Divorce and Communion: the "traditionalists" aren't very traditional
SirPalomides
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
In this new article for Commonweal David Bentley Hart says pretty much everything I was thinking about the hardline Roman Catholic stance regarding divorce and remarriage, and gives a nice bit of historical background.
Comments
Was it an RC wedding?
If a valid marriage is indissoluble, then I think the Church should be extremely charitable in dealing with the realities of human relationships.
Although (not having read the article), I think it is interesting that the Chuch is much more willing to look into the mental state (formation of conscience) of people who were married years and years ago than it is to consider whether or not a longtime priest might not have been sufficiently mentally prepared to validly enter into Holy Orders - with all the repercussions that would have on the validity of the sacraments celebrated by that priest over the years (aside from baptisms and weddings, which in the RCC do not require a priest to valid - the two spouses to be being the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony).
Or are the requirements for the formation of conscience for the sacrament of matrimony different than those for Holy Orders, maybe because the bishop doing the ordaining, not someone being ordained is not the minister of the sacrament of Holy Orders? Am I getting that right?
@stonespring there's a fundamental problem with this. The whole doctrine of indissolubility is dependent on imposing a logical consistency on the facts irrespective of the human realities that underlie them. It isn't just based on choosing which of the gospel versions take precedence. It also depends on the argument,
- marriage is a sacrament.
- sacraments are irreversible.
- therefore marriage is indissoluble,
note, not 'should not be dissolved' but 'cannot be dissolved'.If one accepts that theology (I don't) then 'the Church' cannot be charitable because it can't accommodate 'the realities of human relationships'. They are irrelevant, merely a temptation to be generous when generosity cannot (not should not) be extended. Generosity would be denying 'the truth', deluding people into thinking that adultery isn't adultery.
This may sound harsh, but that's because it is harsh. Habitually, it punishes the victims, because the guilty don't care anyway.
Besides, logic would also say that if the lack of intention meant that the marriage didn't gel, then it didn't gel, was no marriage, whether either of the couple ever sought an annulment or not. Couples who married without the right intention, the potentially annullable, are living in sin. It is their moral duty to separate. I'm fairly nobody is saying that, which I regard as a strong persuasive argument against this whole approach.
The core of the problem is treating 'sacrament' as a sort of magic word, and claiming that if something is a sacrament, it cannot be broken, rather than shouldn't be.
Within it is something even more fundamental, which is that I think it betrays an insufficient appreciation of what Incarnation means.
That's an interesting parallel. If marriage can be annulled for lack of the right intention in either party, and ordination is also a sacrament, then I think I agree with your logic that it's inconsistent to treat ordination differently. The logic that would follow demonstrates the nonsense of indissolubility and annulment arguments.
The Sabbath Marriage was made for man, not man for the Sabbath marriage.
Isn't this argument just marginally dressed-up donatism?
If the former, absolutely not. I don't think the priest has to be perfect. The point I'm making is that if the priest, perfect or not, follows all the rubrics, then the couple is married, period. As such, per RCC teaching, the marriage cannot be dissolved (or declared never-a-marriage-in-the-first-place).
Going back to comparing it with Holy Orders, I’m not so sure. For an ordination to be valid, the person being ordained needs to be of sound mind and also understand what being ordained and being in Holy Orders means and assent to it and intend to do what a deacon/priest/bishop does, even if it is the ordaining bishop(s) that is/are the actual minister(s) of the sacrament. The same is true of the couple getting married, whether or not you believe that the couple or the priest is/are the minister(s) of the sacrament. Or do I not understand the Orthodox Church’s theology behind this?
In contrast, the "intent" and "realize" clauses are interpreted such in the Catholic Church that you can come back 25 years later, after having grandkids, and claim you didn't really understand what you were doing, or similar, and get your marriage annulled.
It seems to me (and I don't think I'm the only one) that this is a feint, a pious fiction, to allow what anybody else in the world would call a divorce.
I imagine that the position in North Carolina is much the same in effect as here - a marriage is only valid if performed by a person properly licensed to do so - and that means properly licensed under State (or Federal here) law.
Annulment = setting aside a marriage that has never been. There are two subcategories:-
Void marriage = there has been a wedding but it is completely invalid, e.g. because bigamous, party under age, conducted by a person not authorised to conduct marriages etc.
The couple were never married at all. In theory, no court process is necessary but in practice it is required so as to demonstrate that people who appear to be married, aren't.
Voidable marriage = the marriage would have been valid, but has never been fully completed. The 'usual' ground would be non-consummation, though there are a few others. There is no such thing as psychological non-consummation.
The legal process is necessary. The couple were married until one of them brought the marriage to an end, but after that, are treated as though they were never married.
All these are rare➔almost unknown. The CofE regards the parties thereafter as single and free to marry in church without further ado.
Divorce = the dissolution of marriage, on the ground of irretrievable breakdown, which has to be demonstrated from the presence of at least one of the five facts prescribed by law, e.g. adultery. All five relate to things that happen during the marriage, not before or at the time of the wedding. Divorce brings a marriage to an end. There is no nonsense about backdating it. They were married until the decree absolute. The bond has been terminated. Thereafter they are not married. The only other way a marriage can be terminated is death.
This is frequent. There is some ambivalence about this in the CofE, but the general position seems to be that, sad and regrettable though it might be, the Church recognises that they are no longer married. They are free to enter into a civil wedding, which will be valid. However, if they want to marry in church, they will have to jump through some extra hoops and may not succeed in getting through them.
Other jurisdictions might be different but is that any help?
Greatly. Thank you.
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Ministers perhaps aren't licensed by the state but it used to be commonplace for the minister to say, "And now by the power vested in me by the state of North Dakota, I pronounce you man and wife." (mutatis mutandis by state). Don't know if they still say that. But the minister is exercising the power of the state in some way, since s/he is marrying the couple both in the church sense and in the legal sense.
Not really.
Sacraments have both magic words and a physical thingie - water/oil/bread and wine/ doing a penace etc.
In marriage the vows are th magic words and what goes on (dear reader) behind closed doors is the physical thingie. Both are required. The clergy only get involved (mercifully) with the physical bit if it was absent and the marriage unconsummated (just like in English law.)
The indissolubly come straight from scripture which is pretty non-negotiable - let no man put asunder. The "trick" in annulments is to try to find some reason that God may not have joined together - lack of consent, never meant it to be for life, inability to form mature consent. I think they are trying to be humane in the face of pretty uncompromising scripture.
What you represent as the argument of the Catholic Church. The idea that a couple can "do it wrong". The idea that a marriage is such a difficult thing to attain that ordinary people can be happily married for a decade, then suddenly discover that they had this defect of intent, and so aren't actually married.
It's nonsense.
Sure - there are people who get "married" with no intention of having an actual marriage, but that doesn't describe most people who marry and then divorce, and it doesn't describe most people who get a Catholic annulment.
Pretty much all those people being granted annulments intended to get married. They intended, to the best of their understanding at the time, to get married as the Catholic church sees marriage. They intended to raise children together and live happily ever after, and then it didn't work out.
But to argue that there was some kind of defect in the understanding of the ministers of the sacrament (the couple) and so therefore there is no marriage is the same kind of Donatist logic that argues that a Mass said by a priest with a poor understanding of theology isn't actually a Mass at all.
Trying to find some excuse for saying that God 'may not have joined together' on that logic is indeed, as you say a "trick". The church would not be being 'humane'. It wouldn't have the capacity to be humane. That would be beyond its peculium. The church would be conniving at delusion and giving people the false encouragement that they can commit adultery with impunity.
This is why I think it's more honest and better to say that divorce is a bad, sad and unfortunate thing. The bond should not be broken, but where it has been, it has been. Adultery, cruelty, infidelity, failure of ḥesed, and the later concocting of fake defective intentions are what break marriages, not defective intentions at the time.
Incidentally, it isn't the vows that are the 'magic words'. It's the mutual exchange of 'I take'.
Because the couple are exercising their own priesthood. The priest is just a witness on behalf of the church. I believe the church wasnt involved at all for years. Not avoiding the question ... what a curious turn of phrase.
No. Every sacrament requires the right material, and the material in this case is two consenting, available unmarried people. Just as a priest can't baptise an unwilling adult.
I have a (unchecked) notion that in places ahere the state requires that couple are married in the town hall first before trotting off to a religious service the couple go for a blessing only and don't repeat their vows. Showing the minister the certificate is enough to show they have exchanged the vows.
As a good Protestant I believe there are only two sacraments: baptism and communion. As the article that kicked this thread off showed, marriage is essentially a civil action; the priest is there in a legal capacity to make sure everything is done correctly.
I have a (unchecked) notion that in places where the state requires that couple are married in the town hall first before trotting off to a religious service the couple go for a blessing only and don't repeat their vows. Showing the minister the certificate is enough to show they have exchanged the vows.[/quote]Not quite. See what I said yesterday about vows.
A civil wedding in England and Wales does not include vows. People can add them, but they aren't essential. I don't think they're allowed to mention God. All they have to do is declare before the registrar that they are free to marry and then each says I X take you Y to be my lawful wedded H or W.
I can't and am not going to speak for other countries or other ecclesiastical households. However, as they are already married, a CofE clergy-person cannot then perform a later wedding for them.
The marriage can, though, be blessed. There is a form of service. What is happening is that they are adding the commitments in a church wedding to a marriage that already exists. Because it has no legal effect, there's more flexibility than for a wedding. It includes the vows, but in the recommended form, the vicar puts the vows to them and they accept them. The rings are blessed but not exchanged because they are already married. They may not sign the register. They may not be given a marriage certificate.
@mousethief does the Orthodox church regard a couple who married before a Registrar or a non-Orthodox minister of religion as married or living in sin?
Oddly, neither. It's 1 am here and my brain is fuddled, but there's a word like "regularize" -- they need to bring their marriage into the church. There's a story about St. Innocent of Alaska, a priest (later a bishop) who came over from Russia. At one point his diocese was a zillion tiny islands flung out across the Aleutians, hundreds of miles. He basically went around in the summer months in a kayak and heard confessions and gave communion and baptised any infants born since he was by, and one of the things he did was regularize any "marriages" that happened when he was away. Which is to say, two people decided to set up housekeeping, and did. When he got to the island, which could be once every five years, he would officially marry them. But they were not "living in sin" or anything like that (not sure that's an Orthodox term at all). They just needed to make it official in the church.
I am told that in the olden days, one got married civilly and then when the couple took communion from the same chalice, they were thereby married in the church. There was no separate service of holy matrimony. That changed during the Turkish Yoke, when the Ottomans basically said, "We're not going to marry your people. See to it yourselves." So what had been civil suddenly came into the church.
Yup.
Full nuptial mass at the high altar of a cathedral with an archbishop presiding and a papal nuncio robed and in the sanctuary.
Doesn't have to be a priest to witness a RC wedding. Where there are no priests layfolk are deputed. Marriages of baptised members of other churches are considered sacramental by the RCC.
It's pretty murky and different jurisdictions have different guidelines. From what I've seen, usually marriages contracted by people who then convert are accepted- whether it was a civil marriage or conducted in a heterodox or non-Christian rite. However I recall reading somewhere that priests in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America have a policy of requiring all married converts to get an Orthodox wedding. This doesn't seem to be clearly spelled out in the guidelines but it has created obstacles for some people, especially if one of the spouses is non-Christian or has not had a recognized Trinitarian baptism, and is not willing to convert.
Since the man and wife are ministers of the sacrament there is no absolute need for a priest to be present and the situation which Mousethief describes when a priest could not be present would obtain also in similar situations in the RC church. The priest at a suitable time would conduct a convalidation ceremony.
Whether or not marriage is a sacrament, the words of Jesus about the indissolubility of marriage apply to all Christians surely. I understand about divorce and that it seems a sensible word to use, but I also understand that the RC Church does not want to use that word about what it considers to be a sacrament. It would rather try to explain it in a different way.
An annulment from the Catholic tribunals does not affect the civil status of the parties.
The children of any annulled marriage are not considered as born out of wedlock. The obligations of the parties to each other remain financially as the law of their land would make them.
Does it anywhere say in the canons or the catechism that love is required for marriage? This is largely a 20th century invention and it's hard to believe it goes back into the depths of history.
When a couple has been married 20 years and has 5 grandchildren, none of that is relevant. Trying to weasel out of a marriage at that point is bullshit.
And that way is dishonest. The RCC wants to eat its cake and have it. We will pretend that we are fulfilling the Dominical command that marriage is indissoluble, while allowing dissolutions of marriage but calling them something else. It's bulltookey.
Jesus in one of the Gospels also says, "except for adultery". So clearly the rule is not hard and fast.
Why is 'annulment' weaselling out of a marriage but perhaps not if one calls it 'divorce' ?
Annulments are not normally granted for adultery,as adultery is breaking the marriage bond,whereas 'annulment' is saying that there was no sacramental marriage bond.
BTW, many years ago I read somewhere that the Orthodox would accept divorce, under certain circumstances, because they recognised that the marriage itself could die. Is this correct? Certainly it's an idea I am drawn to.
After all a bereaved spouse may marry again after the physical death of the other spouse, so why not after the 'death' of the marriage ?
If I understand correctly Orthodox jurisdictions do not allow married and widowed priests to marry again, if their spouse dies. It is the same for married Catholic priests.
The only reason why one ecclesiastical household has developed such a complicated annulment jurisdiction is because it is determined that nothing ecclesiastical shall acknowledge that people do apostatise on marriages. It seems that insistence on that principle takes precedence over everything against and in the face of all evidence, experience and perception of what actually happens, what people do to each other.
It is 'weaselling' to evade this. It is also 'weaselling' to invent doctrines, practices and tribunals to endorse this.
It is dishonest to grout around peoples' states of mind perhaps 25 years ago and to pretend that this marriage has failed because for some spurious reason in the distant past but that one hasn't. It is likewise dishonest to allow some people to get out failed marriages for spurious reasons, but to forbid others, when in both cases it is the things like adultery, desertion, cruelty etc that broke it.
What's the difference between that and, ?
I have also heard that the Orthodox church have a view that a marriage can die and this should be approached as a pastoral matter. Which I think is a helpful theology for the church today. Does anyone know any more about it?
Orthodox priests may not marry, period. On the other hand, a married man may become a priest. The difference is power imbalance and obviating coercion, potential corruptions, etc. etc. If one wished to become a priest's wife, therefore (for whatever reason that may be; none occur to me), and one didn't already have a future priest selected, hanging out at the dispensary at the seminary and chatting up final-year seminarians is a great way to go about it.
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*ekonomia can be thought of as bending the rules for the good of the person(s) involved. A matter of practical compassion, with an eye toward the person(s)' salvation.