Jim Blackburn - 20 Answers- Divorce & Remarriage

20 Answers

Divorce & Remarriage

By Jim Blackburn

20 Answers: Divorce & Remarriage

Jim Blackburn

2016 Catholic Answers

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Introduction

God instituted marriage at the creation of humanity so that a husband and a wife may bond together in a lifelong covenant and produce a family. Essential to this most fundamental human relationship are the spouses union with one another and the indissolubility of their bond, as well as their relationships ordering to both the good of each other and the procreation of children.

Properly understood, Christian marriage emulates the relationship between Christ and his Church. Each relationship is based on a certain indissoluble oneness; spouses are to love each other as Christ loves the Church, helping each other to be holy for the sake of ultimate union with Christ in heaven. Additionally, marriages procreative aspect images the divine life-giving love that Christ has for the Church.

Unfortunately, corruption has plagued marriage since ancient times. Today more than ever, many factors impede a true marriage from coming into existence, and not a few faithful live in invalid marriages. These include both first marriages and remarriages after civil divorces. Until an invalid marriage is convalidated, spouses often must deal with difficult realities such as the inability to receive absolution in confession or to participate in Holy Communion.

Fortunately, the Church has procedures in place to assist couples in making their marriages valid, if possible. First marriages are often convalidated through quite simple procedures, but subsequent marriages usually require lengthier processes involving annulments. The annulment process investigates and officially rules on whether a valid marriage exists. Pope Francis recently reformed the process to make it more streamlined and readily accessible to the faithful. Happily, in some cases, an annulment can clear the way for a remarried person to elevate his new relationship to that of a true Christian marriage.

But not every remarriage can or should be recognized as a true marriage. Indeed, many first marriages ending in civil divorce are still actually valid, indissoluble marriages. In such cases, convalidation of subsequent marriages is simply impossible. Other relationships that attempt to mimic marriagesuch as same-sex marriagesare actually quite offensive to the institution of marriage itself and must always be avoided. Knowing about such issues in advance can help to guard against the error of entering into them in the first place.

To this end, Christians must always approach marriage and the family as an image of Christ and the Churchas the domestic Church. It is my hope that this booklet will help equip Catholics and other Christians to validly enter into authentic marriages that are divorce-proof for life. By approaching marriage and the family as the image of Christ and the Church, may couples grow to appreciate and embrace the beautiful reality that their relationships truly are.

1. What is marriage?

Catholic teaching on marriage may be best understood by tracing its history through the Bible, as the theme of marriage is quite prevalent throughout Scripture. In fact, the first chapter of Genesis and the final chapter of Revelation bookend Scripture with marriage imagery. The Catechism describes the Bibles characterizations of marriage in this way: Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its mystery, its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin, and its renewal in the Lord in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church (1602).

When God created humanity he immediately instituted marriage. This is evidenced in the first two chapters of the Bible: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.... Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh (Gen. 1:27; 2:24). That man is created male and female so that husband and wife may bond intimately with each other is abundantly evident here. And seemingly implied in the phrase they become one flesh is also the fact that God originally intended marriage to be a lifelong relationship. Husband and wife enter a covenantal relationship that serves to make a new family.

From the beginning God intended marriage to be a lifelong commitment, as his displeasure with divorce makes clear: For I hate divorce, says the Lord the God of Israel (Mal. 2:16). Even so, corruptions infiltrated the institution of marriage even in ancient Israel. Such offenses as polygamy and divorce crept in among the chosen people. Due to Israels difficulty in keeping Gods law, the Mosaic Law made concessions for divorce and remarriage (cf. Deut. 24:1-4). Jesus later lamented this concessionsI gave them statutes that were not good (Ezek. 20:25)and ultimately corrected them:

Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce ones wife for any cause? He answered, Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away? He said to them, For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so (Matt. 19:38; cf. Mark 10:29; Luke 16:18).

For his followers, Jesus put things back the way they originally were supposed to be. The Catechism explains, Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning... The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it (1614). St. Paul recognized this in his teachings as well (cf. Rom. 7:23). The indissolubility of marriage was part of Jesus fulfillment (i.e., perfection) of the Old Law, of which he said, Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17).

But Jesus went even further by enlivening marriage between the baptized with sacramental graces, making it supernaturally life-giving for the spouses themselves. In essence, Christian marriage emulates the relationship between Christ and his Church. This is probably most evident in Pauls letter to the Ephesians, where he writes,

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body (5:2530).Next page