When can a civil divorce be tolerated

[EasterJoy]

I am curious as to why so many people in the Church today seem to tolerate practically every civil divorce… this makes the vast majority of civil divorces “moral offenses” but wouldn’t we rather call them what they are now in hopes of repentance and eternal life for those who commit the sin?

I see practical problems with the question.

If toleration is bad, what would “refuse to tolerate” look like? Maybe people who get divorces would have to explain to everyone they know why their case is morally permissible? Maybe we ought to just ostracize everybody who divorces, like they did in the old days? I don’t mean to be cute. How to treat an action which might be either morally wrong or morally necessary or even entirely outside the control of at least one of the parties (who might have constraints on advertising that fact, for the good of their children) when we can’t have all the facts? How can we get the facts when asking might hurt someone who is already in a great deal of pain? Because of the necessity of avoiding rash judgment, I don’t see how we can get around giving the benefit of the doubt when we don’t have the pastoral office to make blunt inquiries.

As many questionable divorces as we have, from a pastoral perspective we also have people who are staying in marriages where their lives or welfare or that of their children are in serious peril. We don’t want to be so gung-ho about discouraging impermissible divorces that we also discourage the other kind: that is, those that really ought to take place.

I think it is good to mutually catecize about what is and is not a permissible reason to divorce, but considering we are surrounded by actual people going through divorces, we have to be careful about that, as well. Not to avoid it entirely, but care needs to be taken.