It is actually quite lousy information, especially the bit about divorce and contraception being permitted, because he seems to think that we take it lightly.
All I said was that you permit it. I didn’t say anything about lightly. You could think it’s the worst permissible thing in the world; but since you permit people to divorce and remarry, and treat those marriages as valid, that constitutes a different doctrine than in the Catholic Church, where remarriages are automatically considered invalid until someone proves that the first marriage was never validly contracted in the first place.
Second marriages in Orthodoxy (after the death of a spouse) are already considered to be pollutions, and those who contracted such marriages were put into penance (i.e., exclusion from the eucharist) for a year…A third marriage…was yet more unthinkable to the ancients who penanced those who contracted a third marriage with three (sometimes even as many as five) years of excommunication, and then only permitting them to commune three or four times a year after they had carried out their three year sentence of excommunication.
The Church Fathers were almost unanimous in forbidding divorced persons to remarry. St. Augustine, for example, said, “It is unlawful for one who leaves her husband, even when she has been put away, to be married to another, so long as her husband lives, no not even for the sake of bearing children. … [Nor] is the marriage bond loosed, save by the death of the husband or wife.” Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, 24:32. Their near unanimity in this is in accordance with the New Testament and with Catholic teaching. Jesus forbade divorced persons to remarry, under pain of mortal sin, when He said, “He who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery.” (Mark 10:11-12, Luke 16:18, most manuscripts of Matthew 19:9, many manuscripts of Matthew 5:32) St. Paul forbade divorced persons to remarry when he said, “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband – but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband. And that the husband should not divorce his wife.” 1 Cor. 7:11-12. The Orthodox permissions to remarry – after excommunication, and even though the first marriage is recognized as valid – constitutes a departure from these teachings.
See the canons of St. Basil
You mean where he said “A man who has put his wife away is not allowed to marry another, nor is a woman who has been divorced by her husband allowed to marry another man”? (Basil, Moralia, Rule 73, #2)
Or perhaps you mean Origen, who identified this practice and said multiple times that it is unusual and contrary to the Scriptures? (Origen, Corn. in Mt., 14, 23)
Or are you referring to that other great Eastern theologian, Chrysostom? He said multiple times that a woman who is put away from her husband can never remarry as long as he lives and no matter what she does. (Chrysostom, De lib. repudii, 3)
The idea that one can simply divorce twice and marry thrice on a whim is gravely mistaken
Nor is it what I said
for bishops may refuse to allow a divorce (by applying akriveia in the case) or for remarriage after the divorce. Remarriage (for any reason, including the death of a spouse) and divorce are both grave sins
St. Paul said that remarriage after the death of the spouse is no problem at all. Romans 7:2-3. But if you acknowledge that remarriage is a pollution and an adultery, then why do you permit those who are living in remarriage/adultery back to Communion?
Divorce is only made acceptable by an act of condescension from the bishop (performed through oikonomia), which basically allows for one who has divorced and remarried to be readmitted to the Eucharist, just as the digamist or trigamist (all of whom cut themselves off from the communion of the Church by their actions) is readmitted to communion after an appropriate period of penance.
Except the digamist and trigamist aren’t allowed to continue in their sinful relationships, and the remarry-er is.
According to Jesus, a person who remarries is living in adultery.
According to the Orthodox, a person who remarries is fine, as long as he goes through a ceremony which declares that his previous marriage is no longer in place. See the difference?
Similarly, the point on contraception is deceptive, because we in Orthodoxy have not denied the patristic understanding that sexual intercourse is for the purpose of procreation (except for a few modernists, but then Roman Catholic modernists do the same).
I’m glad to hear that. I hope that means that you extend that to mean that artificial contraception is impermissible. Everything I’ve seen says that the Orthodox permit couples to decide whether they want to use it or not, and it’s not a problem if they decide to. Perhaps this leads to a deeper problem: there seems to be no way to decide which Orthodox theologians are right without relying on your own judgment. How do you know the modernists are wrong? Because you interpret Tradition differently than they do? We know our modernists are wrong (without relying on private judgment) because the Magisterium has declared them wrong. For you guys, it seems like the modernist theologians have just as much credibility as the more traditional ones.
