Why Catholics are Right: The thorny question of divorce and remarriage?

The Catholic Church teaches that a marriage, being a lifelong covenant, can end only with the death of one or both parties. Divorce therefore, according to the Catholic Church, is not just wrong but impossible. And, consequently, remarriage following a “divorce” is adultery. This is all very logical but pastorally untenable, as it results in people being hopelessly entangled in abusive, damaging, intolerable relationships. Hard to imagine that this is what Jesus had in mind when he condemned the casual attitude to divorce that the Pharisees characterized as divorcing one’s wife “for any and every reason”. (Matt 19:3)

What is a marriage?

Certainly marriage is a covenant between two people to behave in certain ways toward one another for as long as they both live. But a covenant is, by definition, a set of terms and conditions, so breakability is the very essence of covenant. Failing to keep the terms and conditions of a covenant damages it, and may eventually destroy it. Marriage is the classic “takes two to tango” situation. If one or both partners should become uncooperative, stumble or even fall, they may well sort themselves out and continue to dance. But if cooperation cannot be restored, or if a partner storms off the dance floor and refuses to return, the dance is over. It is cruel and absurd to require that the remaining partner continue to dance alone until the other one dies.

What is a divorce, and is it wrong?

Divorce is the breaking of the covenant of marriage and, as such, it is always wrong. But we need to note an important distinction here that is usually ignored; divorce and a certificate of divorce are very different things.

Divorce is a process generally composed of the accumulation of countless occasions when a husband and/or wife fail to keep their commitment to love, honour and cherish each other. In this sense virtually all married couples are guilty, to some degree, of the sin of divorce. But if a divorce is allowed to grow indefinitely it sometimes becomes a tangle of hurt and alienation that the parties are unable or unwilling to resolve. At this point most churches and courts have, for centuries, allowed for the issuing of a certificate of divorce. But the certificate is only a declaration that a divorce has taken place. It does not approve of the divorce, but requires a husband and wife who can’t or won’t be reconciled, to stop damaging one another, sort things out as fairly as possible, and get on with their lives. In this sense it is rather like a death certificate which concedes that the process of dying is complete and irreversible, and that those who survive are free to begin moving on. Death and divorce are usually sad, often tragic, and sometimes deeply evil, but death certificates and divorce certificates, when appropriate, are good and necessary things.

How do we deal with sin of divorce?

There are few, if any, who can go through the painful process of marriage breakdown guilt free, so there is virtually always sin on both sides in any divorce. But forgiveness, cleansing, and life beyond sin are central elements of the good news (gospel). Someone who steals is a thief, but if they will acknowledge what they’ve done, make restitution as far as possible, and stop thieving, they need not be a thief forever. The same it true of lying and even murder. Acknowledgement (confession), restitution (penance) and ceasing to lie or murder (repentance) can, over time, deliver the sinner from the power of the sin. Thus one who used to steal may no longer be a thief; one who lied, no longer a liar; one who murdered, no longer be a murderer.

Is a divorced person free to remarry?

In a sense I agree with the Catholic Church that divorced people are not free to remarry. I differ, however, in that I believe a divorced person can move beyond devorce to singleness at which point they are free.

Surely what is true of other sin must also be true of divorce, keeping in mind that by divorce we mean the breaking of the marriage vow, not the securing of a certificate. If a divorcee can acknowledge whatever sinful part they had in the breakdown of the marriage, forgive and receive forgiveness, make whatever restitution is possible, and turn from those things that led to the marriage breakdown, surely they can put divorce behind them. Which is to say, they need not be defined as a divorced person forever. At this point, I would say, they are free to form a new marriage and the community is free to support them in so doing.

Admittedly, even this sounds pretty rough to some, but every community must take marriage very seriously as it is the wellspring of community. I would suggest that the only people who are ever really free to marry are those who are truly single, and becoming single, regardless how a marriage has ended, is a process that takes time. Even when a spouse dies the surviving partner needs to allow time for the process of becoming single again before they are truly free to remarry.

Why Catholics are Right: The indissolubility of marriage / One Way Out

One day, very early in my ministry, I was approached by a Pentecostal couple I knew well and asked if I would be willing to marry them. When I asked why they were not planning to be married in their own church they explained that each had had a brief marriage many years previously. Both had, since that time, been committed Pentecostal Christians, raised families as single parents, and lived exemplary Christian lives, but their spouses, whom they had not seen for more that two decades, were still living, so they remained married as far as their church was concerned. – The indissolubility of marriage is by no means an exclusively Catholic doctrine. – As we talked the woman remarked wryly, “If I had murdered my husband I’d be out of prison now and free to remarry.” A sobering thought.

At this point I realized two things that remained with me throughout my ministry. First, pastorally speaking, this is an intolerable situation. Even if we view divorce as sinful, people need to be able to find forgiveness and move on with their lives as they do with any other sin. And second, this is the logical result of the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage.

Michael Coren, of course, defends this doctrine, as he does all things Catholic. And he builds an interesting, traditional case right from Scripture. But pastoral theology needs to influence biblical theology from time to time. And if Coren and our Catholic brothers and sisters could set aside their “infallible” conclusion in this matter, they and their Church might benefit from a little Evangelical pastoral theology.

Jesus addresses the matter of divorce in three main passages of scripture: Matt 5:31-32; Matt 19:3-9; Mark 10:2-9. From these passages it is quite possible to maintain that a marriage can be ended only by the death of one or both partners, but this is not a necessary conclusion. For the sake of brevity we’ll consider just one of the passages.

Matthew 19:3-9 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"

"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

The question being raised here is not our abstract question of the permanence of marriage but a concrete and controversial teaching of some Rabbis in Jesus’ day that allowed a man to divorce his wife – never a woman her husband— on any pretext whatever, as long as he returned the dowry to her family. This reduced marriage to a financial bargain among men and, as we might expect, Jesus condemns this interpretation of scripture. He insists that from the beginning God intended that marriage be a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, that divorce is a product of human sinfulness (hard-heartedness), and that to leave a faithful wife and take another is adultery, pure and simple.

Jesus is not saying, as the Catholic Church interprets him, that this is adultery because divorce doesn’t really end the marriage. He is making the simpler and more obvious point that the sin of adultery can’t be finessed by legal posturing and manipulation. Adultery is the sin of unfaithfulness to one’s marriage vow and no legal loopholes can make it okay.

Marriage is a life covenant, sealed by a vow that pledges each partner to the other until death. Its purpose is to provide a foundation for a secure home, but if we say that it can only be ended by death we make it a prison. An abandoned or abused spouse has no recourse but to remain in abandonment or abuse, or to be forced into a life of celibacy. This may not seem terribly cruel to a childless priest, bishop or pope who has chosen a life of celibacy, but to most Christian pastors it has always seemed an unacceptable conclusion. And it leads, within the Catholic Church, to the scandal of annulment, i.e., thousands of couples seeking to prove that, for some reason, their failed marriage was never valid in the first place. There are, of course, forced and fraudulent marriages that should be annulled, but to hold out annulment as a faint hope clause is just more legal posturing and manipulation of the sort that Jesus condemned.

Sorry Michael, this is an instance where the Catholics are wrong.

Next: How does an Evangelical pastor (yours truly)

handle the thorny question of divorce?

Why Catholics are Right: The Purpose of Marriage

That I’m addressing this topic on Valentine’s Day is entirely coincidental, regardless what my analyst says.

The Catholic Church has a view of marriage that is, in two principle ways, different from that of Evangelical and most Protestant churches. The first is the purpose of marriage; the second, its indissolubility.

According to Catholic teaching, the principal reason for the institution of marriage is procreation (the begetting and raising of children), and a marriage is consummated (completed) by the first act of sexual intercourse following the ceremony. It follows from this, according to Michael Coren, that every act of sexual intercourse within a marriage must be, in principle at least, open to the conception of a child. This is entirely in keeping with traditional Catholic teaching and, of course, results in the prohibition of all artificial means of birth control. "Natural” methods of birth control such as the Calendar Rhythm and Basal Body Temperature are accommodated within this way of thinking, though, since they are clearly attempts to preclude conception, it has never been clear to me why this is so.

There is, admittedly, a certain logic at work here that is characteristic of a good deal of Catholic moral teaching, and I am not one to denigrate logic. Frail beings that we are, logic, the certainer the better, is often the only thing that keeps us from running off the moral rails in a fit of unbridled self-indulgence. But, in this case, it’s the starting point that needs to be examined. Few would question the centrality of procreation to the institution of marriage, but it is not at all clear that it is the central consideration. It’s interesting to note that the biblical passage that introduces marriage makes no mention of procreation at all. The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." (Genesis 2:18) Not to say that children and family are unimportant, but merely that, biblically speaking, companionship is the principal reason for the institution. A childless marriage is every bit as valid as one with a dozen children; the same, however, cannot be said of a loveless marriage.

Having said this, I would add that I am supportive of the Catholic emphasis on the importance of children and family, and believe contraception, though it can be a great blessing, also affords us an opportunity to be selfish, thoughtless, and place far too little priority on children. But it also gives us an opportunity to be thoughtful, and this is where infallible edicts from above are deeply problematic.

It is very difficult to have a thoughtful discussion about a question that has already been settled and sealed without your input. In such a situation the tendency is to blindly do as one is told, or blindly refuse to do so. Thus, the adamant stance of the Catholic Church on the matter of birth control has actually fostered a good deal of thoughtlessness. For example, I know of several women who have been “on the pill” for decades because their otherwise thoughtful and loving husbands won’t, or perhaps can’t think through the need to deal with the matter. This is a magnitude of mindlessness that begs for analysis.

Michael Coren is quite frank about the fact that millions of Roman Catholics are practicing birth control in outright defiance of Church teaching. Some of these people, of course, have left the Church, but many continue to attend, participate, and receive communion, though they technically have no right to do so. This is a serious pastoral problem within the church, and should give rise to some serious soul-searching among the magisterium, but for two reasons it does not. Firstly, the idea that the Church’s teaching is infallible makes it very difficult to back up and consider a new course. And, secondly, the magisterium (Pope and Bishops) is composed exclusively of people who are, presumably, celibate.

I once asked a Catholic friend how he could justify practicing birth control in spite of the clear Catholic teaching against it. His response was immediate and concise. “If you don’t play-a de game, you don’t make-a de rules.” It’s cute and clever, and perhaps the best answer available in his situation, but it’s not the real answer. The real answer is one that, as a good Catholic, he could not give. On this one the Church just has it wrong.

Next: The indissolubility of marriage, or

One Way Out.

Why Catholics Are Right: What to do with Mary?

The Roman Catholic Church embraces a number of doctrines that non-Catholic churches reject, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the focus of several:

The immaculate conception, which is often confused with the doctrine of the Virgin Birth (that Jesus was conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit, without any human father), is central. While virtually all Christian Churches believe in the Virgin Birth, the Catholic Church alone proclaims the Immaculate Conception.

This doctrine teaches that when Mary was conceived in her mother, by the normal process of conception, she was preserved from any stain of original sin. Coren defends this doctrine with the traditional defence that the mother of God must be absolutely pure, since it is absurd to imagine that God would enter the world through a soiled vessel. Considering, however, that he entered a sinful world, was laid in a manger, ate with sinners, touched lepers, and died on a cross between two thieves, it seems a bit presumptuous to imagine that we have any idea what’s too absurd for God to do. But again, the consequences of the doctrine, more than the doctrine itself, are the real concern.

When they set Mary apart from all other human beings at conception, the Catholic Church starts down a road that leads to a veneration of Mary that most non-Catholics would regard as excessive. As part of her preservation from sin, Mary is imagined to have lived a sinless life. And she has, thus, become a super-saint: the “Queen of Angels and Saints”, the “Mother of the Church”, the “Mediatrix (feminine form of mediator) of all Graces”.

When, in the 1960s, Mary was officially declared to be “The Mother of the Church”, I pointed out to one of the Catholic priests who taught me in high school that, since the Church is the Bride of Christ, this was a potentially embarrassing situation. He was not amused, but I was not, as he insisted, just trying to be funny. I was, in my adolescent way, pointing out that we can get carried away with veneration. And, when we do, the ridiculous is apt to run over the sublime.

The perpetual virginity of Mary (that Mary was not only a virgin when Jesus was born, but remained one all her life), Coren insists, goes back to ancient, non-biblical tradition. According to this tradition, Mary had taken a vow of celibacy, and Joseph, who was a widower with children, took on the task of caring for her and Jesus, but was never her husband in the full sense. This explains why Joseph is often depicted as an old man in Catholic art. It also, according to Coren, explains the biblical references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Mark 3:31, 6:3; John 2:12 ) and why Jesus, as he was dying, commended her to the care of John (John 19:26-27), though what had become of her supposed stepchildren is not explained.

Non-Catholics dismiss this doctrine as unbiblical and superfluous, but the objection goes deeper than that. In the Bible, virginity is valued prior to marriage, and celibacy outside of marriage, but neither are valued in and of themselves, and sex within marriage is celebrated. But, in the Catholic Church, virginity and celibacy are given preferential status, resulting in the requirement of celibacy for priests and nuns. This results in sexual intercourse being seen as, though not sinful per se, spiritually compromised. This attitude, I believe, has led to an unhealthy, and unbiblical focus on sex in Catholic teaching.

The practice of praying to saints, including Mary of course, Coren defends as an extension of the universal Christian practice of intercessory prayer. All Christians ask others to pray for them, why not those who have died and are, therefore, closer to God than anyone on earth? This is a helpful explanation of the Catholic practice in that it puts it in a context that non-Catholics can understand, and clarifies that “praying to saints” is not worship. I have often used this explanation myself when discussing Catholic practices with my Baptist friends, but I also point out that non-Catholics follow a solid biblical principle of “not talking to dead people”. We discourage praying to saints, not because it’s idolatry, but because it’s a distraction. God, through Christ, is the focus of our prayers, though I wouldn’t make too much of the matter.

Most Evangelical pastors I know would readily admit that we have tended to ignore Mary. This has been a reaction to the Catholic Church and what we would perceive as an unhealthy focus on her. But it’s one thing to admit a problem, and another thing to fix it. What to do with Mary? Indeed.

Next: Marriage and Life

Why Catholics Are Right: The Question of Authority

One of the central doctrines of the Reformation is “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture Alone). It means that only the Bible, not any pope, bishop, priest, preacher or teacher, is given final authority. Accordingly, the Church has authority to teach only what is taught in Scripture, or is a strict and simple logical deduction from what is taught in Scripture. The Catholic Church does accept the authority of Scripture, but not Scripture alone. It believes Church tradition, as mediated through the Magisterium (the teaching office of the Bishops and Pope) is also authoritative.

Coren’s argument is primarily the traditional one. The Church (the Old Testament people of God, and the Catholic Church of the New Testament) existed before the Bible and, in fact, it was through this Church that the Bible came into being. Therefore, it makes no sense to place the authority of the Bible above that of the church. Interesting point, both logical and defensible. He also points out that non-Catholics are divided into a multitude of competing denominations, while the Catholic Church has remained united. This point is somewhat less convincing as he also complains throughout the book about the many “so-called Catholic” factions and individuals who cause division by promoting heretical teaching within the church. Unity, for all of us, is a transient thing, a moving target, an ethereal goal.

Everyone agrees, of course that the Bible is, in a sense, a product of the Church, and is best understood within the Church community. But the fact is, the church is not, and, arguably, has never been a monolithic institution with a unified magisterium and one body of tradition. There may certainly be truths in extra-biblical Church tradition, but for about seventeen centuries the Bible has been the only body of teaching we all agree on, and even there the Catholic Church embraces several books as scripture that others reject. Authority, like unity, is a tricky thing, has always been, and will surely continue to be.

As a result of this division concerning authority, we find the Catholic Church embraces several doctrines and practices that non-Catholic churches reject. Most non-Catholic Christians would see these as peripheral matters, but they do constitute a series of stumbling-blocks that make working together more like running a three legged race than competing as a pairs figure-skating team. A few such doctrines are listed below:

Transubstantiation – This is the belief that, at the words of consecration, the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, though all of the appearances of bread and wine remain. Protestants generally regard the bread and wine of Communion as metaphorically or symbolically the body and blood of Christ. One might be forgiven for not appreciating the significance of the theological distinction, but it’s the practical consequences that are problematic.

It is commonly and erroneously alleged that Catholics worship saints and statues; they do not. But the bread of Communion has become an object of worship in the Catholic Church. It is invested with power, paraded in the streets, and when Catholics genuflect (go down on one knee) as they move about the church sanctuary, it is done in worship of Christ in the bread on the altar. Protestants generally consider these pagan and offensive practices.

This doctrine also results in a very practical division of the Church. Those who do not accept the doctrine of transubstantiation are not welcome to receive Communion in the Catholic Church, and Communion services conducted by pastors who are not Catholic priests are considered empty gestures as compared the Catholic real thing. None of this is done to be mean. It’s just a consequence of disagreement.

The infallibility of the Pope – This is not, as some have imagined, that the Pope is perfect and never makes mistakes. The Catholic Church has always acknowledged that there have been bad Popes who made awful mistakes, indeed, who sinned terribly. What Papal Infallibility means is that, when he speaks ex cathedra (in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians), declaring that a doctrine on faith or morals is to be believed by the whole Church, God will preserve him from error.

Coren argues that, though it was infallibly proclaimed as late as 1870, it has been believed from at least the third century. He cites considerable evidence for this, but all it really indicates is that bad ideas have been around forever.

Besides being unbiblical, infallibility, whether of popes, preachers, teachers, or the bible itself, is nothing but a problem. It never really settles a disagreement, except for those who are lazy or have never discovered the joy of arguing. And, by making dissent on a particular matter an offence, it vilifies dissenters, and kills what otherwise might be a very constructive discussion. And, besides all this, it makes it virtually impossible to admit a mistake. It’s a bit like driving a car with no reverse gear. Cars are all about moving forward of course, but sometimes even that requires a little backing up.

Next: a few other distinctively Catholic doctrines