Some thoughts about marriage and divorce by the White Robed Monks of St Benedict. These monks serve the Contemporary Cath­olic and all people.

Their outlook is that of a Catholic Spirituality (experience: love/compassion) rather than religion (belief: fear, guilt, shame, blame). Accordingly, they educate about the non -mind of a child so the Kingdom of God may be experienced at hand. (Matt. 18:1-4) Thus, they are neither Roman nor Orthodox, Liberal nor Old Catholic. The White Robed Monks of St Benedict are just Catholic.

The above information is taken from Wikipedia.

In his The Good Of Marriage, St Augustine discussed the values of marriage: Fidelity being the faithfulness inherent in mutual love of spouses that involves sexual love and a commitment to love and trust; offspring whose parents accept them in love, nurture them with affection and educate them in “love and compassion”; and sacrament that signifies the unity of God.

The creation narrative of Genesis (2:18,24) is the root of the sacredness of marriage. The Lord God said: It is not good that a man should be alone... Therefore, a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh.

The White Robed Monks tell us that when a man and woman enter a spousal relationship and discover through their human experience that they are, for whatever reason, unable to maintain that relationship and seek dissolution of that relationship, that very human experience itself is prima facie and exculpatory evidence that the couple had never established, without blame, the marriage bond in faith, being generous and gracious.

Faith implies conviction, trust and commitment. Conviction implies an inner disposition to the truth of love. Trust implies an acknowledgment and acceptance – capability – of God and of oneself to love and be loved. Commitment implies a total self-surrender in active engagement in the service of the Kingdom of God (Catholicism, pp. 929-939).

For those of the Roman jurisdiction, the White Robed Monks, out of pastoral concern, cite the following acknowledgment from the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy (April 26, 1971) over the signature of its prefect, Cardinal John Wright: “Conscience is inviolable and no person is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his or her conscience, as the moral tradition of the Church attests” (c.f., p. 991).

In Mark 10:2-9, it is clearly stated that marriage is a covenant, a marriage that is both sacramental and consummated and is indissoluble.

Yet, Origen (d. 254), who was one of the most distinguished of the Fathers of the early Church, taught that divorce and remarriage was a kind of “lesser-of-two-evils” principle, acknowledging that divorce and remarriage was contrary but not entirely without reason.

The Church of the Middle Ages has brought kings to their knees and, indeed, lost England to Protestantism based on another Aramaic mistranslation. Matthew 19:9 (as usually translated “And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”

George M. Lamsa, a native Assyrian, renowned scholar of the scriptures, lecturer and author, was born in 1892 in a civilisation with customs, manners and language almost identical to those in the time of Jesus.

His native tongue was full of similar idioms and parables, untouched by the outside world in 1,900 years. Dr Lamsa (New Testament Origins) on page 98 shows “put away” as the Aramaic shvikta while divorced is another word shrita. Jesus was not here making some profound new law against Christian divorce but merely showing that a man who marries another woman without granting his first wife a real divorce (very easy in Jewish laws of that time) was ethically responsible for his former bedmate’s supposed bigamy because she was still legally married to him.

The Eastern Church holds the Principle of (Divine) Economy, which is similar to the Western Church’s notion of dispensation. This principle removes the unintended harshness of a given law. Thus, the Eastern Church permits remarriage after divorce.

The Orthodox-Roman Catholic Agreed Statement on the Sanctity of Marriage (Origins 8/28; December 28, 1978; p. 446f) states: “Marriage (is) the fundamental relationship in which a man and woman, by total sharing with each other, seek their own growth in holiness and that of their children and, thus, show the presence on earth of God’s kingdom” (I, par. 2).

Although marriage involves a permanent commitment, the statement acknowledges that the Orthodox Church, “out of consideration of the human realities, permits divorce... and tolerates remarriage in order to avoid further human tragedies” (II, par.2).

And that is what I consider “humanity”.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.