Letters | Sunday, 19 July 2009

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Divorce – the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church

‘What God hath joined together let no man put asunder’ – despite this powerful passage from scriptures denoting indissolubility of the marriage bond, a substantial number of pontiffs throughout history have been granting divorce, or using the term preferred by the Vatican, dissolving marriages that in accordance with the precepts of the Church, were supposed to be indissoluble.
Ironically a large number of Roman Catholics live under the notion that what constitutes grounds for annulment in the eyes of the Church, is based on very strict principles that are as rigid and unchanging as the rising sun. In reality nothing could be further from the truth; and for hundreds of years different popes have come up with fresh new concepts that at the time, sufficed to be identified as justified grounds for the dissolution of a marriage. After all, was it not Jesus himself who is quoted to have declared that Christian marriages can be dissolved because of adultery?
Of course the Church wants to keep up the pretence that she is adamantly against the dissolution of marriage and yet in the past, especially when it was politically expedient, popes have granted divorce in cases and circumstances that flagrantly made a mockery of the marriage institution. Perhaps the number one classic example from the sixteenth century was the annulment of Lucrezia Borgia’s marriage after three years by Pope Alexander VII, her own father.
Two 12th century popes in succession, Urban III and Celestine III, both declared that in the case when a Christian wife is abandoned by her Christian husband who apostatises and marries a pagan, she was free to marry. However Celestine’s successor Innocent III later affirmed that the marriage of two Christians was for life and it could not be dissolved simply because one of them lapsed into unbelief.
When one examines documented historical facts on the subject of Roman Catholic marriage and dissolutions, it is truly amazing how through the centuries, and up to the present, different popes have many times pontificated and contradicted each other irreversibly. And worse still, made mistakes whose repercussions can be felt even now.
The list of consummated marriages that were dissolved by the Church, including a few non-Christian ones, is endless and the list of reasons as to why they were dissolved is just as long.

Vladimir Cini
Marsaxlokk

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