Old Love and New Love?

Articles like this one illustrate perfectly just how important it is to choose the best good rather than settle for any ol' good.

Boiled down to it's essence, the article says this:

"Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's husband, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, has a romance with another woman, and the former justice is thrilled — even visits with the new couple while they hold hands on the porch swing — because it is a relief to see her husband of 55 years so content."

Those are the "facts" of the article. From there the Ms. Zernike attempts to wax poetic about the nature of love, describing "young love" as seeking happiness and "old love" as seeking others' happiness. Ms. Zernike holds Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as a quintessential example of this. I will assume the "facts" about Justice O'Connor's love triangle are accurate (I have no idea if they are or not).

My response to this article? Absurd, absurd, absurd! First, I need to situate my comments because my only knowledge of the specific situation comes from this article and I do not know the people involved, so I speak of the moral truths involved here rather than the specific situation. Second, the challenges which Justice O'Connor faces with her husband and his Alzheimer's are tremendious. I have no idea what her burden's are or her capacity to recognize the moral issues involved here. Only God knows the moral culpability involved for each person in this situation.

Allow me to dissect this. I'll start with the "good" that does exist in this situation. Love. The need to be loved and to give love is a core human need. When we find such love, it is good. But is it the best good? Far from it in this case, based on what is known.

Here's one of the major blindness in our culture today. We confuse doing what is convenient and feels good for what is right. We hold on to this lesser good as a self-serving excuse for all sorts of immoral choices that are far from the Best Good we could be choosing -- the Good which upholds right relationship and promotes God's Kingdom being revealed here and now.

The sins involved are adultery and worse. Judge O'Conner appears to have abdicated her marriage vows (and turned against the sacrament of marriage if a Catholic marriage). Yes life looks different when illness or disability hits. How well I know! But the beauty of "old love" (what Pope Benedict refers to as God's love, sacrificial love, mature love in his first encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" is completely missed. I do not know the specific situation here, but from the outside it appears that Judge O'Conner is lazy and happy that someone else is loving her husband so she doesn't have to.

Far from an example of what love should look like as we age, it is a poor and twisted example of settling for far less than God calls us to.

True love is sacrificial. I see mainly selfishness here. I have seen couples age gracefully through amazingly debilitating diseases such as Parkinson's, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer's, with one Lover serving their Beloved either at home or while they are in a nursing home. That is love and devotion. That is the best good. That is true love.