Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dhosek@lucy.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: divorce and remarriage Message-ID: Date: 2 Nov 90 09:03:05 GMT Sender: hedrick@porthos.rutgers.edu Organization: Harvey Mudd College Lines: 67 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , irani@brahms.udel.edu (Jennifer Irani) writes... >I have a question regarding divorce and remarriage in the Bible. I have to >lead a bible study on it and discovered a few things while preparing that >I could use some help on. According to the old testament and Jesus' teaching >in the New Testament, it seems as though it is acceptable to get a divorce >as long as there is not a remarriage, otherwise the sin of adultery is being >committed. I understand why it would be adultery. What I do not understand >is, if I am reading it right, then why do so many churches allow a person >to remarry and actually assist/perform the second marriage? Wouldn't the >church then also be sinning by not only allowing the person to sin but also >causing them to stumble? Or is this a case where society has accepted the >idea of a second marriage and therefore the church has also? I hope we are >not compromising the law. This is one that I've thought long and hard about for a long time and is something that applies to some of the restrictive parts of both the Old and New Testament teachings. Marriage and divorce is a nice concrete item to deal with, so I'll stick with that. When we look at any teachings whether they come out of scripture or religious tradition, we should remember Jesus' answer about what the most important law was: "The most important law is You should love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. The second most important law is like it: You should love your neighbor as yourself. On this the whole of the law and the prophets as well is based." (Paraphrase from memory from Matthew). In the case banning remarriage, the purpose of this was to make couples take the sacrament of marriage very seriously: they were making a life-long commitment and should be sure that they enter into this sacrament as such. There is a stigma in our society towards breaking off an engagement. This is too bad; people should understand that it's perfectly OK to realize that they aren't called to marry each other. At a young adult group meeting last month, one of the parish priests mentioned that about half the couples he counsels in engaged encounter decide not to get married or to delay the wedding. He gets a lot of kidding about this from his fellow priests, but he thinks that it's a sign that he's doing his job well, I'm inclined to agree. But what about the people who feel trapped in a bad marriage because of church strictures on divorce? The fact of reality is that people make mistakes. And we should remember that we are called to forgive others. Jesus said, "Man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for Man." (Mk 2:28 or somewhere thereabouts). The same applies for the whole of any law; it was made for us not we for it. However, we are still faced with the reluctance of the church to allow remarriage, and this is understandable. There is the danger of the abuse of the sacrament if annullment of marriage were a trivial matter, since this would, in the eyes of the people, lessen the value of marriage. I'm not exactly convinced that the church's laws regarding annullment are the best approach to the problem, but they do go some distance to address the issue. I hope these thoughts aren't too disjoint to be of any use... -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont support, consulting dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu installation and production work. dhosek@ymir.bitnet Free Estimates. uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147 finger dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu for more info