The
televangelist Pat Robertson’s suggestion that a man whose wife was far “gone”
with Alzheimer’s should divorce her if he felt a need for new companionship has
provoked a storm of condemnation from other Christian leaders but a more mixed
or even understanding response from some doctors and patient advocates.
On his television show, “The 700 Club,” on Tuesday, Mr. Robertson, a prominent
evangelical who once ran for president, took a call from a man who asking how he
should advise a friend whose wife was deep into dementia and no longer
recognized him.
“His wife as he knows her is gone,” the caller said, and the friend is “bitter
at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he’s started
seeing another woman.”
“This is a terribly hard thing,” Mr. Robertson said, clearly struggling to think
his way through a wrenching situation. “I
hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things, because here’s the loved
one — this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and
suddenly that person is gone “
“I know it sounds cruel,” he continued, “but if he’s going to do something, he
should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial
care, somebody looking after her.”
When Mr. Robertson’s co-anchor on the show wondered if that was consistent with
marriage vows, Mr. Robertson noted the pledge of “’til death do us part,” but
added, “This is a kind of death.”
He said the question presented an ethical dilemma beyond his ability to answer.
“I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to
have companionship, you’re lonely, you have to have companionship,” Mr.
Robertson said.
The reaction from many evangelical leaders, who see lifelong, traditional
marriage as the cornerstone of morality and society, was harsh and disbelieving.
“This is more than an embarrassment,” Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of
Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote
in a blog post on Thursday. “This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
But Beth Kallmyer, senior director of constituent services at the Alzheimer’s
Association in Chicago, declined to question Mr. Robertson’s remarks.
“This is a challenging, devastating and eventually fatal illness, and it affects
everybody differently,” she said. “The most important thing is that families get
help.”
In the association’s experience, she said, it is rare for people to get divorced
because of Alzheimer’s. But Alzheimer’s can go on for years or decades,
progressively worsening.
“The decisions people make are personal,” Ms. Kallmyer said.
Dr. Amanda G. Smith, medical director of the University of South Florida
Health’s Alzheimer’s Institute, in Tampa, said of Mr. Robertson’s remarks: “I
think he was trying to give someone the freedom to move on, but he only took
account of the caregiver without taking account of the patient.”
“Even if someone doesn’t recognize a spouse as specifically their spouse, there
is often a familiarity with that person and a feeling of comfort, especially if
they have been married for decades,” Dr. Smith said.
At the same time, Dr. Smith said, when the disease is advanced, she sees nothing
wrong with caregivers developing other relationships “that bring joy and fill a
void.” By the same token, she said, “it’s O.K. if a patient in a facility finds
a girlfriend to sit with at dinner every night.”
Dr. James E. Galvin, a neurologist who runs a dementia clinic at New York
University’s Langone Medical Center, said it was wrong to say that people with
Alzheimer’s were “gone,” or to call its late stages “a kind of death.”
“While it’s true that in terminal phases, patients may not be fully aware of
what’s going on, they tend to recognize the people who are closest to them,” Dr.
Galvin said.
With good care, people may live 15 to 20 years with the disease, most of that
time at home, Dr. Galvin said. If they eventually move to a nursing home and
seem unaware of what is going on around them, he said, then spouses face “an
individualized decision” about when and how to develop new relationships, ones
based on religion and ethics, not science.
Mr. Robertson helped make the Christian Coalition into a formidable political
force in the 1990s and is still popular on television. But over the years, he
has also stirred anger among some conservative Christians with statements
considered unorthodox by one group or another, including a defense of China’s
one-child population policy and assertions that dire events like the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks and the Haiti earthquake were punishments from God.
“Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore,” wrote Mr. Moore, of
the Southern Baptist seminary. “Most roll their eyes and shake their heads when
he makes another outlandish comment.”
Through a spokesman, Mr. Robertson on Friday
declined to elaborate on his televised remarks.
