For those who don’t have acess to facebook I have copied and pasted the following. I have lots of apologetics books for Catholicism, but none touch upon divorce. Any help will be appreciated.
The Original State Is Lost
(This present series is addressing Jesus’ response to the Pharisees when they asked Him about the lawfulness of divorce. The Pharisees had presented the"bill of divorce" injunction of Moses from Deuteronomy 24; to which Jesus said that “from the beginning it was not so.”)
Much has changed since the beginning.
In the beginning both Ish and Ish’sha were made in the image and likeness of Elohim (Genesis 1:26-27; 5:2). As Elohim is good, pure, holy, just, righteous, merciful, and loving so too was the man and woman He made. So, in the beginning the relationship between Ish and Ish’sha was a reflection of all the attributes of their Creator; they, after all, were fashioned as a mere “for instance” of their Father.
Of all the attributes worthy of God, we must focus our attention on the subject of love: as this quality of God was found in mankind (in the beginning) and as it relates to man and woman within the union of marriage.
The purpose of the Ish/Ish’sha relationship is to demonstrate the Christ/church union. In this analogy the lesson centers itself on the concept of companionship.
Companionship realizes fulfillment by meeting the needs of some other person - by giving, not taking. In the beginning, before sin entered the garden and the subsequent fall (when both Ish and Ish’sha reflected the love of the Creator), love focused its force outward. Love requires an object - that is true - but godly love requires an object other than self.
The Lord God recognized the loneliness of Adam. Loneliness is the need to share one’s self with another. In this sense a companion is one who emits his or her own self toward and into another; namely, giving. In such giving one loves another in the other’s self.
However, the love of fallen man proceeds in the opposite direction. His love is not characterized by the act of giving, but taking.
At some point after pristine Ish and Ish’sha were placed in the dewy virginal garden paradise, the Spoiler of all things good turned the heart of Eve - who in turn turned the heart of Adam. This turning resulted in the spoiling of Ish and Ish’sha (along with their world) from the dawn like state of their beginning. It can truly be said that they and their habitat were born-again. This new birth was from purity to impurity, from holiness to unholiness, from manifesting God to manifesting self. Notice that the consequences of the fall inverted man’s interests: changed Ish’sha from being a giver to being a taker. She in turn convinced Ish to the same state. Thus, the fallen nature of man became egocentric. This egoism manifested itself in the need to fulfill one’s self with another; a gratification that results in an absorption of the essence of another into one’s self - in a word: taking.
Before the fall (i.e. in the beginning) love focused outward and shared - invested itself in another. Adam was able, even desired, to love Eve in herself. After the fall everything changed. Love refocused inward. No longer was love an export commodity of the soul; it became an item of acquisition to be prized and possessed. Neither Ish nor Ish’sha sought to love the other in the other’s self; both sought the loving of themselves in the presence of the other.
The consequences of the fall is that all the Father intended to demonstrate (in the beginning) by the union of man and woman was spoiled. So then, when Jesus (addressing divorce) declared, “but from the beginning it was not so,” it must be acknowledged that He is referencing the pre-fallen state of the man and woman. The beginning was the time and place absence of pain, betrayal, distrust, or hatred caused by the cancer of narcissism. In short, a place and time totally unlike Jesus’ place and time, and especially dissimilar to our own place and time. True, “From the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh…” (Mark 10:6-8); but, that was in the beginning.
Divorce was allowed, even instituted, by the Lawgiver (Moses) exactly because men and women do not live out their lives in the ideal conditions of the beginning. Instead, a fallen race, in its ongoing struggle to make its way through a fallen and cursed world, has appealed to a merciful God for relief and obtained it in the bill of divorcement (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
Tell a man whose wife repeatedly lays with others (male or female) that he may not sue for divorce because “from the beginning it was not so,” and he may well reply that, In the beginning there was no carnal lust to disrupt the intended union between one man and one woman. Tell a spouse whose companion brings false gods into the home (thereby making the home an abomination to the Lord our God) that he or she may not sue for a divorce, because “from the beginning it was not so” and that spouse will, no doubt, answered that, In the beginning mankind knew no other God but God. Tell the wife whose children are abused by an infidel husband that she may not sue for a divorce because “from the beginning it was not so,” and she will point out that in the beginning there was a pristine love between man and woman and children were not starved, beaten and raped.
Circumstances were different in the beginning!
Divorce is a loving God’s judicial response to the unloving acts His children commit against each another.
