Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

From Godspy on the MacFarlane divorce:

Q: You and your husband are well known in faithful Catholic circles for your books, talks, and ministry to lay Catholics...I'm sure there are more than a few Catholic couples who wonder that if the two of you can't make it, who can?

Just because Bud and I knew how to get out books and tapes in a really efficient way, and he had a lot of marketing experience, and knew how to do mailings, had nothing to do with what our personal life was like.

I've had a lot more time to read now with my kids away most of the time, and I've been reading Fire Within, about Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross... and it emphasizes what real prayer is, and what spirituality is. Basically, if you pray your rosary and you brag about it, you're really at the bottom of the totem pole. And if you pray privately and you get a revelation that tells you what to do and you think it's from God and you go act on it, well that's pretty dangerous...

In the same way I think people could have misunderstandings about marriage on all sorts of issues—women who think they're supposed to have romance and fireworks all the time; men who think they're supposed to have obedience. People could read the Pope's encyclical on family, Familiaris Consortio, which is one of the things I read when things were getting bad, and it was very discouraging, because what he describes is so beautiful. What are you supposed to do if you don't have that—does it mean you're not married? Does it mean you go get a divorce, and try to look for the "real thing" somewhere else? So there's got to be more realism.

I see a lot of prominent literature quoting the Pope and Vatican II statements about marriage that conclude that if one doesn't have a "strong satisfying interpersonal relationship that is a communion of life and love," then you don't have the stuff of marriage and that you should get an annulment because you were incapable of having a valid marriage with your current partner for reasons that could even be subconscious. That's the irony of the current scandal. It's almost satanic, that the Father of Lies would take what's good and twist it to lead people to break up their families.

The scary thing is I read the stuff that comes from the Pope about marriage, and it's so wonderful and beautiful and I think: How many people really have that? Maybe it's one in a thousand. It's kind of like reading about a saint. It can be very discouraging, because I'm not like that! Lucky for them—they have all these wonderful things—but I'm not like that. The beautiful stuff is the goal, but maybe we need a little more realism about what average people are experiencing. It's going to have ugliness in it. Let's not be so secretive about it; let's go fix it.