If your Catholic friends are divorcing, read this.

Recently I received a heartbreaking email from a male reader with an all-too-common dilemma. Here is an excerpt, with some identifying details changed (and emphasis mine):

I wanted to get your opinion on something and as always, your prayers. Recently, some good friends of mine have decided to divorce after 6 years of marriage. We were in each other's wedding and remained somewhat close until 2 or 3 years ago. With having additional children (we have 5 children, the oldest being 9) our lives have made it harder to stay in touch. It was only until recently that the husband contacted me saying that he needed some help. His wife had been having an adulterous relationship and he found out about it. He was not without guilt, having had an emotional affair with someone else as well. Both had made mistakes and he was wanting to rectify everything. He went to our local priest, went to confession for the first time in 10 years, and wanted his wife to start counseling. She refused and has since continued her relationship outside of marriage. They have 3 small children. 

The tipping point came this past weekend when I was at a store, and I ran into her (almost literally) in the parking lot and our eyes made contact. I couldn't even muster the strength to say hello. I left the parking lot feeling like I let God down. It was a perfect opportunity to simply say hello and break the ice a little. It has been killing me ever since. She's in a downward spiral, her parents support her adulterous lifestyle and are only adding fuel to the fire. She's all about material things right now and isn't thinking clearly about anything. 

I now feel this call/obligation to write to her. Not to be judgmental, but to remind her of mercy. That she doesn't have to go through with anything, and that I stood by them at their wedding and heard them profess on that day a commitment to love unconditionally. That everyone at that wedding had an obligation to lift them up when times got tough and we've failed to live up to our part of the bargain. That I'm not going to sit by like the countless others and support her decisions. I want her to know the truth. I know in her heart of hearts, she is searching for God. She just doesn't realize it. 

I know they are in the midst of divorce proceedings and I don't want to interject, but I feel I need to do something. I'm just very hesitant. Feelings are fleeting and I'm wanting to really test this to make sure it is the right thing to do. 

What would you do?


What would you have told him? More importantly, what would you do if you were him?

Among the regrets in my life are about three occasions where I did not discourage, and even tacitly encouraged, the divorce of Catholic girlfriends. I can barely type those words. All those instances were many years ago, and today my response to women who come to me basically asking "permission" to divorce (without abuse or safety issues) is very different. However, my previous complicity still hits me hard. Were there "good reasons" for those divorces? At the time, I believed there were, but looking back, I'm not so sure. Perhaps it was simply my desire to see my friends "happy" that informed my bad advice. Or maybe it was simple cowardice on my part.

My answer to this reader was the following:

Please, please, please do exactly that! Oh my goodness, if only we had more people who thought like you!

What you say is really perfect because it is true that it is your obligation (and the others' as well even though they won't do it and would not even think to). Good for you and I will pray for you. Whatever happens you have a clear conscience after this. Oh, I hurt  for those children who will be saddled with the lifelong effects of a broken home. It's always the children who must sacrifice for the adults, isn't it?

As someone said, the children are left to reconcile the two worlds that even the adults couldn't reconcile. What a heavy burden to put on the innocent. 

May God reward you. 


As it turns out, he spent many hours -- and many, many prayers -- composing the letter to his friend. He sent it, and he heard that she received it kindly, although he does not expect an actual response. He also had firm but loving talk with the husband and father, who has since fallen into similar sins.

My reader, praise God, did not sit idly by like so many friends and family do and "support" the break-up of this family. He did what his faith, his friendship, and his witness to the marriage obligated him to do: He spoke. He spoke the truth in love, but by gosh, he spoke.

The marriage/family/"gender" catastrophe in the culture today is happening because good people are too afraid to speak.

Like this courageous reader, you must speak.

You can do this. I promise you. Ask the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Mother to guide your hand or your tongue, and speak.

The two-child norm is not necessarily the result of selfishness

Please Note: I am writing about the wider culture and its norms; this post is not referring to faithful Catholics with smaller families.


Since my reversion 21 years ago, I have been surrounded by my Catholic friends in an amazing Catholic diocese and community. The norm in my circles is openness to life in one's marriage. Those of my friends who have small families, or no children at all, are usually suffering from infertility.

But when I am in the broader culture, a culture I used to fit within quite comfortably, I recognize that large families are an anomaly. Sometimes, the realization can be jarring. A couple of my younger kids now go to a public charter school down the street, which is a change from the small Catholic school and homeschooling that had been the norm for us for decades. Almost all of my boys' classmates come from families with one or two children.

On my block, almost every other family has two children. Over the 15 years we've lived here, a strange thing has happened. A bunch of us had small kids/toddlers/babies at the time. As the years passed, the neighbors' kids grew into teens and even adults. No more babies or little kids in the neighborhood -- except for our house, which continued to contain young kids, toddlers, babies. It is sometimes just a little eerie, honestly.

Families that welcome many children are not the norm. In the past, big families were seen as a blessing, as natural, as routine, but the culture has changed completely, as evidenced by a comment I received just the other day from a reader named Amy:

Leila: I would rather like to know what made you have eight children and expect your husband to provide for all of them, unless he is quite wealthy.

I don't want to assume snarkiness (though it sure seems a little snippy), but I do assume that Amy has a general unfamiliarity with large families. She simply cannot imagine why a regular married couple would welcome many children. It makes no sense to her at all, and she sees it as even a terrible imposition on the marriage itself, unless it's the luxury, whim, and frivolity of a "quite wealthy" family.

Which brings me to the thoughts I've been having lately, when I see just how different my family and my friends' families really are in today's America. When I first discovered the truth of Catholicism and the beauty of God's design for human sexuality and marriage, I was exploding with joy! Everything made sense, it was so stunning, so lovely, so profound!

New converts or reverts have a tendency to get zealous very quickly, due to that blush of "new love" that comes with the embrace of Christ and His Church, and that zeal I felt, combined with spiritual immaturity, led me to so many rookie mistakes. I made assumptions that were unfounded, including the assumption that "people in this culture only have one or two children because they are selfish!" I was just sure of it.

And then I began to mature, and I began to think. While it is true that some couples close their marriage to any or more children due to selfishness, materialism, and a desire for the "finer things and the good life" (I have had people admit this to me with great honesty), I can't assume that for the majority.

In fact, I started to look at my own pre-faithful life. When my husband and I were married, I was on the Pill. We had talked about having two kids, maybe three at the most (especially if the first two kids were the same sex). That was how it was, and there was no big controversy or angst.

But interestingly, that was not my heart's desire at all. I actually always thought that big families, when I had seen them or read about them, were amazing, wonderful, fascinating! In my heart of hearts, I would have loved to have a "big family" -- four kids, maybe even five!

Of course, that was just a dream (and one barely thought of), like saying that it would be amazing to weave my own clothes on a loom, or travel the world on a yacht. I mean, some people did that sort of thing -- the eccentrics, the uber-religious, the uber-rich -- but not normal folks.

It wasn't that I was being selfish or stingy in fully intending to limit our family to two children (three being possible, but not probable), it was that I was doing what was done. The cultural norm of two children was and is the very air that we breathe in regular America. There is no thought about it, no deeper questions to be asked, none of that. We do what our neighbors do. We do what the culture says. I would no more have thought about actually having a large family than I would have thought about going barefoot on a trip to the mall or joining a circus as a trapeze artist. I mean, who does that? A very odd few.

Selfishness, like love, requires willful thought and action.

And so, in looking back, I was not selfish in my decision. It was simply not a decision that I even knew could be made. It was not a question on the radar at all. When I look around at the majority of my neighbors and fellow parents, I cannot assume that they are being selfish in deliberately limiting their family size. They are just being 21st century Americans. It's just what we do. We have very small families and we do it reflexively. It's no more complicated than that.

Which brings me to the freedom. When the glorious moment hits, when the awesome realization strikes, "I don't have to follow the American norm; I am a Catholic and I follow the Lord", oh the freedom! Oh, the joy! It's as if the sealed box we've been living in has been burst open and we can jump out into the sunlight! Everything is different, new, bright, fresh, and colorful -- teeming with life and abundance! Oh, the possibilities!

My heart's hidden desire, to have more children and have my house full of life and my children lush with siblings and exponential extended family potential, was now unleashed! No one and nothing, not even a mindless and powerful cultural norm, could bind me again.

I pray that we Catholics would understand that those who deliberately have small families are not necessarily being selfish; they simply don't know a higher authority than the cultural norm. When they question or act shocked by our big families, it may well be that they are, as I once was, truly curious at the "eccentrics" in their midst.

May we Catholics never take our freedom for granted, nor judge as selfish those who don't yet know that they are still bound. Our job is to love them, and to lead them to the freedom that is meant for all.