Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Catholics & Divorce

Read the Catechism in a Year image
Read the Catechism in a Year

Day 212 - Can Catholics get a divorce?

Can a Catholic Christian marry a person from another religion?
For Catholic believers, to enter into and live in marriage with a person who belongs to another religion can cause difficulties for their own faith and for their future children. Given her responsibility for the faithful, the Church has therefore established the impediment of disparity of religion. Such a marriage can therefore be contracted validly only if a dispensation from this impediment is obtained before the wedding. The marriage is not sacramental.
May a husband and wife who are always fighting get a divorce?
The Church has great respect for the ability of a person to keep a promise and to bind himself in lifelong fidelity. She takes people at their word. Every marriage can be endangered by crises. Talking things over together, prayer (together), and often therapeutic counseling as well can open up ways out of the crisis. Above all, remembering that in a sacramental marriage there is always a third party to the bond—Christ—can kindle hope again and again. Someone for whom marriage has become unbearable, however, or who may even be exposed to spiritual or physical violence, may divorce. This is called a “separation from bed and board”, about which the Church must be notified. In these cases, even though the common life is broken off, the marriage remains valid.
Indeed, there are also cases in which the crisis in a marriage ultimately goes back to the fact that one spouse or both was not eligible at the time of the wedding or did not fully consent to the marriage. Then the marriage is invalid in the canonical (legal) sense. In such cases an annulment procedure can be introduced at the diocesan tribunal.  (YOUCAT questions 268-269)

Dig Deeper: Corresponding CCC section (1638-1649) and other references here. 

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