rights in any sense the same as (or even close to) infanticide.
He sounds like a great guy, and I don't think much of Mom.
I'm with Joel. He didn't leave, she did. He can't lock her up, and he's certainly not obligated to do something shockingly wrong to keep her happy, wedding vows or no wedding vows.
ReplyDeleteThat's a separate issue, and I agree.
ReplyDeleteHe's not obligated to give the child up for adoption just to make his wife happy *either* (and methinks if she's willing to file for divorce over something like this, she wasn't really on board with the whole "til death do us part" aspect of marriage, anyway.
There was no discussion of "Let's re-arrange our lives so we can afford to have a live in caretaker", which might well be a legitimate compromise.
I am less willing to condemn the wife for not willing to devote her entire life to caring for this child. If a man makes that choice (stays married, but says, "No way am I staying home all day with our child") no one bats an eyelash. So I see no particular reason to apply a whole different standard to Mom.
As a person and a parent, I find her behavior shocking and sad. And the traditional morality answer to this would have been for Dad to refuse to accept the divorce (which wouldn't stop it) and comport himself for the rest of his life as though he were still bound to his now ex-wife, despite her lack of faithfulness and commitment.
I doubt most people would see that as fair, though.
No, I wouldn't find it fair at all.
ReplyDeleteContracts and covenants are two way streets, and if one is going to invoke traditional - Biblical - morality, that book is chock full of instances where Israel broke the covenants they had with God, and God felt no obligation to hold up his end. I've never understood why the covenant of marriage is singled out in some denominations as some special snowflake thing where the injured party is bound to observe the strictures even where it has been shattered beyond any ability to repair by the injuring party.
It's very chic and trendy to be "non-judgmental" but I've never much cared of being chic and trendy. The entire fault for this rests with this woman, she's a horrible human being. She broke the covenant, he is free to find his happiness with a clean conscience, and I cannot quite wish for God to have any mercy on her soul.
I hope Karma follows her around for a long time.
And the traditional morality answer to this would have been for Dad to refuse to accept the divorce (which wouldn't stop it) and comport himself for the rest of his life as though he were still bound to his now ex-wife, despite her lack of faithfulness and commitment.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think the traditional moral answer would be to ask for an annulment, because clearly she didn't take the oath with a serious heart (which is one of the things that can cause an annulment to be valid). So the very traditional Christian position might be that there was never a true marriage at all. Both the current and the traditional standards don't let a couple make that determination to divide a marriage on their own: both invoke a formal institution to sit in judgment on the case first.
I've never understood why the covenant of marriage is singled out in some denominations as some special snowflake thing where the injured party is bound to observe the strictures...
The only thing Jesus said is that the injuring party is so bound. In Mat. 5:31-2, he says that you can't legitimately divorce a woman unless she commits adultery; but having committed adultery and gotten herself divorced, no one else should marry her or it counts as adultery (as if she were still bound to her husband).
She has engineered a false choice for him. Imagine some other ultimatum: "If you don't kill my father, you are choosing to divorce me." That is not so. She is choosing, and trying to disguise it as his choice to muddy the waters.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood why the covenant of marriage is singled out in some denominations as some special snowflake thing where the injured party is bound to observe the strictures even where it has been shattered beyond any ability to repair by the injuring party.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it really depends on whether you actually believe a wedding vow is an actual, binding oath before God and your community, or whether you choose (as liberals do with the Constitution) to read into it all sorts of things that are not actually there.
This is the oath I swore before God:
I,Tech Wench, take thee, Spousal Unit, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.
There was no "out clause" in the vows we exchanged that day. Now civil society has a set of laws that add all sorts of "outs" to the actual bargain we struck that day.
But that is a separate matter from what was promised.
If I'm honest, and I try to be, I would probably consider myself to be excused from that vow if my husband committed adultery. But the Catholic church in particular did not traditionally do that - one could get an annulment but in fact women in particular were often advised by the Church that adultery was part of the "for worse" part of marriage and that their Christian duty was to love and forgive and try to make the marriage work.
My brother in law got divorced, and when he remarried the Catholic church did not recognize his marriage until his first marriage was formally annulled.
There's no question that this woman violated her vows. I'm just pointing out that if you actually take the wedding vows seriously, he is probably still bound.
Unless you bring in a lot of extra legal stuff or after-the-fact practical exceptions agreed upon by third parties.
I don't think this would be fair, either. And I could find all sorts of reasons to give myself an out if I were in his situation (my husband told me to put my baby up for adoption or he'd leave me).
But it's a pretty broad oath with no escape clause, taken on its face.
She has engineered a false choice for him. Imagine some other ultimatum: "If you don't kill my father, you are choosing to divorce me."
ReplyDeleteThat's not what the article said, though. What she said was, "If you don't agree to put our child up for adoption, I will divorce you".
Legally, his consent is not required, nor would it be if the roles were reversed. Morally (a separate issue entirely) he has not given his consent, either.
Whether or not he is bound by his vow morally really depends on whether he places his literal oath before God above or below his legal duty as outlined by civil society.
They're separate issues. Morally, there's absolutely no question in my mind that he has done the right thing here.
It's not something for which we have a scriptural answer, I don't think, but I personally would be much more bothered by a wife's refusal to raise our child than by a single act of adultery. Assuming that it was not a pattern, and she genuinely was sorry she had done it, I could probably forgive and move on after an affair. This business about rejecting our son, though, that goes right to the root of what marriage is about. How can we describe a bond of marital loyalty that is not extended to the fruits of the union?
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to condemn people who give up children for adoption on the sense that those children will legitimately have a better life -- say for reasons of extreme poverty. That's not the case here. And presumably that would be a mutual decision, not one she claimed the right to command on her own authority.
Cass has a good point. The guy can't prevent his wife's leaving, but is anyone comfortable advising him that he mustn't remarry? That used to be the almost universally understood rule in any kind of respectable society. Your husband or wife might run off, or be committed to an asylum or a jail, but unless he or she was declared dead you were still married, bub.
ReplyDeleteIt's a rule rarely invoked today, and yet those of us who profess conservative (especially religious) values rarely go to much trouble to explain how come we're off the hook. The fact is, I think, that we're off the hook because we live in a society that doesn't uphold our conservative religious views. It's still a legitimate question how we should justify it to ourselves, and whether we should be more open about how malleable our conservative religious views are when they're really, really inconvenient, and our liberal milieu suddenly looks pretty enticing on this particular point.
I disagree. First of all, if your wife is committed to an asylum, you really are still married to her -- that's part of the 'sickness or health' thing. It would be somewhat shabby to start up an affair with someone else.
ReplyDeleteThere are some issues like this one where I think an annulment would be justified, because what appeared to be a marriage was something of a sham: however seriously he took his vows, clearly she didn't take them seriously. But I don't think divorce is religiously justifiable since there was no adultery.
In other cases, our liberal milieu makes it far too easy to scrap your oaths. There's simply no penalty, not these days even a social one, for treating it as if it were simply a business contract with an unwritten escape clause that nevertheless courts will recognize.
It would be somewhat shabby to start up an affair with someone else.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't even thinking of it at the time, but it would be super shabby to just divorce her and start a new life with somebody else, as if your oath to be with her in sickness and health didn't apply at all.
To me, divorce and annulments are simply a formal rulings by third parties (the Church, society) that they're willing to consider your vows dissolved.
ReplyDeleteBut you didn't make those vows to either society or to the Church - you make them to each other and to God. At least that's what I believe.
So who cares (in one sense) what other people think or are willing to accept? Obviously, I know the practical answer to this (who wants to be ostracized or criticized?), but I can't quite get myself to the point where 3rd parties really have anything to do with a promise between two people.
Whether or not outsiders approve or understand seems utterly irrelevant to the promise itself.
But you didn't make those vows to either society or to the Church - you make them to each other and to God. At least that's what I believe.
ReplyDeleteI think that's right, but the distinction between the annulment and the divorce is the formal decision that you didn't take the oaths to each other -- at least one of you didn't make the commitment, which (as this is an oath by which you bind each other) means that there is nothing to dissolve. The marriage isn't dissolved by an annulment, but found to have been an illusion.
In the case of divorce, you are agreeing that there was a marriage, but that the duties of the party cheated upon are dissolved. The other party retains the duties.
That's my understanding of the distinction. The third party is just there to make sure that the process is fair and based on the truth. God knows what was in your hearts, so the Church's ruling isn't the real issue as to whether or not the oath was made; but it is helpful to keep people from just waving away duties they no longer want.
Ok, far more interesting (to me, anyway) question... she's divorced him, should his obligation be to remaining faithful to the marriage he didn't want to end, or finding a loving mother for his son?
ReplyDeleteI think this is not necessarily the best way to resolve an ethical conflict. It's tempting to recast a dilemma so that we're focused on the cost to an innocent third person of fulfilling a commitment, rather than on the inconvenience or pain to ourselves. But if the question is whether the commitment is binding, that's something of a distraction. It's kind of like the argument that robbing a bank might be OK if refusing to do so would condemn one's innocent child to die for lack of an expensive medical intervention. Whether robbing a bank is wrong or not shouldn't depend on the terrific use we have in mind for the money.
ReplyDeleteI'm not here to argue that everyone should agree that a marriage contract is indissoluble. I'm only pointing out that, if we think it is dissoluble, we should acknowledge that we're no longer adopting the traditional conservative view. Admittedly the traditional conservative view was very, very hard to live under, and exposed people to enormous personal tragedy when their marriages became absolutely impossible. They sometimes were left with a marriage that no longer functioned, and with no ability to create a replacement marriage, which meant that they and their children were bereft of the spouse and parent that should have been present. That's part of what it means to say that a marriage is sacred unto death. It's not a minor issue, and there are solid reasons why the prevailing modern view is that a marriage is sacred only up to a point.
I suspect that most people, even under the stricter old-fashioned standard, adhered to it more because society demanded it than because their personal commitment was that strong. Society no longer demands it. That leaves us to sort out where we really stand personally. I'd hate to think I'd ever abandon my husband, but then I find it hard to imagine he'd ever do the sort of things that would make me leave him, either. I don't find it at all difficult to sympathize with friends who divorce spouses who have become impossible to live with--and I'm talking about things far less serious than a hopeless drug addiction or escalation to violence.
Ok, far more interesting (to me, anyway) question... she's divorced him, should his obligation be to remaining faithful to the marriage he didn't want to end, or finding a loving mother for his son?
ReplyDeleteIf you ask me, the latter.
I'm not here to argue that everyone should agree that a marriage contract is indissoluble. I'm only pointing out that, if we think it is dissoluble, we should acknowledge that we're no longer adopting the traditional conservative view. Admittedly the traditional conservative view was very, very hard to live under, and exposed people to enormous personal tragedy when their marriages became absolutely impossible. They sometimes were left with a marriage that no longer functioned, and with no ability to create a replacement marriage, which meant that they and their children were bereft of the spouse and parent that should have been present. That's part of what it means to say that a marriage is sacred unto death. It's not a minor issue, and there are solid reasons why the prevailing modern view is that a marriage is sacred only up to a point.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more, Tex :)
That's really the reason I wanted to make that point - we talk a lot about being faithful to conservative/traditional morality, but that's in the abstract.
I really believe few of us would come down in exactly the same place after fully considering what faithful adherence would look like in the real world.
I think if we look to the wisdom of the Catholic Church on this- they've had a long time to deeply consider it and work it all out- as I understand it the position would be this- in the specific case above, this would be anullment worthy, as Grim has pointed out, she did not make her vows in sincerity, so there was no union to dissolve.
ReplyDeleteIn a situation where there was a legitimate union, but continuing to live as a married couple together is no longer possible, the church does not forbid legal (secular) divorce, but it does consider the vows still in effect- so you would not be able to re-marry, and you'd still have obligations toward the well being of your spouse.
As for the child vs. the marriage- which is more important?- as an institution, we as a group (society or church) should see marriage as the more important, as without it, there is no structure within which to properly have and raise children, and it is the natural incubator for the production of offspring. The advice to those getting married is to put spouse first, to maintain a good environment for the children- in a general sense, of course.
Now, in dealing with actual cases, and real people, you account for the specifics of the situation, and deal accordingly- clearly here he's been left without any support to fulfill his obligation to the child, and so the child has no one else- his obligations have shifted- and then add to that the reasonable assumption of annulment, and his duties are clear. In the case of say, a spouse who was unfaithful, you'd still have the vows and the obligation to the children to suggest that you should try to make it work.
My question for Grim is- Are vows more binding than the implied duties of parenthood? Should we have a ceremony to formalize the duties of parenthood, to make them as binding (if indeed they are lesser)? I suppose baptism provides this, as one does vow:
"You have asked to have your child baptised. In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training him (her) in the practise of the faith. It will be your duty to bring him (her) up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbour. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?"
So if the child had been baptized, he would have vows there as well, correct?
Not necessarily. Baptism can be done outside of ceremony. Any Christian can baptize an infant, though we are taught to ask a priest to do it as it is more certain to be effective.
ReplyDelete