I my previous post, commentator mdavid made the following comment;
SP, Charity, for example, does not permit divorce (at least frivolous ones)Now, I really didn't want to get into a theological discussion about the matter of marriage, but if you take the approach of charity as "a perfecting force" instead of an emotive type of benevolent act, several contentious theological issues can be approached from a fresh perspective. I'll just stick to marriage for the moment.
Ahh, the seeds of relativism are planted deep! Even SP's blog offers no relief...:-)
Firstly, without any reference to the text, if charity is a benevolent perfecting force, it follows that charity will always attempt to restore something that is broken or deficient. The operation of charity on a Christian marriage, in other words a union blessed by charity, will be to keep it together. If we take the view that God is Charity, i.e Deus Caritas Est, then there is no way in hell that God will approve of divorce, because His very nature is to perfect, not to destroy. It's not only that He does not permit divorce, he can't actually divorce anything because of His nature.
Now, I wasn't hoping to put up a defence of Catholic teaching, ruminations on Houellebecq's "problem of love" led me to this conclusion, but the fact of the matter is that charity can never permit divorce and the Catholic approach to divorce displays the correct understanding of the nature of God. God can't break any sanctified union. No reliance on scripture is necessary.
I was wrong. There is no way that divorce of any kind is permissible. Mea Culpa.
Still it is important to test my thinking. In my previous post, I mentioned to commentator Spandrell that the way that the intellect can gain an understanding of God's will for things is either through revelation or reason. As I get older I tend to put more trust on revelation than reason, and with regard to the subject of divorce, pretty much all of the New Testament confirms the prohibition of divorce.
Except Matthew 5:32;
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.Like everyone else who read this passage, I concentrated on the exceptive clause, "excepting for the cause of fornication", believing that this provided some "wiggle room" for divorce. But on further reflection, thanks to mdavid, now I think that I've read this passage all wrong.
Now the Greek word from which fornication is derived from is pornea. The term pornea seems to have a wider connotation of sexual immorality including adultery, whilst the specific biblical Greek word for adultery is moichatai. It's interesting that the text uses both words and seems to be an indication of intention in precision of meaning. This is important.
Now, if we analyse the text by first getting rid of the exception clause we get;
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife....maketh her to commit adultery and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.Here the text would imply a degree of agency on the part of the husband in any adultery by the wife by the use of the term maketh . It's this attribution of agency on the part of the husband with regard to the wife's sins that's interesting. Now, moral culpability is only applicable to creatures with agency and it would therefore imply that Jesus will hold the husband responsible (to an unknown degree) for any future adultery of the wife.
It would also seem to imply that the involuntarily divorced wife may not be full culpable for any future adultery but anyone else that sleeps with her is. Hence if she is kicked out of the house and shacks up with another man she still sins, but maybe not mortally. (This has significant practical implications for innocent divorce victims but I'm speculating here, and could be way out of whack.)
If substitute a more expansive phrasing of the word pornea into the exception clause we get;
excepting for the cause of her own sexual immorality( including her own adultery),We see that within the exceptive clause agency is attributed to the woman solely.
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of her own sexual sins, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.The way I interpret this is Jesus saying, if you divorce your wife, except with case of her freely chosen sexual sins, you will be partially responsible for her future adultery. In other words, this passage is not about justifying divorce but rather an exposition of how Jesus will assign blame in the case of a separation. If a woman commits adultery or some other freely chosen sexual sin, she will bear the guilt, otherwise the initiator of divorce will bear some of the responsibility.
And finally to put a nail in the coffin, so to speak;
and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.If the traditional non-Catholic interpretation of this passage was correct, in that divorce was permissible as a consequence of some type of sexual sin, then this last segment of the text would be contradictory. Since, if she was lawfully put away by right of the exception, it would be impossible to commit adultery with her if married to her.
7 comments:
Sometimes the car is totaled and not worth the trouble of fixing. Throwing good money after bad is not charity.
Robert Brockman
Sometimes the car is totaled and not worth the trouble of fixing
It's not the way He looks at it.
Aw, SP I was just ribbing you. Never had any doubt. It's only when I can't get a real argument going that I resort in drive-by snark.
No problem, I actually appreciated your comment because it forced me to think a bit more about the subject, especially about the the possibility of divorce.
Now, I don't think that divorce is possible, but what may be, is a form of "cohabitation in venial sin" amongst previously married persons only.
The whole idea that a woman is forced into adultery by the act of divorce implies that she is not fully culpable of any adultery she does in the future, and hence, there may be legitimate circumstances where she is not in mortal sin whilst being adulterous. This would imply that such a woman could still be part of Catholic Church life (i.e be able to receive communion). I suppose the concept that I'm trying to get across is, that by being the innocent victim of divorce, a person may gain the "privilege" of non-culpability in certain circumstances of adultery. Once again, I'm only speculating about the issue and the subject would involve more theological thought. But it does raise the possibility of providing some form of relief for those who have been abandoned in marriage.
I've meditated on this question of the woman's post-divorce culpability, and considered at least 2 nonexclusive explanations for it:
(a) In a preindustrial culture, women are totally dependent on men for survival... and there are no women's rights, alimony, etc. Ergo, if a preindustrial woman got divorced, as a matter of SURVIVAL she had to seek other male support -- either remarriage, or prostitution.
Since new-covenant marriage is indissoluble, she is committing adultery when she remarries or prostitutes herself. But since the alternative is probable starvation, she is less culpable than the husband who threw her out.
This logic would not apply in a modern western society, where women don't starve after divorce, and indeed where women often initate the divorces.
(b) Male sexuality is automatically "on" from puberty, and men instinctively know they're going to like sex long before they have it. But women are different -- for many women, sexuality has to be cultivated, and it usually blossoms best in a committed marriage. (Surveys indicate that many young women have only unsatisfying hookups while single and don't have orgasms til they had been married a while.)
So... a single woman often (there are exceptions) isn't nearly as sexually driven as a man. But when she marries, her enjoyment of sex is cultivated, and both her enjoyment and drive increase greatly.
If she THEN is divorced, she finds herself at the mercy of a highly tempting sexual marketplace, with a raging sex drive that is no longer being handled... which explains my observation that nearly all divorced women, go through a season of promiscuous acting-out, after the breakup, no matter how moral they were before.
They seemingly CAN'T HELP themselves. Once a woman's libido is awakened, it appears to be LESS controllable than a mans. Hence, a man who divorces his wife, "causeth her to commit adultery". And this reason DOES still apply in modern industrial culture.
This does not mean, necessarily, letting down your guard and pouring your heart out about how much you love your grandmother. The whole professional vs. personal ratio also has to be calculated with your topic and target audience in mind. You should not, however, blog about anything that you wouldn't write in a business email.
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