Sep 29, 2004 / 22:00 pm
The U.S. Church is living through another scandal, and the perpetrators are not priests; the perpetrators are parents, says Mary “Bai” Macfarlane, a mother of four. Although millions of American homes are broken by divorce, the U.S. bishops tend not to speak out against it and canon lawyers seem to defend divorce instead of marriage, she says.
The issue is close to home for Macfarlane, who, after nearly 14 years of marriage, finds herself as the defendant in no-fault divorce case in Ohio. Her four children have been taken away from her because she has insisted on home-schooling them. She has recently joined with others in a grass roots movement to protect children and parents from no-fault divorce.
“Millions of Catholic parents are divorcing and stealing from their own children their God-given right to an intact home, and by example, are teaching their own children there is nothing unnatural or wrong with divorce,” says Macfarlane.
“These parents are remarrying too, and their actions are condoned by the U.S. tribunals, which totally ignore two sections of canon law, and invented a newfangled interpretation for another canon law.”