Vatican to debate teachings on divorce, birth control, gay unions

[losh14]

Didn’t Moses permit divorce in the Old Testament? Matt 19:8? So, was it the case that the rule on divorce changed?

Yes, correct. According to Jesus’ words:
Mt 19:4 4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The original teaching is that divorce is forbidden because marriage unifies a man and woman into one.

Moses later allowed divorce (Deut 24: 1 - 4) but with considerable restriction:
If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, 2 and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, 3 and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, 4 then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled.

So Moses allowed the husband to divorce the wife, but says nothing of the husband being allowed to remarry. The wife may remarry (it was probably necessary in those times for her survival) but the first husband cannot remarry even the woman he divorced if she had married another. This teaching is echoed in Jeremiah 3:1 and Malachi 2:16, among other places.

Jesus’ teaching is actually friendlier to the woman - (Mt 5:32) But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery

So yes, the rule on divorce was “changed” (by Moses, and restored by Jesus) but approval was never really given for divorce for any reason, which is what civil law generally allows.

A priori, this seems unlikely. Perhaps it was *sometimes *

allowed, but Christian teaching at the time was very insistent that we not abandon each other, and divorcing a wife was a form of abandonment.

If the Christian Church in the first three centuries *did *accept divorce, then that is a very grave flaw in the early Christian Church. Even if divorce isn’t seriously wrong now, it was then.

It was a very different time and I’d be curious if the reasons for granting divorce more freely then are even relevant today. Some bishops allowed divorce in the case of adultery (perhaps taking a cue from Mt 5:32, as noted above), but again that’s very different from allowing divorce for any reason, the common “no-fault” divorce. I think of my cousin who left his wife of 10 years because they stopped getting along. There was no adultery (at least that either of them admit to), there were some problems but every couple faces that. In the early centuries I think that his bishop would tell him to get it together, or it might be a moot point anyway because her family would come and kill him for offending her honor. But no, he just wanted to live the way he wants in his cool apartment in a hip part of town. At least the kids seem okay so far…

 

[Tigg]

Didn’t Moses permit divorce in the Old Testament? Matt 19:8? So, was it the case that the rule on divorce changed?

I’m under a terrible time constraint right now and there are essential things I would like to respond to on this forum, but I simply cannot at the moment. Off hand, I do not know the answer to your questions, but isn’t there something more essential you might keep in mind as it relates to the subject matter of this thread?

Has the Catholic Church been incorrect in her *infallible *teaching for the past 2,000+ years? **Because she has echoed Scripture and absolutely defended the words of Christ. **Please see Post #160.

I’d say this presents more than a small problem for the progressives who now wish to refute Divine Law.

 

[Tomdstone]

I’m under a terrible time constraint right now and there are essential things I would like to respond to on this forum, but I simply cannot at the moment. Off hand, I do not know the answer to your questions, but isn’t there something more essential you might keep in mind as it relates to the subject matter of this thread?

Has the Catholic Church been incorrect in her *infallible *teaching for the past 2,000+ years? **Because she has echoed Scripture and absolutely defended the words of Christ. **Please see Post #160.

I’d say this presents more than a small problem for the progressives who now wish to refute Divine Law.

Some teachings were not infallible. Such as for example, that women wear headcovering in Church. According to Catholic teaching, these issues do not touch the question of infallibility.

 

[Butaperson]

What a shoddy bit of journalism - but then again, it IS the LA Times. I read the whole thing and am amazed that it got printed. Innuendos and subtle hints at a change in policy all over the place. The writer is of the same ilk as those who published similar nonsense during the infamous Papal Birth Control Commission back in Paul VI’s day.

They hint at a change in policy (or even teaching) all the while knowing that nothing will change. So why do it? Simple: they know the Catholic Church is the strongest moral voice in the world and has the most members in its ranks of any organization (whether or not those individual members are practicing or devout it another story). So, if the liberal left can knock the Church’s credibility down a notch, so be it. In the eyes of lukewarm Catholics, the authority of the Church is neutralized when such unrealistic expectations are not met.

The liberal media do not do themselves any favors with this approach. In my experience, I have seen people read such scandalous articles and go running towards the much more conservative rad-trad Catholic churches. The only Catholics who would be swayed towards liberalism like this would be the Catholics who were lax about their faith to begin with.