Divorce and the Church

"The tradition of the Church has understood the sixth commandment as encompassing the whole of human sexuality."    
-- The Catholic Catechism, 'Love your neighbor as yourself'

Kryie Eleison

version by Mr. Mister

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Recently in the news the Roman Catholic Pontiff Francis is again making waves on the internet as a result of statements he has made. The latest on the dissolution of marriage front, as divorce attorneys like to call it, is the Pope's statement that a large percentage of Roman Catholic marriages are invalid--yes, invalid!

What does that mean? It means several things and that possibly a lot of people can get a divorce and start over again. But doesn't everyone know that Roman Catholics can't get a divorce, not so simple you say?
 But this topic makes more sense if one understands that in the Catholic view, an invalid marriage is one which from the very beginning, something was lacking that was necessary for this relationship to be called a marriage.
 She, the Church, does not expect the Body of Christ to be taken advantage of, abused or otherwise grossly mistreated in the name of marriage, thus divorce is indeed possible for some reasons, but not for what is viewed as self-centered, petty reasons of the ego: he dresses like a slob, she talks too much, we don't like the same movies or vacation spots, he snores, etc.

So some marriages may indeed be invalid. The general criteria is that a marriage is not valid or is null when the partners do not enter into the marriage of their own free will; that one or both partners refuse to support or abandon the marriage; that one or both partners refuse to freely accept what children might be born of the marriage; that there is insanity, or other physical inability to freely contract the marriage such as age, drug abuse, alcoholism or drunkenness; if one or both partners enter into the marriage without the intent or belief of its permanence, all are examples of cause for a Roman Catholic to divorce within the Church. Any one of these reasons support the claim of marital nullity. You see, they are specific and limited.

So exactly what did Pope Francis say? A Simple Mind is unable to confirm any recent statements via the Vatican web page or any major Catholic news outlet such as Catholic News Service regarding this point. However the Pontiff has convened a meeting scheduled to take place in Rome in October of this year. From that meeting there is likely to be much more about divorce  along with other family life issues.

Love and the Body

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you..." 1 Corinthians:1-19
"We are like little mirrors in which God contemplates Himself."
St. John Vianney

When the Body Speaks

Depeche Mode

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To the soul's desires

The body listens

What the flesh requires

Keeps the heart imprisoned

What the spirit seeks

The mind will follow

When the body speaks

All else is hollow...

In matters of the body, there are some who see no body-soul connection, instead they see the body only. The physical, tangible body is their reality. There is nothing intrinsically evil or immoral in things, natural in creation. The Creator has seen to that, writes Thomas Merton. In his effort to express what he sees as the good, the beautiful, the holy, Merton addresses certain issues of the human body.

While all things, natural, created by the One cannot be in any way an impediment to realizing our own true divinity, the obstacles when and where they do exist take the form of "self." It is the tenacious need to maintain a separate egotistic, willfulness that alienates one from the Creator by means of an outwardly 'false self.'
By necessity and by function, this falseness demands an equally false environment in which to operate; the false self subsumes the real; in service to the imaginary, false self we use things for the betterment of this self to the detriment of the One, true, created self, the 'original face' as some call it. Engaged in corruption, evil easily enters as we use many illusions to increase our dependence and attachment to the false self.
The maintenance of such falseness tends to turn one into a fanatic, ever on the look-out for what is not whole or unified. Those who divide themselves, distract themselves in this pursuit to maintain a exterior identity and a second, hidden identity. We all know others whom we may have referred to as 'two-faced' and this is what Merton wishes to address.

The true joy of the world is escape from this little island of false self; instead of entering into union with the One who creates, we encounter much sadness; the grief we sometimes discover is due to the demands of our desire that there be more than there is: he who does not expect, then, has all things.
In any event, the false self is not to be 
"identified with the body. The body is neither evil nor unreal. It has a reality given it by God and this reality is therefore holy... The body is the temple of god, meaning that his reality, his truths are enshrined there... let no one then dare to hate or despise the body that has been entrusted to him by god, and let no one dare to mis-use this body... Soul and body exist together," writes Merton

There are many [persons] in the world, decent and moral, and also who recognize no other reality in life besides their body and its relationship to the environment, or a physical containment within its surroundings. While they may admittedly reduce themselves to their five, discrete senses--taste, touch, sound, smell and sight, their lives are based on their senses and nothing else.
Consequently, they easily fall into illusion-- but do not find fault in the body itself; rather it is the person them self who consents, finding a sort of security in the simplest senses. They will not answer to the secret, still voice of the One, the Creator, who calls them to take a risk, to come out of themselves, making visible all glory of the Created One. This risking, says Merton, is a task for a spiritually engaged person.