For better or worse

by Editor · Published September 30, 2009 · Updated March 6, 2012

In this Sunday�s Gospel reading we hear Jesus� injunction that the bond of marriage entered into freely under God is indissoluble. Challenged by the theologians of his day, Jesus turns standing teaching on its head and proclaims: �What God has joined together, man must not separate”� (Mk 10:9).

On October 4 the Church in Southern Africa celebrates Marriage Sunday, the culmination of a six-week marriage campaign prepared by the Family Life Desk of the Southern African Catholic Bishops� Conference. Doubtless priests across the region will in their homilies address the theme of marriage. Some will perform renewals of wedding vows.

They will tell congregations that matrimony is sanctified, a vocation in its own right that in God�s eyes can be abandoned only by the death of a spouse. The pastorally-minded homilist will note that the initial bliss of a wedding day in most marriages will be supplanted by the routines of daily life; the nature of the love that compelled two people to commit to one another is likely to evolve. And in some cases, it will dissipate.

The Church in Southern Africa insists on prenuptial preparations in courses that give counsel on how to keep a marriage alive, as does Engaged Encounter. The Marriage and Family Life Renewal Ministry (Marfam) produces materials intended to build up Christian family life. For couples who wish to strengthen their life together, or may feel that something is missing in their relationship, Marriage Encounter offers assistance. And for marriages that are in trouble, Retrouvaille offers Christ-based intervention.

In short, the Church�s expectation that marriages should remain intact until death is supported by a range of excellent ministries.

However, some marriages fail notwithstanding all good intentions and respect for the sacrament of matrimony, by one or both spouses. For Catholics especially the experience of divorce can be traumatic, precisely because they know that marriage cannot be dissolved.

Canon law makes allowances for the annulment of the marriage bond, a generally complicated process in which specific criteria are employed to establish whether the marriage was canonically valid in first place. It would be incorrect, however, to view canonical annulments as the Church�s version of civil divorce.

Catholics who divorced and remarried in civil courts without having obtained an anulment �cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation [that is, their re-marriage] persists� (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1650).

This presents an enormous pastoral problem for the Church. How can it be explained that faithful Catholics � especially those who were not the guilty party in the breakdown of a marriage � should be excluded from the summit of the Church�s life when less honourable individuals � say Robert Mugabe � may receive Communion?

Pope Benedict is sensitive to the problem. A few months after his pontifical election in 2005 he met with priests in northern Italy and asked them about their greatest pastoral challenges. The priests referred to the situation of divorced and remarried Catholics. Pope Benedict responded that while the Church cannot change its teachings on marriage, the ways in which it responds to such Catholics� situation required urgent study.

The Church�s hands are tied by Jesus� unequivocal injunction on marriage and the doctrines based on that. And yet, our faith is one of compassion.

The difficult challenge facing the Church today is to find a way in which the dimensions of doctrine and compassion, in this case seemingly contradictory, can be reconciled.