Married Life as the Full Catastrophe

by Michael Shackleton · July 3, 2016

Guest editorial by Michael Shackleton – In the 1960s movie Zorba the Greek, based on the best-selling novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba is asked: “Are you married?” His disarmingly hyperbolic response is: “Yes, I’m married. Wife, children, house. The full catastrophe!”

The word catastrophe comes from the Greek meaning a sudden and unpleasant turn of events. Considering the interest in the declining health of marriage and the family at present, one is left wondering whether modern marriages have been turned into an unpleasant event.

The Church with its centuries of experience, has no delusions about the frequent failure of what were initially happy marriages. The Catechism of the Catholic Church acknowledges that married couples find themselves in a vulnerable relationship.

In paragraphs 1606-1608 it points out that the conjugal union has always been threatened by discord, a spirit of domination, infidelity, jealousy and conflicts that can escalate into hatred and separation, all of which have a universal character.

It attributes this pervasive weakness to our very nature which has been wounded by sin. Men and women need the help of the grace of God who, in his infinite mercy, will never refuse them. Without his help they cannot achieve the union of their lives for which God created them “in the beginning”.

Social scientists have produced a wide array of studies that highlight the need for a maddeningly elusive elixir that would transform a shaky marriage into a stable unity of husband, wife and children.

Some of their findings have appeared recently in a comprehensive article entitled “How to Stay Married” in Time magazine. Getting married, it suggests, is now easier than it has ever been. Staying married, and doing so happily, is more difficult.

Nevertheless, it quotes experts who found that couples who have made it all the way in life experience the mature years as sublime. One expert said that research had started to reveal that in later life happy relationships become very much like they were during the days of courtship.

Moreover, married people seem to have better health, wealth and sex lives than singles, and will probably die happier.

All of this general and statistical fascination, and even anxiety, about the future of marriage and the family is of concern to the Church.

This is because of the Church’s fidelity to the teaching in Genesis that the man and his wife become one flesh. God blessed them, commanding them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

Secular attitudes today ignore or reject the Church’s defence of marriage and the family, and with apparently widening influence also envisage a society without institutionalised matrimony.

In his post-synod exhortation Amoris laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis has admitted that within the language of the Church the institution of marriage may appear less appealing to many because of overemphasis on doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues.

He adopts a patently pastoral approach, encouraging all to accept married and unmarried individuals and families with compassion and love as they struggle to sort out their lives and their relationships with one another and with God.

Amoris laetitia is a lengthy document that moves Christians to remember that they are to be Christ-like and to feel kindly towards those who on the surface fall short of the ideal state of marriage. It also emphatically affirms the importance of Christian marriage and the need to support those who have problems or have failed and divorced.

In Pope Francis’ words, we are to keep our feet on the ground and remember the spiritual dimension of the sacrament of matrimony. We may add that we must also strive to do and be happy with “the full catastrophe”.