Whether divorce will make it to the statute-books in Malta is ultimately a “political” decision. The Catholic Church has no direct say in the matter – and so it should be - once our society is committed to uphold a democratic state which functions separately from the Church. However, the Church’s views on various matters of a social nature will influence the positions which Christian members of our society may adopt, and many still look for guidance, or even firm direction, from the Catholic Church before deciding on how to vote. Therefore, it is essential that the Church’s position and the degree to which it binds Christians to be guided, when it comes to the crunch, should be limpidly clear.
The Church’s doctrine on marriage and divorce is Scriptural in origin. Jesus mentions divorce in various Bible passage: In Matthew 5, as part of one of His best-known speeches, the Sermon on the Mount, He says: “31 It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of illicit marriage, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery”. Later on, in Chapter 19 of the same Gospel, Jesus makes what is probably His most well-known declaration on marriage. In answer to a question posed by some Pharisees about whether it was lawful to divorce one’s wife on any pretext, He replies “4 ... Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning made them male and female? 5 And that he said: This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and the two become one flesh. 6 They are no longer two, therefore, but one flesh. So then, what God has united, human beings must not divide.'’?
The Pharisees counter with a query as to why, then, did Moses command that a writ of dismissal be given in cases of divorce? Jesus’ reply: “8 ... It was because you were so hard-hearted, that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but it was not like this from the beginning. 9 Now I say this to you: anyone who divorces his wife -- I am not speaking of an illicit marriage -- and marries another, is guilty of adultery.”
In both instances, Jesus’ injunction that marriage is for life and that, therefore, any form of re-marriage for a person who has been through a divorce is tantamount to adultery, appears to be qualified by that allusion to “illicit marriage”. But did Jesus really leave a door open for divorce and re-marriage?
Matthew wrote in Greek, and the word which Catholic Bibles tend to translate as “illicit marriage’’, Matthew (in both Chapter 5 and Chapter 19) writes as porneia. Those versions of the Bible which translate the same word as “adultery” are invariably Protestant, hence providing an apparently Biblical alibi for the Protestants’ position that adultery (including one’s own) can be grounds for remarriage. It is worthy to note that, for Protestants, matrimony ceased to be considered a sacrament as far back as Luther’s days. Anglicans, by the way, still do not allow remarriage, although many Anglican priests are willing to bless second (and subsequent) marriages.
But is “illicit marriage” the right translation for porneia, or are the Protestants right - after all - in translating that word as “adultery” with all the implications that this translation would carry for remarriage of Christians? First of all Luke and Mark, who also report Jesus’ words about divorce, do not mention the exception clause. One has to understand that each gospel sprang out of a particular community of believers and was written with that community’s characteristics in mind. Luke and Mark wrote for Gentile Christians, while Matthew wrote for Jewish Christians, a group still very much influenced by Judaic practices – to the extent that for many (for example, the Romans) they seemed simply a Jewish sect. For this community, Jewish law was still of paramount importance and they would certainly be concerned about Jewish marriage practices.
So what does “illicit marriage’’ mean in the context of Jewish traditions? It could refer to the marriages prohibited under the Mosaic Law: marriage was forbidden to people who were related to each other. In 1 Corinthians 5:1 Paul – also, writing in Greek - uses porneia to describe marriage to one’s stepmother, which was prohibited by Jewish law. Moreover, Jews were prohibited from marrying foreigners.
The word porneia could also mean unchastity before a complete marriage union; that is to say, after betrothal, but before consummation. Jewish couples became betrothed months before the marriage was consummated and that betrothal was considered a valid, though unconsummated, marriage. That sort of marriage is, of course, entirely dissolvable even today. That is the situation Jesus’ own father found himself in: the woman whom he was betrothed to became pregnant before he “knew” her. In fact, Joseph was contemplating divorce before the extraordinary circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy were revealed to him.
Even from a purely linguistic point of view, it is close to virtually impossible that Jesus had adultery in mind when He uttered those words: the Greek word for adultery is not porneia, but moichea. The latter is the word Jesus uses - when translated into Greek - in all references to adultery, and these include instances in which He speaks ofporneia in the very same passage. It is obvious that Jesus distinguishes between the two.
Other passages from the Bible support the thesis that, for a Christian, divorce cannot be countenanced. In Romans 7, Paul is adamant that "2 A married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress."
In 1 Corinthians, he writes “10 To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband) — and that the husband should not divorce his wife ... 39 A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. If the husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord."
However, possibly the strongest argument against adultery being cited by Jesus as grounds for divorce comes from a content analysis of Matt 19 itself. In Verse 6, Jesus clearly and unequivocally makes the point that “ ... what God has united, human beings must not divide.'’ It would take a highly irrational being to contradict Himself a mere two verses later by pointing out ways with which His very own words could be undermined and proven worthless. Adultery – a human decision to commit sin occurring within marriage – could never be grounds for severing what God put together. An illicit marriage, on the other hand, had never been put together by God in the first place.
Many Catholics do accept that Christian marriages are indissoluble, but may be in a quandary about how to vote in the referendum, simply because they wish to help those whose marriages have gone bust, and now wish to regularize other unions they may have formed. While the motivation to help may, on the face of it, be unimpeachably altruistic, that - in itself - cannot justify voting for the introduction of a practice which the very founder of their faith has explicitly condemned, and this precisely because it contradicts God’s eternal plan. For the Christian, divorce can only be seen as intrinsically evil and, as such, can only have negative social effects in the long run. Morally, enabling evil to be committed is evil in itself.
Objectively speaking, the only truly Christian position is to vote "no".
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