Orthodox View on Divorce?

[rusmeister]

All of that Catholic stuff, as well as the assumptions that divorce (between two practicing Orthodox Christians who both express intent to repent, forgive everyone, and follow Christ) is something that can actually be done leaving both members in good standing (not legally, but in truth), is nuts. It doesn’t understand the concept of marriage at all as a type of Christ and His Church. Catholic annulment was produced in their legalism and bad theology, and it’s generally, “not our monkeys, not our circus”. Of we DID understand the Orthodox concept, we would see how horrible things like adultery and divorce are, and how they defy and nullify that conception (as does Catholic annulment in fact, if not in their theory).

I don’t see an Orthodox bishop allowing that a marriage has ended in that case of two penitent Orthodox Christians to be legitimate at all. Sure, if one has left and rejected the Church, deliberately fornicates, etc., leaving the other as a victim. But that’s given, and I don’t think anyone argues about that among us. The one issue is the now-constant efforts to justify divorce between spouses who both stay in the Church (one likely moving to another parish), considering themselves to have nothing to repent of in choosing to do that, instead of determining to love the spouse they find so difficult.

A chief problem is that, with the mind of the world infiltrating the mind of the Church, people now see marriage and divorce as purely private affairs between the couple alone, and barely see, or refuse to see what a devastating blow it is to their children, and lie to themselves about that, and do not at all see that it also affects their in-laws, their own extended family’s relations with the spouse and in-laws, friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners, and even acquaintances; in short, they do not see that both marriage and divorce are thoroughly public affairs, and not merely their private business, something Christians of the past, not dominated by the paradigm of individualism, generally understood.

 

[Euodius]

All of that Catholic stuff, as well as the assumptions that divorce (between two practicing Orthodox Christians who both express intent to repent, forgive everyone, and follow Christ) is something that can actually be done leaving both members in good standing (not legally, but in truth), is nuts. It doesn’t understand the concept of marriage at all as a type of Christ and His Church. Catholic annulment was produced in their legalism and bad theology, and it’s generally, “not our monkeys, not our circus”. Of we DID understand the Orthodox concept, we would see how horrible things like adultery and divorce are, and how they defy and nullify that conception (as does Catholic annulment in fact, if not in their theory).

I don’t see an Orthodox bishop allowing that a marriage has ended in that case of two penitent Orthodox Christians to be legitimate at all. Sure, if one has left and rejected the Church, deliberately fornicates, etc., leaving the other as a victim. But that’s given, and I don’t think anyone argues about that among us. The one issue is the now-constant efforts to justify divorce between spouses who both stay in the Church (one likely moving to another parish), considering themselves to have nothing to repent of in choosing to do that, instead of determining to love the spouse they find so difficult.

A chief problem is that, with the mind of the world infiltrating the mind of the Church, people now see marriage and divorce as purely private affairs between the couple alone, and barely see, or refuse to see what a devastating blow it is to their children, and lie to themselves about that, and do not at all see that it also affects their in-laws, their own extended family’s relations with the spouse and in-laws, friends, neighbors, fellow parishioners, and even acquaintances; in short, they do not see that both marriage and divorce are thoroughly public affairs, and not merely their private business, something Christians of the past, not dominated by the paradigm of individualism, generally understood.

This. Absolutely this.

And our failure to hold this line hurts our mission as the Church. The truth of marriage is the protection of those in marriage. The nature of adultery and divorce is very damaging. Opening up the possibility of divorce also opens up the possibility of abuse.

The reasons for divorce are in situations that put the offender outside the Church in a very real way (and repentance, while still possible, isn't to be expected or so pushed to the side for that person.)

Marriage is a sacrament with a real metaphysical effect on both persons who enter into marriage. The church essentially has fallen into ignoring the nature marriage... and the metaphysical effect of remarriage.

This is something I want to know more about.

 

[ArseniusTheSilent]

I still can't get over the fact that Latin rite marriage is completely different to everyone else. Only in the Latin rite are the couple getting married also the celebrants. Because of this, the whole business of annulments seems to me to demonstrate strong indications of the heresy of Donatism.

The marriage ceremonies are different for second and third marriages in the Orthodox Church as well if we follow the official rubrics (at least that is my understanding). They use different readings and highlight biblical figures of a far more penitential nature.

 

[rusmeister]

The marriage ceremonies are different for second and third marriages in the Orthodox Church as well if we follow the official rubrics (at least that is my understanding). They use different readings and highlight biblical figures of a far more penitential nature.

This is true. However, the idea of penitence has almost no practical effect on the believers. They come to justify the divorce, to say that it was good and right to divorce, so that they might wind up with their second (or third, or fourth, or whatever) and "much better" spouse. In our time, what Orthodox believers need hammered in their heads is that divorce is essentially wrong, that, as far as they are concerned, it is almost never justified, that when they try to justify it they use the same lines of argument that abortion defenders use, and that we need to see our marriages as PERMANENT, with both spouses continually repenting and forgiving each other, emphasis on MYSELF and not my spouse repenting and forgiving. The "three strikes rule" has led to a level of permissiveness and alignment with the world's view on marriage that the folk who declared it could not imagine. It's taken legitimate economia and made a farce out of it.

 

[ArseniusTheSilent]

The history of the Orthodox Church, since the beginning, disagrees with you. Our Holy Fathers also see it differently.

The Orthodox Church is a hospital, not a courtroom. You're arguing this like a Catholic would. It is really hard to see Christ's love in your comments. I see a whole lot of judgment and very little compassion in what you're saying. In addition, you're acting like our modern world is somehow different from what they struggled with for centuries. We've always struggled with sin in our fallen state.

Soften your heart (as I try and soften mine). This isn't an area of absolutes that we can talk about black and white, right and wrong. Our Holy Fathers recognized that.

 

[ArmyMatt]

actually, rus' fourth sentence contains what Christian physical love actually is.

 

[prodromos]

The history of the Orthodox Church, since the beginning, disagrees with you. Our Holy Fathers also see it differently.

The Orthodox Church is a hospital, not a courtroom. You're arguing this like a Catholic would. It is really hard to see Christ's love in your comments. I see a whole lot of judgment and very little compassion in what you're saying. In addition, you're acting like our modern world is somehow different from what they struggled with for centuries. We've always struggled with sin in our fallen state.

Soften your heart (as I try and soften mine). This isn't an area of absolutes that we can talk about black and white, right and wrong. Our Holy Fathers recognized that.

I don't think you have properly understood Rus's response, and I don't know that you have read enough of the Church Fathers to claim they see it differently.

 

[rusmeister]

The history of the Orthodox Church, since the beginning, disagrees with you. Our Holy Fathers also see it differently.

The Orthodox Church is a hospital, not a courtroom. You're arguing this like a Catholic would. It is really hard to see Christ's love in your comments. I see a whole lot of judgment and very little compassion in what you're saying. In addition, you're acting like our modern world is somehow different from what they struggled with for centuries. We've always struggled with sin in our fallen state.

Soften your heart (as I try and soften mine). This isn't an area of absolutes that we can talk about black and white, right and wrong. Our Holy Fathers recognized that.

Hi, Arsenius! Christ is risen!
I think you don't know my context, and imagine it as some kind of silly, "Arrrrrgggh! Everyone should stay in unhappy marriages and suffer!", which is not at all the case.

It is not Catholic, but Christian to think that marriage ought to be permanent, and that divorce ought to be rarer than albino children. We all agree on the hospital vs courtroom, nobody's arguing with you on that point. But what divorce is is the splitting of two who have become one flesh. It is like the hospital ordering the cutting of a person in two.

I'd suggest that you ask, rather than assume what I mean. The others know what I have been saying for a long time, and none of them are going to argue with what we know Church teaching to be, starting with "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder". (Mark 10:9), which the fathers knew and acknowledged. There is such a thing as false compassion, and it is possible to encourage our brothers and sisters in the Church, who have agreed that we should love our neighbor and love our enemies, to love even their own spouse, difficult as that may be at times. That is more loving than the false compassion that counsels divorce.

 

[LizaMarie]

.

 

[ArseniusTheSilent]

Quick aside.

Yes and yes (and yes). I painted with a broad brush and made a lot of assumptions. I also didn't mean to come off with such a sharp edge.

Leaving my comments to remind myself of my own transgressions.

Interesting topic nonetheless.

 

[Markie Boy]

I never thought of that.

So a couple ... would essentially be guilty of years of fornication without having known it? What does that mean for their children too? Were they born out of wedlock?

Strange situation to contemplate.

Yes - Catholic theology has several cases that make you shake your head if you follow the thought process to completion.

 

[trulytheone]

I need to clarify a number of points on the Catholic doctrine of marriage:

• It is true that all marriages, according to Catholic doctrine, are naturally indissoluble.
• But, a marriage between two unbaptized or between a baptized and an unbaptized is not considered a sacrament in our theology.
• Because this marriage is not a sacrament by nature, it can be dissolved the moment one of the two unbaptized partners is baptized (we Catholics call this the Pauline Privilege).
• Or, if the baptized partner can no longer maintain his or her marriage to his or her unbaptized partner due to good reasons, he or she can seek his/her marriage’s dissolution from the Pope himself (this is called the Petrine Privilege).
• In both cases, both partners are free to remarry following the marriage’s dissolution.
• In the case of a marriage between the baptized, only death can dissolve it if they had already consummated it on the marriage bed (ie if they already had sex after the marriage ceremony) because this marriage now possesses the nature of a sacrament.

The above points may be some of the factors that caused the western Church to employ those approaches listed down in those articles “Divorce & Remarriage in the Latin West.”

 

[rusmeister]

I need to clarify a number of points on the Catholic doctrine of marriage:

• It is true that all marriages, according to Catholic doctrine, are naturally indissoluble.
• But, a marriage between two unbaptized or between a baptized and an unbaptized is not sacramental in our theology.
• Because this marriage is not sacramental, it can be dissolved the moment one of the two unbaptized partners is baptized (we Catholics call this the Pauline Privilege).
• Or, if the baptized partner can no longer maintain his or her marriage to his or her unbaptized partner due to good reasons, he or she can seek his/her marriage’s dissolution from the Pope himself (this is called the Petrine Privilege).
• In both cases, both partners are free to remarry following the marriage’s dissolution.
• In the case of a marriage between the baptized, only death can dissolve it if they had already consummated it on the marriage bed (ie if they already had sex after the marriage ceremony) because this marriage has the nature of a sacrament.
• Marriage without sex can still be dissolved.

Of course, this thread is about the Orthodox view, not the Catholic one - all I could say, not in a spirit of debate but simply of reaction, is that the mindset behind this thinking is highly legalistic and cuts across and denies some Orthodox understandings, so we couldn't accept the "If this, then that..." the whole "legal loophole" attitude. The Orthodox view is that people even outside the Church can be married, so we don't think that pagans or non-Christians or non-Orthodox are "not married"; a real permanent metaphysical connection ("What God (not man) has joined together...") is created along with the physical one. It's that metaphysical connection that makes accepting Catholic ideas essentially impossible. And the Orthodox Church has generally been dogmatic about the sacrament of marriage within the Church. The Catholic problems arise from its legalistic approach to theology and spiritual understandings in general; the Orthodox problems stem from abuse of the mercy of economia to prevent further and greater sin. Thus, in the Orthodox Church, while a second or third marriage might have been allowed, it was never SUPPOSED to be allowed, but many began to imagine such allowances in a more Catholic, legal sense, as if it really WERE a "three strikes - you're out" (and everybody gets to have two free strikes) view rather than a condescension out of pity in extreme and desperate cases. When you make exceptions, all of a sudden, everybody sees his or her own case as exceptional. The Catholic woes on marriage come from the multiplicity of rules and juridical attitude.

 

[trulytheone]

The Orthodox view is that people even outside the Church can be married, so we don't think that pagans or non-Christians or non-Orthodox are "not married"; a real permanent metaphysical connection ("What God (not man) has joined together...") is created along with the physical one.

We never denied that the married unbaptized are married. It is just that they only have what we call a “natural marriage.” Their natural marriage is naturally indissoluble, viz., no human power can dissolve it. But the state of being baptized, the Church, and the office of the Papacy do not naturally originate from human authority anyway (these are according to Catholic doctrine). And I do not regard these accusations of “legalism” against the Catholic Church to be to Her disadvantage anyway, considering how I have noticed some of the Orthodox’s attempts to explain away the Filioque doctrine of the Western Fathers by employing linguistic and metaphysical arguments.

 

[Xenophon]

We never denied that the married unbaptized are married. It is just that they only have what we call a “natural marriage.” Their natural marriage is naturally indissoluble, viz., no human power can dissolve it. But the state of being baptized, the Church, and the office of the Papacy do not naturally originate from human authority anyway (these are according to Catholic doctrine). And I do not regard these accusations of “legalism” against the Catholic Church to be to Her disadvantage anyway, considering how I have noticed some of the Orthodox’s attempts to explain away the Filioque doctrine of the Western Fathers by employing linguistic and metaphysical arguments.

The Filioque is a topic for another thread, but creating a dyad between the monad and the triad is an error which creates either disruption in one's apprehension of the trinity (leading to greater error) or creates an unquestioned absurdity. You can't have dual generative processions. It either belongs to one person or the whole of the trinity. The Holy Spirit is not a mere sum of the love of the union of Father and Son (against Aquinas.)

In a word, ideas have consequences.

And the Filioque is merely Plotinus.

So, it's funny to me that you'd complain about metaphysics - i.e. 'spiritual reality' on the part of one theological issue while upholding a 'legalism' on the basis of a metaphysics.

 

[prodromos]

I need to clarify a number of points on the Catholic doctrine of marriage:

• It is true that all marriages, according to Catholic doctrine, are naturally indissoluble.
• But, a marriage between two unbaptized or between a baptized and an unbaptized is not considered a sacrament in our theology.
• Because this marriage is not a sacrament by nature, it can be dissolved the moment one of the two unbaptized partners is baptized (we Catholics call this the Pauline Privilege).
• Or, if the baptized partner can no longer maintain his or her marriage to his or her unbaptized partner due to good reasons, he or she can seek his/her marriage’s dissolution from the Pope himself (this is called the Petrine Privilege).
• In both cases, both partners are free to remarry following the marriage’s dissolution.
• In the case of a marriage between the baptized, only death can dissolve it if they had already consummated it on the marriage bed (ie if they already had sex after the marriage ceremony) because this marriage now possesses the nature of a sacrament.

The above points may be some of the factors that caused the western Church to employ those approaches listed down in those articles “Divorce & Remarriage in the Latin West.”

What about the fact that marriage annulments in the Catholic Church is synonymous with the heresy of Donatism?

 

[trulytheone]

What about the fact that marriage annulments in the Catholic Church is synonymous with the heresy of Donatism?

Annulments are supposed to be done when there are impediments prior to the marriage ceremony that are verifiable to those working in the ecclesiastical trials (which means merely telling the bishop “I didn’t really mean it when I said, ‘I do’ during our wedding” ideally won’t count). These happen because the couples themselves are the ministers of this sacrament. I’m already aware there are abundant of abuses that happen and that both the couples and their bishops will be held accountable for these on Judgement Day.

And considering that there are a variety of views within your own communion on the sacraments of the Catholic Church which are actually Donatistic to our perspective, such as that one view that our baptisms are invalid, I will just discount that accusation of Donatism in the Catholic view of marriage as another useless polemic.

 

[trulytheone]

So, it's funny to me that you'd complain about metaphysics - i.e. 'spiritual reality' on the part of one theological issue while upholding a 'legalism' on the basis of a metaphysics.

I was explaining the hypocrisy of accusing the Catholic Church of “legalism,” while some Eastern Orthodox’s attempts to explain away the writings of the Western Fathers on the Filioque are similar to the methods pre-V2 Catholic theologians utilized when they argued.

Fine, I will start a thread (or a series of threads) about the Filioque and the Divine Simplicity.

 

[rusmeister]

Yeah, I think going into Catholic views is liable to derail this thread. I would just try to say by way of friendly explanations to Catholics here that the idea of a couple administering its own sacrament is pretty foreign to us. We can imagine extreme cases where, for instance, God may bless a baptism of a dying man by a layman in a desert or on a battlefield with water and in the name of the Holy Trinity, God not being bound by our limited understandings, but it would never be a matter of course. That’s my two cents on a difference between our theological understandings. (Apologetics being more my line than theology, which we would insist is connected more to prayer than to academic understandings.)

 

[East of Eden]

Here's what I found from a source that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) cites,

"'Annulment” is an unfortunate word that is sometimes used to refer to a Catholic “declaration of nullity.” Actually, nothing is made null through the process. Rather, a Church tribunal (a Catholic Church court) declares that a marriage thought to be valid according to Church law actually fell short of at least one of the essential elements required for a binding union.

For a Catholic marriage to be valid, it is required that: (1) the spouses are free to marry; (2) they are capable of giving their consent to marry; (3) they freely exchange their consent; (4) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children; (5) they intend the good of each other; and (6) their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister. Exceptions to the last requirement must be approved by Church authority."

Also, could you explain what Donatism is? I've only vaguely heard of it at best.

Here's what I found from a source that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) cites,

"'Annulment” is an unfortunate word that is sometimes used to refer to a Catholic “declaration of nullity.” Actually, nothing is made null through the process. Rather, a Church tribunal (a Catholic Church court) declares that a marriage thought to be valid according to Church law actually fell short of at least one of the essential elements required for a binding union.

For a Catholic marriage to be valid, it is required that: (1) the spouses are free to marry; (2) they are capable of giving their consent to marry; (3) they freely exchange their consent; (4) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children; (5) they intend the good of each other; and (6) their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister. Exceptions to the last requirement must be approved by Church authority."

Lots of loopholes there. How do you judge intent after the fact?

According to one source, the US has 6% of world Catholics, but 55%-70% of annulments.