6 Uncomfortable Facts About Divorce

Michie · Jun 11, 2025

Even many Catholics cringe from these, but we must face them

Catholics are against divorce in theory, but not in practice. That sad truth has led to countless Catholic marriages and families shattered, causing a ripple effect of destruction through generations. Perhaps we find ourselves in this unhappy reality because we have not heard the following six things from the pulpit or the Catholic community for many long decades. Do you know these truths?

1. Divorce itself is a sin.

That’s right: divorce is a sin all on its own, whether or not an illicit “remarriage” follows. There has never been a time in Church history when divorce—defined as a spouse’s willing and express attempt to “break” the marital contract (CCC 3284)—has been morally permissible. Jesus himself forbids divorce when he responds to the Pharisees who test him on the issue:

Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt 19:4-6).

The words of St. Paul confirm the truth of Christ:

To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband)—and that the husband should not divorce his wife” (1 Cor. 7:10-11).

And we have solid confirmation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states, “Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law” (2384).

Consider those words carefully. The “natural law” is another name for God’s moral law, and a “grave offense” is one that is serious and deadly. So divorce is a sin of grave matter (not venial!), one that the Catechism tells us is “truly a plague” and that “divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and society” and “brings grave harm to the deserted spouse [and] to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them” (2385).

Remember, all these ominous passages and descriptions are speaking of divorce alone. But as grave as it is, the sin of divorce can be compounded.

2. Remarriage after divorce adds to the sin.

Continued below.