Divorce Rates PROVE Liberty-Modernity Is A Moral Apocalypse

God’s Due The Rebound

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “I was looking at divorce rates yesterday when I was writing this piece for my daughter, who wishes to begin dating.  I said: Okay, before you do that, I want to apprise you of what it is that you’re about to do, and how before all these modernists came along, how people perceived and dealt with the issue or the idea — there was no dating.  There might have been courting.  Just imagine if you lived in a time when your father would take your dowry and say: I think I’ve chosen a pretty good husband for you, daughter.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I was looking at divorce rates yesterday when I was writing this piece for my daughter, who wishes to begin dating.  I said: Okay, before you do that, I want to apprise you of what it is that you’re about to do, and how before all these modernists came along, how people perceived and dealt with the issue or the idea — there was no dating.  There might have been courting.  Just imagine if you lived in a time when your father would take your dowry and say: I think I’ve chosen a pretty good husband for you, daughter.  You’re going to marry John McGillicuddy down the street.  This was commonplace.

Professor Donald Livingston asked me once upon a time, he joked about it and then I said: Elaborate on that.  We were having breakfast with Bill Evelyn and Jason Thompson in Atlanta, me, Don, Jason, and Bill, at a Waffle House.  I can’t remember how the subject came up, but somehow the subject of grandchildren came up.

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Professor Livingston said: I’ve never understood why as a parent I don’t have a say-so in who you’re going to pick as a mate.  After all, I’m not going to have any say-so, but I’m going to be accorded grandchildren out of the deal.  Before you start jumping up and down, hollering and screaming “Get back to bashing Obama,” I asked Professor Livingston: Can you elaborate on that?  He goes: Sure.  He got into arranged marriages.

Think about that for a moment.  It is taken for granted.  We as parents, once our children are grown, all deals are off.  We don’t have any say-so in who it is they choose to marry.  Even if they choose the wrong one, most of us will ultimately go: Oh, all right, yeah, you can marry James Dean, the rebel without a cause.  As Professor Livingston was saying, especially when it comes to men, you’re taking my name.  You’re going to go off with her and make another me, and I don’t have any say-so in the matter?  My point is, this is ahistorical.  This is anathema to tradition.  That’s not the way it was.  But hey, we’re modernists.  Who needs the wisdom of parents when love is all that matters?  This runs counter to almost 7,000 years of recorded history.

To Father Longenecker’s point, this is viewed as an anachronism.  Modernity fixed this.  Really?  Did it?  Maybe we should analyze the end result of what this has engendered before we proclaim that modernity has fixed it.  I looked the divorce rates up yesterday.  They are shocking, and it’s not just the United States; it’s Western civilization.  Divorce is industry today.  It’s not just divorce, it is industry.  Entire industries don’t have the activity that the divorce industry does.  The amount of divorces are so voluminous and happen with such frequency now that now even the U.S. Census Bureau can give you an accurate portrayal of just what the divorce rate is or is not.

I spent about two hours trying to figure this out.  I never made any headway on it.  I did discover some generalities.  The numbers are shocking.  I don’t think people consider these things any longer.  In 2013, following were the top ten countries with the highest divorce rates.  These divorce rates are per thousand marriages of the population.

1. Russia: 5

2. Belarus: 3.8

3. Ukraine: 3.6

4. Moldova: 3.5

6. United States: 3.4

You have to bear in mind that some of these things are hard to calculate.  Are you talking about the first marriage, second, third, fourth?  Then there are the other statistics.  Approximately 50 percent of all marriages in the United States end in divorce.  This is a hard number to lock down.  On this particular website that represents a bunch of lawyers, divorce lawyers, says this:

[reading]

The statistics regarding the divorce rates in America often report a 50% overall rate of divorce. However, this data is not really very accurate, though it is quite close to the real figures. As per the ‘Americans for Divorce Reform,’ an approximate of 40 to 50% of marriages in the U.S., would end in legal separation if the present trends are likely to continue. This is only a projection. There are many factors contributing to the upward trend in the divorce rates and the laws pertaining to divorce are one of them.

The statement mentioned above about American divorce rates does not reveal all the details regarding the distribution of the same.

The divorce rate in America for first marriage, vs second or third marriage.

50% of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.

According to the enrichment journal on the divorce rate in America:

The divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%

The divorce rate in America for second marriage is 60%

The divorce rate in America for third marriage is 73%

[end reading]

Mike:  You can see that the trends, with the available data, are very identifiable.  Roughly speaking, about half the people that get married the first time, their marriages will ultimately fail.  I did look this up because we did have numbers on this prior to 1960 because there was so little to catalog.  The number before 1960 was somewhere around six to eight percent, depending on what age group you’re talking about and depending on what year was surveyed.  That was total.  That was the total rate.  What did the people in the 1950s and ‘60s and ‘40s know that we don’t know?  I would suggest that they had not embraced historicism just yet.

Ask yourself this question.  If you’re wondering why I’m laboring with this, there is a point to be made.  Most of you listening to me right now are parents, as am I.  Do you wish for your children to be in a perpetual state of pursuing this elusive thing called the soul mate, this elusive thing called the happy, perfect marriage, even if that entails two, three, four, five, six divorces, shacking up, children out of wedlock, children spread among parents that live in different states now, divorced, separated, child support payments, court-ordered visitation and every other hell forsaken thing that goes along with it?  We have to ask these questions and stop lollygagging around.  Why won’t anyone ask that question?  I don’t hear anyone shouting from the rooftops that this cannot possibly be what we wish for our children.  It can’t be.  If it is, please call me, write me a letter.  Let me try to talk you out of that, as someone who has lived it, and many of you have lived it.  [mocking] “But Mike, there’s no other…,” yes, there is.  Again, historicism says that what those fuddy-duddies went through, we can’t do that.  We’re modern.  We have iPhones and stuff.

This has been brought about because the clergy — yes, this is an indictment against, principally, my faith.  The Catholic Church has stunk the joint up when it comes to expounding upon the eternal law.  Too much confusion.  Too many liberals running around claiming that they’re theologists.  I read some theologists in the last two days, namely Augustine, Ambrose, and St. Alphonsus Liguori.  I actually read the entire Book of Matthew last night just for fun.  Answer the question: Is that what you wish for your children?  If it isn’t, where is the other way to be located?  Do we find it in going forward and hiring more Dr. Spocks and becoming better atheists or agnostics, in plowing together a better nondenominational point of view?  Good luck with that.  You’ve been trying that for 50 plus

years.  The rates are going up; they’re not going down.

There has to then be something in the past that we can tap into.  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a very simple proposition.  It’s a proposition that the people, before modernity, men — not all.  No, this is not perfect.  Yes, there were fallible men.  I don’t want to get into this discussion here.  By and large, men and women lived with a mortal fear of almighty God, frowning upon them and sending them into that fiery place we call Hell.  They did as the fathers and as Christ and as the Old Testament before Christ said they should do.  Why?  Many out of pure love, also many out of fear, fear of mortal sin.  What is mortal sin?  [mocking] “Why are you preaching?”

Folks, our society has gone off the rails.  This cannot possibly be the best that we can do for our children.  And no, I don’t want to hear your agnostic point of view.  I’ve already heard it.  I’m living with it.  As a matter of fact, I pursued a divorce listening to you.  I’m well acquainted with what you have to say.  I’m well acquainted with your sources.  I’m well acquainted with your objections, as St. Thomas Aquinas would say.  I’ve heard them.  Yesterday I read his answers to your objections.  He wrote them in the 11^th century.

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Are they still valid today?  You bet your bottom last dollar or donut they are.  Are we going to be the generation that tries earnestly to stop this, or are we just going to be the next one that’s just another in the line of degradations?  It’s a simple question.  This stuff is not complicated.  Our Lord did not leave us a call to vocation of marriage and to the other activities that he calls us to — you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out.  It’s pretty easy.  It’s pretty simple.  You just have to humble yourself.

I wrote about this.  You can read this on the website if you’d like.  The title is “How To Prep Your Daughter To ‘Date’? A Catholic-Parent Bootcamp On Sexuality.”  Whether you are Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, doesn’t matter.  What those fathers and those doctors of the Holy Roman Church taught is what founded what we call Western civilization today.  Yes, part of the Greco-Roman tradition.  This stuff still applies.  Historicism and our own modern conceit is what prevents us from easily accessing it and then doing the hard work that is necessary to try and implement it.

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Don’t our children deserve better?  We hear over and over and over again, [mocking] “We just want our children to have the things we didn’t have.  We want them to have it better than we do.”  Really?  Do you?  Seriously?  I’m supposed to believe that?  What are we doing about it, buying more games?  Teaching them how to invest better in the stock market, that’s how you have it better than the previous generation?  You can count me out.  Someone accused me yesterday, [mocking] “Good luck, jerk.  Good luck with your daughter finding some 12^th century relic to date.”  I should be so fortunate that a knight, a chivalrous, virtuous knight with that healthy fear of God that is talked about should wish to court one of my daughters.  Who do you want courting yours?  Who do you want courting yours?

End Mike Church Show Transcript