Marrying someone who is divorced

[phil19034]

In doing some research on this issue, I’ve come to an interesting theory/understanding. The original Greek “pornea” literally translates to fornication, which of course means sex between two unmarried people. So how can it be that the only exception allowing divorce is fornication? Two married people cannot fornicate by definition. And therein lies the Catholic (and Jesus’s) teaching. If for whatever invalidating reason the married couple isn’t actually married, then they are fornicating. So because the marriage is invalid or unlawful, they can divorce, because technically it’s not even really a divorce. I wonder if this is God’s way of allowing invalidating reasons to change - by authority of the Church - as society changes since this leaves it fairly open-ended (i.e. the bible does not define what invalidates a marriage).

Porneia doesn’t literally mean fornication (at least in the Biblical sense), it really means unlawful or illicit sexual relations. Incest is be an example of porneia. Another example would be marrying someone who is already married.

Please check out the following articles:

catholic.com/quickquestions/if-jesus-made-an-exception-for-divorce-in-cases-of-adultery-why-doesnt-the-church
catholic.com/quickquestions/does-jesus-leave-a-loophole-for-divorce-in-matthew-199
catholic.com/magazine/articles/did-jesus-allow-divorce
catholic.com/magazine/articles/god-made-it-we-can%E2%80%99t-change-it

I hope these help, God Bless.

 

[Wampa]

Merlin14, 1ke has been posting here frequently for 10 years. I did not find 1ke’s comments to be rude or hateful at all, nor did the OP apparently. Direct, sure, but sometimes that is needed when people are doubting and they don’t need to be

Since I see that you are brand new and this is your first post, it’s probably best to hold back a bit on criticizing regulars and get the feel for CAF. No doubt there are folks to avoid here (as 1ke said, that’s what the ignore feature is for), but 1ke is not one of them IMO.

Welcome to the site. Get settled in and I think you’ll get a better sense of things here

 

[madtom]

Porneia doesn’t literally mean fornication (at least in the Biblical sense), it really means unlawful or illicit sexual relations. Incest is be an example of porneia. Another example would be marrying someone who is already married.

This is all incredibly interesting. I never gave varying biblical translations much thought before because I (wrongly) assumed all translations essentially tell us the same thing, just with different sentence structures or more modern usage. I have been doing a lot of research the last few days and have found many different translations for porneia, including unchastity or unlawful as you noted, which seems to be what the Catholic Church has settled on. But in the original Latin vulgate, which arguably can be viewed as the most accurate translation due to being closest (in time and understanding) to the original Greek, “porneia” was translated to “fornicationem.”

Of course, we really don’t know for sure what the original Greek was intended to mean, but the benefit of Latin is that it is a “dead” language so there haven’t been changes to word meanings over the last 1500 years. But still, we can’t be sure. I suppose this is an argument for why we need the Catholic Church as a guide, and why we can’t rely on Scripture alone.

This leads me to another question, and this is probably better for another thread, but becasue we can’t really be sure, how will God ultimately judge us? If we follow Church teaching and what we believe to be the true meaning of scripture, but it turns out we were wrong, will God fault us or will he understand that we did our best based on our understanding? And I mean this for the bible as a whole, not just this one passage or issue.

 

[1ke]

This leads me to another question, and this is probably better for another thread, but becasue we can’t really be sure, how will God ultimately judge us? If we follow Church teaching and what we believe to be the true meaning of scripture, but it turns out we were wrong, will God fault us or will he understand that we did our best based on our understanding? And I mean this for the bible as a whole, not just this one passage or issue.

The Church is our sure guide, we can have trust in the Church because the Church is given authority by Christ and the charism of infallibility.

Do you have a protestant background perhaps? I see some glimmers of “sola scriptura” in your thought process, just wondering if perhaps you came into the Church from a protestant background or maybe have a lot of protestant friends? (note before anyone jumps on me: I grew up protestant).

And, of course, God judges our hearts and our intention to please him. I am afraid your OCD is kicking in here. Please try not to have anxiety over this. If you continue to obsess over this, it will be bad for you spiritually and you should see your pastor for some in-person counseling if anxiety persists.

 

[madtom]

Do you have a protestant background perhaps? I see some glimmers of “sola scriptura” in your thought process, just wondering if perhaps you came into the Church from a protestant background or maybe have a lot of protestant friends? (note before anyone jumps on me: I grew up protestant).

No, not at all. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools from K all the way through college, and was even an altar boy. But are there glimmers of “sola scriptura” in my thought process? absolutely. it’s in my nature to be literal and to want to be sure of something. I really don’t like ambiguity. I also don’t like just taking someone’s word on something without doing my own investigation. It’s just my nature and personality. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I lost my connection with the Church, or never really had a true connection. I’m trying to get there now.

I think this may also be why Thomas is my favorite apostle

 

[Todd977]

Jesus’ teaching about divorce and remarriage is mentioned in Matthew, Mark, and Luke but only Matthew’s version contains the exception clause. Matthew is also the only one to mention that Joseph, whom he described as a just man, intended to divorce the Virgin Mary when he initially found out that she was pregnant before they lived together. It seems to me that Matthew added the exception clause to justify Joseph’s intention to divorce the Virgin Mary, otherwise how could Matthew refer to Joseph as a just man without contradicting himself? I think the exception clause ought to be understood as referring to situations similar to Joseph’s situation, where a man finds out his wife is pregnant before they consummate their marriage.