The Brother-Sister Vow

The Roman Catholic Church's once-and-for-all view of marriage causes more problems, more suffering--and more apostasy from the church--than most non-Catholics suspect. Marriage is merely legalized adultery in the eyes of the church if either of the partners has a living spouse to whom he was validly married (which may include ceremonies in other faiths and even civil ceremonies). Example: a Catholic divorced and remarried is considered to be living in sin. What happens if the couple want to make their peace with the church and receive the sacraments?* Must they dissolve their marriage, divide up the children and live apart?

There is another alternative, not often granted by the church, known as the brother-sister vow--in which a man and woman are permitted to live in public as man and wife, but in private must be as chaste as brother and sister. The true story of one couple's struggle to achieve this relationship is poignantly told in a new book, Whom God Hath Not Joined, by a young woman under the pen name of Claire McAuley (Sheed & Ward; $3).

A Neat Trick. "Claire McAuley" was married in the church at the age of 18, and two years later, "after a series of misfortunes which eventually saw my legal, valid husband behind bars and bigamously married to another," her bishop granted her permission to get a civil divorce. Thus at 20, the mother of a small son, she found herself legally free but ecclesiastically still married. When she met the man she "realized was the one with whom I should spend the rest of my life," she was confident God understood that her first marriage had not been a marriage at all--even if the church chose to be legalistic about it. So she married him in a civil ceremony, and he--a baptized Catholic who knew nothing about the church's teaching--settled down with her. Eventually they had three children.

But Claire McAuley gradually began to be nagged by doubt that God "understood" so well, after all, and that through her own willfulness she might be "paving a path to perdition," not only for herself but for the man she loved. In an agony of conscience, she appealed again and again to her parish priest. She had never heard of the brother-sister vow, but had come to the conclusion that she and John could stay together if only they avoided "adultery," i.e., sex ("A neat trick, if you happen to be quite young, quite normal, and very much in love"). Her priest obviously felt the trick was all but impossible; he offered her no hope of returning to full Communion, short of breaking up her life with John.

The Bishop's Worry. John at first treated Claire's soul-searching as a phase that would pass, then as a cruel denial of his conjugal rights. There were violent quarrels. But as Claire persevered, John slowly began to see things her way, and they began searching for a priest who would help them get a bishop's permission to take the brother-sister vow.

But any priest to whom they presented their problem "looked at us and saw a young couple with a house full of youngsters, and then looked ahead. He thought of the possibility of one night having the little martini hour turn into quite a party, and no matter what the intention, or how strong it might be, we could easily pick up again the habit we were trying to eliminate. If we were bound by a vow, we would be in more serious trouble. And the Bishop who stamped the paper would have some deep thinking to do ... The biggest worry a Bishop has in connection with granting permission to live together-apart is the consideration of what possible abuse might be made of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist [Communion]. Should a couple fall and still continue to receive, the responsibility for the unworthy reception of the Sacrament would lie directly with the Bishop for permitting such sacrilege." Eventually, Claire and John moved to a parish where the assistant priest took up their cause and obtained permission for them to take the vow and return to confession and Holy Communion.

The Overlapping Life. Their new life has not been easy. "We can't overindulge in alcohol, for obvious reasons; we can't haunt night clubs that feature sensational dance lines and limited apparel (usually stimulating to a man, they would be even more so to a man living as a 'brother'). We try to limit and strongly curtail our association with the 'sophisticated' set who enjoy the more worldly plays and movies and delight in passing on a somewhat spicy story . . . You can't maintain a close relationship with a quantity of cocktails behind you, followed by dancing . . . and then sail home to turn off the emotional faucet and act as if you and your companion were just good friends.'' Separate bedrooms must be maintained --a fact that Claire and John disguise from neighbors by making her bed a studio couch and his a double bed covered with "feminine frippery." They cope with their frustrated desire for more children by taking in a steady stream of foster children. They make two religious retreats a year--one separately and one for married couples. And they work extra hard to love and consider each other.

"We're so very lucky in being permitted--to live a life overlapping the life of marriage and the life of the monastery that we easily forget it is a life of penance . . . How we, who are so far beneath them . . . can emulate the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph, is difficult to understand. But try we do."

* A Roman Catholic may not take Holy Communion unless he is free of mortal sin, which can only be obtained by confession and absolution from a priest, and no confession is valid unless the penitent sincerely intends never to repeat his sin.

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