Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
When I teach my undergraduate Christian Marriage course, I always have students asking why the Catholic Church prohibits divorce - and what's up with annulment anyway? Isn't it just a Catholic form of divorce? Today's scriptures point toward some of the whys and the complexities of Catholic teaching about marriage and divorce.
In the Gospel (Matthew 19:3-12), the Pharisees are once again asking Jesus questions. The Pharisees represent the school of Judaism that was most rigorous about following "the rules" in Jesus' day. They followed the "letter of the law," and so were concerned exactly with questions like the one they ask here, so perhaps it comes as a surprise that Jesus' answer to their question makes him out to be MORE rigorous than the Pharisees. This is something of a surprise because on other matters, Jesus seems less rigorous (for example, healing on the Sabbath). But in fact, Jesus is not saying what he says to be more rigorous, but to be more just and merciful than the Pharisees.
Back then, there were two sides when it came to interpreting the particular Old Testament passage about divorce from Deuteronomy 24:1, about a man divorcing a woman who "becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her." One of the sides maintained that it was only matters of indeceny that could permit a man to request a divorce. The other side maintained that was any matter that caused displeasure at all that permitted a man to divorce his wife. So this question is ultimately a trick question meant to embroil Jesus in a heated dispute and make some people hate him because of the side he takes.
But characteristically, Jesus sidesteps the controversy by taking the question to a new level. Jesus is well aware of the pain and problems that divorce causes in his society: in ancient Israel, women without families had almost no way to support themselves, and this was even worse if they had children. The recourse was often prostitution and the like. This is why the Old Testament so frequently features laws about taking care of the widows and the orphans, because they were the poorest of the poor. So when Jesus suggests that people should not divorce at all, it is a matter of care and justice for the poor, just as healing on the Sabbath is a matter of justice for the very ill. Jesus is thereby saying that the ones who follow only the "letter of the law" are too hard of heart and do not quite understand the nature of God's kingdom. God's love and mercy push us to seek beyond the mere letter of the law to living a more full life of discipleship that particularly means not just divorcing a woman for any reason at all.
Note also that in the Gospel passage, one of Jesus' arguments against the Pharisees is to quote from Genesis about the purpose of marriage, which is that male and female become one flesh. Jesus is trying to point out to the Pharisees that they were thinking about marriage in the wrong way: it was not meant to be a status symbol for Jewish men, nor was it necessarily a means of their own all-too-human version of happiness (in that they could divorce their wives for any reason at all, even that their dinners were poorly cooked).
We might think that in a post-feminist revolution world, when BOTH men and women have the freedom to divorce, these gender issues are all solved, but in fact, there are many parts of the world where women still live in abject poverty and must turn to sex trade or other forms of slavery if their male partners divorce them or die. Indeed, in our own country, single mothers with children make up one of the largest groups living below the poverty line. Divorce still affects us and our world, often negatively, and Jesus is asking his disciples to try to accept his "hard teaching" in order to promote justice and mercy toward all humanity.
Today's first reading (Ezekiel 16: 1-15, 60, 63; the shorter version is Ezekiel 16:59-63) comes at the marriage and divorce question from a different angle. Like many prophets, Ezekiel is comparing the relationship that we all have with God to a marriage relationship. In Ezekiel's particular depiction, he shows Israel (God's bride) as first being unwanted and unloved, in order to highlight the contrast to when God "marries" Israel and gives her an abundant life beyond anything she would have known beforehand. It is a theme throughout the Bible: God takes the rejected, the lonely, and the unloved, and demonstrates again and again how much God loves them. Indeed, God loves Israel to the point of establishing and re-establishing eternal covenants with her, even though she continually turns away. Through this metaphor of a marriage relationship, we are meant to reflect on the extravagant, costly and long-lasting love of God for us.
Both of these scriptures relate to the Church's teachings on marriage and divorce, which I can only partially express here. In the Sacrament of Marriage, Catholic couples take a lifelong vow pledging that they too, are one flesh, and often the marriage ceremony includes the Sacrament of Eucharist to highlight the parallel between Jesus' one-flesh relationship with us, and married peoples' one-flesh relationship with their spouse. When it comes to the question of divorce, it is not that the Church sees something necessarily sinful at work. Note that contrary to popular belief, divorced Catholics who have not remarried (or married following an annulment) may freely receive the Sacrament of Eucharist, and there may be good reasons for at least a separation (Jesus suggests adultery as a reason in Matthew 5:31-32; many theologians also suggest spousal abuse). It is more that the Church simply does not know how a couple can break an eternal vow once it is made.
This question about eternal vows is what distinguishes divorce and annulment. In divorce, a court looks at the present state of the marriage to determine whether legal grounds are present for rendering the marriage contract null and void. In an annulment, however, the church tribunal requires first that a legal, civil divorce has already happened. This is because the church's own court is interested in the beginning of a marriage, rather than the present day: were the elements there at the beginning that made the couple capable of making an eternal lifelong vow that even reaches high enough to mirror God's relationship with us? Were Jesus' examples of mercy and justice present in that relationship?
Today, let us focus on ways in which we can bring justice and mercy to all our relationships.
-- Jana M. Bennett