Of course you wouldn’t have married an abuser if you’d known. On the other hand (not that I’m justifying abuse by any means) chances are he probably wouldn’t have married you either if he thought he’d turn INTO an abuser during the marriage - as you said it often comes later. So what makes you think abusers are necessarily any more likely to predict the abuse before marriage than victims?
**I never said anything about the abuser predicting the abuse (or anyone for that matter). Marrying an abuser is like marrying someone with a mental illness that they are hiding from you–you don’t know about it, but you never would have entered into marriage with that knowledge. Often the abusive behaviors are there, but subtle. If one doesn’t know the signs to look for, they don’t have the knowledge they need to make a valid comittment to that person
**
Of course abuse is hard and scary - and so much more. And that’s why you’re more than entitled to physical separation and even legal divorce in the event of abuse. You’re entitled to do everything you can to protect yourself and remove yourself from the abusive situation.
Obviously. This has been stated to death, and as far as I can tell, no one this thread is disputing you here!
Remember your definition of a sacrament. It is a special interaction between God and man, an occasion of especially generous gift of God’s grace. And once God’s grace is given He won’t take it back. It stays with you, although it may be more or less active depending on your disposition.
And some sacraments are permanent in nature. He doesn’t, for example, ‘take back’ your baptism or confirmation if you turn out to be wicked - not even if you leave the Church entirely and supposedly get ‘baptised’ or ‘confirmed’ again in another denomination.
Similarly with Holy Orders, no matter how wicked the priest may turn out to be, once ordained he is ‘a priest forever in the order of Melchisedeck’ as scripture says. Priests can be laicised - forbidden their priestly duties - and even permitted to marry (since it’s not actually an essential part of the sacrament for a priest to BE unmarried, merely a discipline which can be dispensed with) but nothing removes the mark on their souls of their ordination.
It’s the nature of the sacrament of marriage to be similar, it leaves a mark upon the spouses that is not dissolved except by death. That mark being the mark of God having joined husband and wife for life.
Are you forgetting that spouses vow to GOD ALMIGHTY to forsake all others until death do them part? Since when do our sincere and solemn vows to God mean nothing? Since when is it EVER ok to go back on a vow sworn, as long as it is done with full understanding and intent, in His very presence in Church? If you both understood and sincerely meant that vow to God, that’s it. There’s no going back on it for either of you while you both live. No remarriage, no shacking up with a new partner.
That’s why, even though you’re certainly entitled to legal and physical separation in the event of abuse, the sacramental bond cannot, if validly contracted, be dissolved.
Riiiiight…I know what the sacrament of marriage is! We’re not talking about conditions that arise after the start of the marriage. so my argument is that abusive tendencies that the spouse was unaware of would preclude them having validly entered into the marriage. It isn’t the same as a condition that arises later, it is a prexisting condition that isn’t blatantly obvious often until several years into the marriage. In fact, one of the characteristics of abusers is that they rush their spouses into a fast marriage. IMO, many of the characterstics of an abusive relationship are such that the victim has been so manipulated that they did not enter into marriage validly.
