God S Law and the Family

BISHOP CESAREBONIVENTO PIME

PASTORAL LETTER 1997

God’s law and the family

“Man must not separate whAt God has

joined together” (Mk 10: 9)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The theme of my pastoral letter for 1997 is “God’s Law and the Family.”. By this I want to draw attention to the family and to give a special help to all the married couples in Vanimo Diocese, since the family is one of the main concerns of the Church at this time.

In recent years there has been special attention given to the family at international level:

in 1993 the PNG Bishops Conference published a pastoral letter on the family;
in 1994 there was the international year of the family organised by the United Nations;
in 1994, again, there was the letter of the Holy Father to families and a lot of Church initiatives undertaken for the family;
in 1995 the PNG Bishops’ Conference published a pastoral letter on “Responsible Parenthood”.

It seems to me that the Diocese of Vanimo has to do its best in order to make everybody aware of what the Church says on this matter, considering that at this time there are so many other unfortunate ideas circulating that the Christian message risks being obscured and misunderstood by our good people. I think then that it is compulsory for me to summarize and to apply to our local context the universal teaching of the Church for the benefit of everybody in the diocese.

INTRODUCTION

MARRIED LIFE IN VANIMO DIOCESE

I want to write a letter on this subject because I am very worried by the way that family life is understood and lived in our diocese. I don’t think that I am very far from the reality if I say that in our diocese the family is seriously ill. In fact, I think that I am quite realistic if I say that the sacrament of marriage is the rarest and also the most broken sacrament.

My impression is that in the past our missionaries worked very hard for the sanctity of married life, and the response was quite satisfactory, considering the limited number of Catholics. Even now a good number of those families are still strong in bearing witness to Jesus. Recently I was really touched by an old mother who came to me in tears to beg me to do my best in order to prevent her son, a teacher, from taking a second wife.

However the situation, from a Christian point of view, has deteriorated. Today’s marriages are few, in comparison with the number of Catholics, and very much unstable. I can summarise the situation as follows:

a great number of couples are living together without having received the sacrament of marriage;
marriage breakdown, with the abandoning of the partner, is not infrequent..
births outside of marriage are numberless;
the ‘easy way’ or lack of reciprocal respect among boys and girls in sexual matters is becoming commonplace;
abortion is becoming more frequent;
contraception is getting more and more common; sometimes it is even carried out by medical procedures against the will of the couple.

Such a situation is the source of many great sufferings especially for women and children, and in many ways it goes against traditional culture.

I have good reasons to describe the situation in those terms because of my pastoral visitations throughout the diocese. On those occasions I spend much time counselling and consoling people coming to me with difficulties in their marriage. Some time it is a long procession of poor women, telling me that their husband beats them, or left them, or took a second wife, or is not taking care of them and of their children. Sometimes it is the case of men complaining that their wife has left them for another man. And sometimes it is for other problems.

I have to admit that my willingness to help those in need, fathers or mothers with their children, is insufficient in order to solve such a vast problem. The damage caused by the break-up of families is far worse than the eruption of Manam Volcano or of the destruction of the Gazelle peninsula in Rabaul because of Tavurvur Volcano. A lot of people are not aware of this or they simply don’t want to acknowledge the situation because they have their own interests to protect. However it is true: on spiritual, social and economic levels the broken marriages are causing a terrible damage to our diocese and to the country as a whole.

In order to solve such an enormous problem we need much more than money or food or shelter for those who are affected by the consequences of a broken marriage. In my opinion the first and main thing that we have to do is to know God’s will for marriage and to draw from it the moral guidelines for the welfare of the true Christian marriage. For this reason I make four special points in this letter:

the Law of God on marriage;
the evaluation of some aspects of the married life in PNG, especially with reference to the dignity of women;
the relationship between God’s Law and Civil Law;
some pastoral guidelines in order to help married life be lived according to our Christian dignity.

I PART

GOD’S LAW ON MARRIAGE

Let me then remind you first of all and with great simplicity of God’s Law on marriage.

In Genesis chapters 1 and 2, the Bible teaches us that God created man. It is not man who created God. Consequently it is only God who knows what is good and necessary for man. It is God then who fixed the marriage Law, knowing what is good and what is bad for the welfare of the family and for humankind. Mankind has simply to follow this law if it wants to be happy.

If we want to be happy we have to ask the Lord, our Creator, to make known to us his will and to give us the strength to carry it out.

From the Bible, then, we come to know that:

marriage is good, because it is God himself who willed it. He said: “It is not good for man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him” (Gen. 2: 18);

marriage is for the happiness of both man and woman together. Looking at Eve, Adam says: “At last, here is one of my own kind... That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one”. (Gen. 2:23-24).

From the Bible we also come to know what God’s Law is in order to reach happiness inside the married life. To give happiness to the married couple and their children, God wants marriage to be:

monogamous: The Bible says that God created Adam and Eve. In other words a man and a woman. Not a man and two women, or a woman and two men. In this God states his will very clearly: marriage must be contracted by one man and one woman only. Anything other than this is against God’s will. Jesus confirmed this Law when he said: “God made them male and female... So they are no longer two, but one... Man must not separate, then, what God has joined together.” (Mk. 10: 6-9).

for good: in the sense that marriage is to last until the death of one of the two

partners. No one is capable or entitled to break it: nor the two partners themselves, nor just one of them, nor any authority on earth. In the book of Genesis there is nothing allowing Adam to reject Eve or vice versa. The teaching of Genesis is confirmed by the Divine Word of Jesus who says: “Man must not separate, then, what God has joined together” (Mk. 10: 9);

open to life: in the book of Genesis God says: “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control” (Gen. 1: 28).This commandment of God means that marriage must be constantly orientated to life, never to death. In the Bible there is nothing that may hinder such a duty and right of a man and of a woman who have decided to marry. There is nothing in the Bible either that gives authority to a man or woman to change the nature and goals of married intercourse. That act must be carried out according to the wish of God. In other words, in all cases that act must be open to life.

If it is true then that God created man and woman and that He is the One who instituted the family, it means that his law on married life is supreme and is above any other law or custom. It must be followed and totally respected. No authority in this world is entitled to deny it.

This means that if we want to improve the life of our families we must look at God’s will and make all our laws both civil and customary in tune with His. We must put God’s Law in front of us, and by its help we must distinguish what is good from what is bad in our way of living the married life today.

Let us then look at the way to live married life in our diocese in the light of God’s will, and let us see what we are to keep and reinforce as well as what we are to correct or reject.

II PART

GOD’S LAW AND MARRIED LIFE IN OUR DIOCESE

P O S I T I V E A S P E C T S

In reality the traditional family in PNG Reflects in many ways the blessing that God gave to Adam and Eve. A lot of values that flourished in the heart of the Melanesian family are very much in tune with God’s will. How can we forget:

the great esteem for life. Even now far from being considered a burden,

children are regarded as a blessing from God, in accord with what the Bible says: “Children are a gift of the Lord; they are a real blessing” (Ps. 127: 3).

the great respect for the elderly, whose word at times carries great weight in the community and who are kept with the family until their death;

the community’s support of the family: marriage is never something of interest only to two individuals; on the contrary it concerns the whole extended family; and the couple in this way feel a greater social responsibility, because the unity of their family contributes to the unity of their two clans, and at the same time they are supported by the two extended families.

the help to the orphan. In PNG it is hard to find a child without a family; consequently the concept of “orphan” which is common in some other countries, doesn’t exist in PNG;

the sense of hospitality. In PNG everybody is welcome in any family. The guest is somebody to be taken care of. There could be various explanations for this. But it is a matter of fact that such an attitude is perfectly in tune with the message of the Bible.

the readiness to help anybody in need and especially families with problems. It is touching sometimes to see how the average PNG family is ready to share whatever it has with anybody affected by any kind of difficulty, especially when somebody is hungry or sick..

These kinds of values are indeed positive and bring joy to everybody. They are really rooted in the Bible. They are perfectly in tune with God’s law on marriage. Consequently we have to support and protect them from any attack.

N E G A T I V E A S P E C T S

In the PNG tradition of family, however, there are also some weaknesses, and those are not in tune with God’s Law. They are also rejected by the vast majority of PNG people, because they are the source of a lot of sufferings, tensions and dissatisfactions. They reflect the consequences of original sin. In this context we consider:

the lowly role of the woman inside the family: in some places she must undertake the heaviest work, she has no say in family decisions, she can in no way object to the husband, and indeed sometimes she is the object of great violence. In one word: she is not considered the husband’s equal, with the same rights and duties. With difficulty can we apply to women in PNG the Word of God: “It is not good for man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him” (Gen. 2: 18).

violence: very often women suffer violence from the husband in PNG. The man considers her weak and in no way his equal: consequently and especially if he has paid the bride-price, he considers that he can do whatever he wants with her. However this is something unacceptable and rejected by the Bible;

polygamy: it is not rare to see a man with a second, and sometimes even a third wife. This phenomenon it is not decreasing. On the contrary it seems to be on the increase. Sometimes he is obliged for customary reasons, but sometimes it is simply his own decision. One of the reasons here in our diocese is money. A lot of people are getting money either from their job or from their timber royalties, and to show their new status, they think they must take a second or third wife. The situation for those families leads frequently to real tragedies, as everybody knows.

rejection of the wife or divorce. Often a husband for various reasons decides to reject his own wife, and to send her back to her village, either alone or with her children. Sometimes he is obliged because he is not able to pay the bride price; but sometimes he does this of his own will because he says that he was obliged to marry her in first place, by the fact that she was marked for him, and now he has the chance to marry one that he loves. Sometimes he does this without any excuse. Sometimes, however, it is the wife doing this, and leaving the husband alone. In either case, the final situation causes a lot of suffering to all involved.

lack of care for children, when the marriage breaks. This is a consequence of the previous point. When the father and mother separate, the children will in any case experience much suffering, even though their parents try their best to assist them. A child needs his father and mother; he has the right to this; no one has the right to deprive him of his parents. The suffering of children increases greatly when the support of parents is reduced or doesn’t exist at all. Even though in PNG there is always an uncle or an aunt to take care of the children, the deprivation of their natural parents causes them a lot of suffering. That is the nature of things.

the easy way. Unfortunately, at this time there is another style gaining ground in PNG: young men and women living together without any strong commitment. “Trying out” they say and they are ready to split up at the first sign of difficulty. These people are not aware of the great suffering they cause to each other, to their children, to their families, and to society. Such behaviour is terribly damaging to everyone concerned, and it is the result of a misinterpretation of freedom.

the bride-price. The bride-price deserves a special mention. Traditionally it gave value to the woman and united the two clans concerned. Today it has become a big and unbearable business, endangering the stability of the marriage. In extreme cases, if the bride-price is not paid in full, the wife can be taken away from the husband and returned to her family. Obviously the consequences of this are terrible. Recently from some groups in PNG there has been a movement to declare illegal both the bride price and polygamy. The Church fully supports such a move, on condition that both customs be declared illegal at the same time. If only the bride-price were to be declared illegal, and men considered themselves free to take more wives, then the situation of women and of the family could be worse than before.

All these customs are definitively bad, since they cause suffering. They are forbidden by God’s Law, if only because they are the cause of such suffering. If they are forbidden by God’s Law, then they must be rejected also by us. They will never be constructive in our society.

III PART

A - GOD’S LAW AND CIVIL LAW

The Word of God enlightens not just the private life of the faithful, but also the laws of any civil society, including PNG. PNG is especially bound to God’s word, because it states in its constitution that it is a Christian country. We Christians must follow the laws that reflect God’s will. This is why we expect our PNG Government to make Laws in accordance with God’s will, especially when dealing with moral issues and matters concerning the family.

I say this because today life in PNG is so exposed to any influence, and people are tempted to copy without evaluation whatever comes from Europe or from America. At this moment a lot of influence is coming from Europe and America, some good, and some bad. We must be very careful in what we choose to accept. Our Government too is to be careful. So we have to watch out and weigh everything in the light of the Word of God.

Consequently we hope and pray for our Government that it make laws according to God’s will, avoiding what has already been done by some international agencies and governments, which over past years have intervened on family matters with decisions that deny what God says in the Bible.

In fact right now people are debating not only divorce, but also the right to impose birth control or to extinguish life at their wish by causing or allowing abortion or euthanasia. The apparent reason for this is the desire to solve problems such as: hunger, underdevelopment, improvement of life, medical problems, or the maintenance of the present high standard of living in western or rich countries.

The Church reminds everybody that no real problem affecting human life can be solved by offending God’s Law. We have not to forget that, even if we were able to solve some of those problems from a technical point of view against the will of God, human life will never improve afar from God. On the contrary, it would be ever more precarious and at risk, because it would find itself absent from God who is the source of life.

For the good of the Christian family in the diocese of Vanimo, I want to remind everybody of God’s will on some of the social issues very much debated now, and to tell the faithful of Vanimo diocese that we are bound to God’s Law, even though the civil Government allows or might allow something that is not in accordance with it. In that event, those Laws would be meaningless for us Christians. God has already spoken on those matters, and his Word remains for ever. We must have the courage to repeat the words of Peter to the Sanhedrin: “We must obey God rather than men” (Ac. 5: 29). This is what John Paul II reminds us of, in his great Encyclical Letter ‘Evangelium Vitae’.

B - GOD’S LAW AND SPECIAL MORAL ISSUES