Chico Xavier appeals to the Pope

(Text by M. Tamassia)

A reader sends me a letter from which I transcribe some excerpts: “My daughter, since she was a little girl, has been a delicate, sweet, and gentle creature.  We had the impression that we had married her ‘well,’ as they say in society, since the chosen one belonged to a prominent family, possessing name and fortune.  She gave me two grandsons, but the poor girl’s existence has been a true martyrdom since the first days of her married life.  Her husband turned out to be a psychopath, violent and masochistic, hitting her for any little thing.  It has been hard for me and my wife to see our daughter, whom we raised with so much care, married to a brutal man.  Besides, he’s a bum.  Since he got married, he has never settled down to anything, and we are the ones who have supported the home.  Dragged by bad company, he wanders around after women.  From the beginning, my suffering Marisa wanted to separate.  As a practicing Roman Catholic, for me, what God has joined together, no one could separate.  On the other hand, in our family, we have never had a woman separated from her husband.  Since my daughter is quite young, only 25 years old, she might later like someone and want to rebuild a home, but then she would have to live together without being married.  In no way would I agree to have a daughter living together without being married tomorrow.  I would rather die.  For all these reasons, I never consented to a separation or divorce of any kind.  However, my daughter is increasingly wasting away, and her health is becoming very precarious.  Taken to a psychiatrist, he has kept her in alternating periods of shock therapy.  I live in tremendous inner conflict, afraid of offending God.”

It is evident that, because it involved information of personal nature, my answer to this reader was sent by mail.  But this matter reveals to us an aspect of the current debate on divorce in Brazil.  Many attempts, even heroic ones, have been made for its legal approval, without any result.  And the reason has always been the same, the one that makes man indifferent to things that do not concern him personally

It is the same situation we faced when we asked a friend for a monetary contribution to purchase blankets for prisoners at our local jail, 10 to 15 human beings living in damp and dirty dungeons, treated like beasts.  His reply: “Oh well, they are criminals, and the more they suffer, the better!”  Three months later, this person sought us out at the Prison Council, distressed and tearful, so that we could soften the situation of his dear brother, imprisoned for tax evasion.  And only then did he understand our work and that there are crimes and crimes!

First of all, when divorce is discussed, people usually use the argument that, the approval of a divorce law in Brazil would stimulate marital separation and promote the disintegration of the Brazilian family.  This argument is the result, not of a cold analysis of the facts, but of an emotional decision that produces great distortion.

If the person stopped to think, they would see that this is not true, but a simple suggestive technique, which famous French historian and sociologist Gustave Le Bon denounced in his work Opinions and Beliefs.  Many countries in the world that have adopted divorces enjoy absolutely healthy and incorruptible families.  On the other hand, in reality, no couple separates because they can or cannot marry again.  When insurmountable reasons arise, absolute impossibility of cohabitation, sharing a bed, with selfishness, truculence, violence, even risking death, the spouses do not consider whether there is a divorce law or not.  They separate anyway: some simply pack their bags and leave, without any formality.

Ipso facto, divorce has nothing to do with separation, because, if it were so, in Brazil we would not find any broken homes, since we have never had a divorce law, and the number of couples who separate is unbelievable.  What separates a couple are numerous factors, some quite complex, and that is what we should study to warn young people.  Religion, then, would be very important in this sedimentation, but for a person’s own use in guiding his/her sentiments and behavior.

When spouses separate, they often happen to find another partner.  It is curious that this other chosen one, after the initial failure, integrates better into the new union.  Perhaps this is because now, the choice was made when there was greater maturity and, in the words of psychiatrist Frank S. Caprio, most marriages take place in the phase of man’s immaturity and under the deceptive enthusiasm of “prematurity.”

One of the most perfect couples I met in São Paulo, in a home where the most excellent Christian virtues prevailed, were not married.  Not even their exemplary children knew this.  And it is curious that they helped me a lot to save homes from disintegration, acting as counselors.  However, I know how many obstacles, difficulties, fears, and frights they endured to hide the flaw they had to carry.

In the same vein, related to melodrama: “The law wants me to suffer…”, I want to mention here an illustrative episode of the cruelty of certain principles causing by the absence of a divorce law in Brazil.  A respectable elderly citizen passed away, leaving the widow with a bunch of children.  One of the daughters was engaged, with the wedding more or less set, to a person of the highest social position in the city of Rio de Janeiro.  However, when it came time to obtain the death certificate, this rich and solicitous fiancé took charge of the procedures and, only then, at that ill-fated moment for the young lady, did he verify through the documents that the couple was not “married,” and his future wife was illegitimate.  He broke off the engagement, and the widow, until the end of her life of much struggle, lived traumatized for having been the cause of her daughter’s unhappiness.  She had lived together with her loved one for half a century, was already 82 years old, had 45 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren, but the law considered her “single,” and that’s how she was buried.

It seems that life between a divorced person and a single person is normal in today’s modern world, but it is not.  Socially, there is real prejudice; the same prejudice that makes the letter writer mix the tyrannies of men with supposed determinations of God.  In social and family relationships, in the records of recreational clubs, in income tax papers, in registrations, titles, and personal documents, everything is difficult for those who unite, under the aegis of love and try living a new life but are not able to get a marriage certificate.  It is when these “different” individuals go to enroll their children in schools that they feel the weight of this shortcoming, incidentally, “imprescriptible,” which cruelly affects innocent beings who have nothing to do with the issue.

Perhaps that is why, through Chico Xavier, in a famous Pinga-Fogo TV show, the voices from Above made themselves heard through this “baba,” in Bannerjec’s expression.  On that occasion, the medium answered a question made by the noble federal legislator José Freitas Nobre: “We, who live today in such great dimensions of human understanding, consider divorce as a legitimate human measure, because ‘it hurts our hearts’ when we hear, in the public declarations of our great magistrates, the word ‘concubine’ to designate most distinguished ladies…”  And Chico Xavier, after other considerations, added: “Let us ask God that our authorities may hear our feelings… We will wait for better days to come for the Brazilian family and that divorce may be accepted, by all of us, as a human measure…”

It seems that this imponderable spiritual force, which involves the meek, good, and peaceful persons of all religions, is beginning to act here and there, in this new attempt by those who seek the improvement of our institutions.  At least that is the case of Dom Jerônimo Sá Cavalcanti, prior of the Monastery of São Bento, Bahia, who courageously laid his cards on the table: “The Church’s position in traditional terms is to face the problem of the indissolubility of marriage only from the intrinsic formal angle, without realizing that the essential issue is that of love.  It makes no sense for a couple to live together when they no longer understand each other, or to maintain the bonds only by an imposition of the Church…”  And he continues: “Enough of subterfuge, we have to be sincere.  Does God want, as a sign of his invisible grace, to see as a couple two people that not understand or love each other?”