Do you know what a “stander” is? A “stander” is apparently the left-behind spouse after a divorce who, nevertheless, remains faithful to his or her marriage vows despite abandonment by the other party. I had never heard that term until I read Leila Miller’s great essay, “Six Uncomfortable Facts about Divorce” (see here). Miller identifies a cohort we don’t hear too much about: the abandoned spouse.

It’s almost trite to repeat the observation that the plumbing contract today is more sacrosanct than the marriage contract. Try unilaterally getting out  from your obligations to Roto-Rooter and see your life go down the drain into the sewer. Those who pushed the liberalization of divorce laws in the 1960s and 1970s sold Americans a false bill of goods: that divorce was somehow “better” for spouses and children than marriage. Children were “resilient.” Spouses could “move on.” Society would be better off if it didn’t force people to stay in “failed” marriages. The most cursory survey of the social science data — just the numbers — reveals how wrong that was.

Speaking of “wrong,” what in fact did “liberalization of divorce laws” actually mean? It meant marriage was stripped in a unique way of its moral quality by eliminating the element of responsibility for a divorce. That is why, like changes that were taking place in automobile insurance laws around the same time, the new laws were called “no-fault.” Prior to the 1960-70s, most states allowed divorce for serious, blameworthy reasons: adultery, abandonment, abuse. You had to show cause to get out of a marriage. And because the cause involved moral misbehavior, divorces were usually initiated by the injured party. “No-fault divorce” changed all that. Asserting that too many people were perjuring themselves to claim nonexistent wrongdoing because they just wanted out of their marriages, the “reformers” decided that by taking away the element of moral responsibility — who was responsible for damaging what was supposed to be “until death do us part” — problems would be solved. Instead, the divorce rate exploded.

It exploded for multiple reasons, two particularly meriting mention. One was that if fault doesn’t count, now the party responsible for the marriage breakup could pursue the divorce. Not only could that party injure the marriage but could make that injury permanent, many times without repercussions, by divorcing his or her victim. The other was that “no-fault” eliminated marriage as an interested party to a divorce. Marriage qua institution no longer mattered. The law no longer defended what Glenn Campbell once called “forgotten words and bonds//and the ink stains that are dried upon some line” (see here). All that mattered was the individuals who, even though married, the law now treated as simply individuals. One was enough to break the bond; if two agreed, all the better. What Catholic theology called one of the bona matrimonii — the vinculum, the bond — just disappeared.

But Leila Miller exposes a dirty little secret: Catholic complicity in all that.

Once upon a time, most Catholics would have known who was the victim and who was the victimizer in a divorce. Now, that very language would be considered hateful, likely met with “who am I to judge?” (That makes it so much easier to stay on good terms with all sides by taking none.) But when that moral element disappears, even Catholics begin to lose orientation. Pope Francis’s dubious document, Amoris Laetitia, was supposedly driven by his desire to “accompany” the divorced-and-remarried by creating a path for them (based on geography) for Communion. Apart from the scandal his ambiguous footnote created, one could ask a more basic question: How about accompanying the “stander?” How about standing with the stander who once stood before the altar and promised “till death do us part”? How about the principle of Canon Law that marital validity enjoys the presumption of the law? How about Pope Leo XIV’s recent comment (here) that marriage is not some “ideal” that we hope happens, but an ordinary albeit miraculous reality we should support and treasure?

Our failure — especially our Catholic failure — to support marriage beyond theoretical lip service has real-life impact. How many “standers” still hold to what their faith teaches about marriage with real support from the Church? (One once told me that, when asking for encouragement from a priest, he was told to “get a girlfriend.”) How often are divorces now initiated by women, not out of concrete wrongs but a general malaise about the “oppression” of marriage? In consequence, how many men decide getting married isn’t worth the risk? The pledge of permanence isn’t there, but the risk of serious and permanent life disruption, financial loss, and losing your kids — temporarily or permanently — is. And, if there’s nothing particularly enduring or protecting about entering into marriage, why is it any better than “hooking up”?

June is traditionally a month associated with marriage. One reason people attend weddings is not just so the parties and their families can go bankrupt with expenses. It’s because they are witnesses, witnesses that here and now something that should be “until death do us part” has happened. Well, if that’s the case, those witnesses need to stand with the standers.