Letter Eighteen:
Divorce and Annulment
My Dear Family,
We find ourselves returning to Matthew 19 for Jesus’ teaching on divorce and re-marriage. The men of His generation were looking for loopholes. Jesus essentially tells them that there are no loopholes to look for. What is bound by a covenantal oath before God and His Church, and consummated by the marital act, becoming one flesh, is sacramental and inviolable. As such, married couples must not look for a way out of a difficult marriage, but how to perfect themselves in it, working through the issues. By keeping their oath, that oath will keep them faithful on their quest to perfection.
Jesus mentions the sin of “adultery.” Adultery is an unholy mixture, as the word suggests, and is a crime against nature, where everything is to follow the inherent rules established at creation. It is universal that adultery is repugnant and wrong. Yet, by degrading the word “love” to raw “passion” we have, as a culture, forgiven ourselves of this sin. For many, the worst thing is to be “trapped” in a marriage where the flames of physical passion have burned low, and in our movies, we cheer on those strange “lovers” who ignite the passions. This type of passion is not love, but a terrible form of domination of the other for our own gratification, resulting from the Fall. What is more, adultery is betrayal, a very deadly sin indeed.
Adultery is a deadly enough sin to break the bonds of marriage, but not essentially so. If the marriage has true integrity, it can survive, and repentance and reconciliation can bring restoration which is always the hope. If the union had little to no integrity, then the church has the authority to discern that it was not, in fact, a marriage at all, and to grant a declaration of nullity. However, children of this union are never considered by the Church “illegitimate.”
There are other legitimate reasons for the Church to nullify a union, and we go into this in our “Hungry for More” section for this week. It should be noted that divorce is primarily a civil concept, not a theological concept. The point is that we must think in terms of perfection as discussed in “Our Lofty Call in Life.” A marriage must work through the dry times, just as each one of us must work through our arid times with God. It is by working through these arid times that our bonds deepen over the years, where marriage is based on virtue, not ephemeral feelings, and our salvation is secured by the grace provided for in this sacrament.
Yours in Christ,
Father John Worgul
Takeaway
Discussion Questions
- Share a time when you were in a difficult situation that you could not walk away from but had to work your way through. How did you handle it?
- Share a time when you experienced dryness in your relationship with God. What did you do about it?
- Other than your spouse, is there a person in your life that you would not give up on?