Should an Alzheimer spouse divorce?

Televangelist Pat Robertson has done it again. This week he responded to a call from a viewer and began a firestorm among people of all religious backgrounds. Here is the question and his answer as reported by the New York Times:

“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 with the subject matter. “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.”

On their Facebook page the 700 Club offered this follow up:

Having had many close friends struggle through Alzheimer's, Pat has seen the devastating impact that it has on not only the spouse with the disease, but especially the caregiver whose quality of life also becomes completely debilitated by it.

Robertson's reply is offensive on so many levels.

• Firstly, how can anyone categorize a person with Alzheimer’s as dead? This is simply ludicrous and presupposes that all people with the disease are incapable of loving interaction. His answer displays an alarming ignorance.
• Secondly, when did marriage become all about what a person gets out of it? Where is the call to sacrifice and honor? Where is injunction to enter into the suffering of the hurting spouse? It seems that one having this sort of mindset looks for reasons to escape their vows rather than embrace them.
• Lastly, where is the concept that Christian marriage is a covenant between a man, a woman and their God? Robertson's answer comes across as a purely human response. He leaves God out of the situation and offers no spiritual advice at all.

When I think about this issue my heart wanders back to a room in a nursing home in a suburb south of Memphis. My dad shared a room with a man who had this sort of dementia. Before the disease the man had been a pastor. Each day that I was there I watched his wife come in and attend to his needs. My heart was lifted then and it is lifted now as I remember how much she loved her husband. This is a memory that greatly encourages me and shows me what love really is. Would that Robertson shared such a story with his caller.

What do you think of Robertson's reply to his caller. How would you have responded?