If There Are Cases of Justifiable Killing, Why Not Justifiable Adultery?

[Michie]

DIFFICULT MORAL QUESTIONS: Just as the bond of Christ’s love for his Church cannot be broken, neither can the bond of a Christian marriage.


Q. If not every act of killing is mortally sinful, why do we judge every act of adultery as such? We know Jesus said that when men and women divorce and remarry, they commit adultery. Scripture makes this clear. But what if a woman is abandoned by her husband, and remarries for the sake of her children — why is this still mortally sinful? She intends to help her children by contracting marriage in a situation where not contracting marriage could end in the children’s harm? Why isn’t this a lower grade sin or even not sinful at all? — Taylor

A. It is hard today to communicate effectively the reasons why divorce and remarriage are always gravely immoral, including under heartbreaking circumstances such as the ones you envisage.


We have grown accustomed to hearing spectacular examples of marital infidelity, tragic cases of love betrayed and then of hearing of happy endings with second unions.

When the Catholic Church repeats the scriptural teaching on the absolute indissolubility of Christian marriage, it can sound like a great unacceptable anachronism. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, says it well: “The doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage is often met with incomprehension in a secularized environment.”

Continued below.
If There Are Cases of Justifiable Killing, Why Not Justifiable Adultery?

 

[Chesster]

This is from Volume 3 of Life of Jesus Christ by Anne Catherine Emmerich

“Several women had come to Him (Jesus), asking whether He could not give them a bill of divorce. They complained of their husbands with whom, they said, they could no longer live. This was an artful device of the Pharisees. They were confounded by His miracles and could do nothing against Him; but yet being full of wrath, they resolved to tempt Him to say on the subject of divorce something against the Law, that they might be able to accuse Him as a teacher of false doctrine. But Jesus said to the discontented wives: "Bring me a vessel of milk and another of water. Then I shall answer ye." They went into a neighboring house and returned with a bowl of milk and one of water. Jesus poured one into the other and said: "Separate the two again, so that the milk shall be again by itself, and in like manner the water. Then I shall give you a bill of divorce." The women replied that they could not do that. Then Jesus spoke of the indissolubility of marriage, and that it was only on account of the obduracy of the Jews that Moses had allowed divorce. But perfectly disunited husband and wife never could be, since they are one in the flesh; and although they might not live together, yet must the husband support the wife and children, and neither could remarry. After that Jesus accompanied the wives to their homes, where He had a private interview with the husbands.”