Mt 19, 1-9 The two shall become one flesh

Chapter 19

(Mt 19, 1-9) The two shall become one flesh

[1] When Jesus finished these words, he left Galilee and went to the district of Judea across the Jordan. [2] Great crowds followed him, and he cured them there. [3] Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?" [4] He said in reply, "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' [5] and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? [6] So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate." [7] They said to him, "Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss (her)?" [8] He said to them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. [9] I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery."

(CCC 2364) The married couple forms "the intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws; it is rooted in the conjugal covenant, that is, in their irrevocable personal consent" (GS 48 § 1). Both give themselves definitively and totally to one another. They are no longer two; from now on they form one flesh. The covenant they freely contracted imposes on the spouses the obligation to preserve it as unique and indissoluble (Cf. CIC, can. 1056). "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mk 10:9; cf. Mt 19:1-12; 1 Cor 7:10-11). (CCC 2382) The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble (Cf. Mt 5:31-32; 19:3-9; Mk 10 9; Lk 16:18; 1 Cor 7:10-11). He abrogates the accommodations that had slipped into the old Law (Cf. Mt 19:7-9). Between the baptized, "a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death" (CIC, can. 1141). (CCC 2384) Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery: If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself (St. Basil, Moralia 73, 1: PG 31, 849-852). (CCC 2383) The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law (Cf. CIC, cann. 1151-1155). If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense. (CCC 2386) It can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce decreed by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage (Cf. FC 84).