…anyone surveying the cultural and political scene with a dispassionate eye would surely have to come to other conclusions: the general erosion of the instance of life-long marriage in North America and Europe, the rise in divorce rates, and the concomitant upsurge in the number of single-parent families, are all well-known to us in secular discussions, but are by no means absent from church-attending, or indeed Protestant clerical, families.<\/p>\n
Only a short time ago, for instance, the clergy of the Diocese of Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts received a mailing calmly announcing that one of their suffragan bishops was undergoing a divorce.<\/p>\n
One could not but be struck by the air of enforced “normalcy” and psychological adjudication that hung over this letter – no regrets, no confessions, no distress even, and certainly no reference to either bible or Christian tradition: just an insistence that the couple had been “faithful in caring for … each other” in the past, but were now “clear” about the fact that their marriage was “ending.”<\/p>\n