Getting Married · Chapter
Divorce a Sacramental Duty explained
The chapter argues that marriage, as a sacrament, requires divorce when it loses its spiritual grace, criticizing the Church for defending indissoluble marriage and pointing to the Reformation's failure to fully reform marriage, leaving it
What happens
The chapter argues that marriage, as a sacrament, requires divorce when it loses its spiritual grace, criticizing the Church for defending indissoluble marriage and pointing to the Reformation's failure to fully reform marriage, leaving it a mix of commercial sex slavery, sex abhorrence, and sanctification.
Themes in this chapter
Divorce and Legal Reform
The chapter advocates for divorce as a sacramental duty when marriage loses spiritual grace, and criticizes the Church for opposing reform.
Critique of Marriage as an Institution
Marriage is described as a 'curious mixture of commercial sex slavery, early Christian sex abhorrence, and later Christian sex sanctification.'
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
Bishops are accused of using outdated atheist arguments and Aramaic mistranslations to defend indissoluble marriage, showing hypocrisy.
Key passages
“But Mammon overreached himself when he tried to impose his doctrine of inalienable property on the Church under the guise of indissoluble marriage.”
The pursuit of wealth went too far by forcing the idea of permanent property onto the Church, disguised as the concept of unbreakable marriage.
Critique of economic interests corrupting religious marriage doctrine.
“So it is; but that is exactly what makes divorce a duty when the marriage has lost the inward and spiritual grace of which the marriage ceremony is the outward and visible sign.”
Because marriage is a sacrament, divorce becomes an obligation when the inner spiritual grace is gone, since the ceremony is only an external symbol.
Central argument linking sacramentality to compulsory divorce.
“In vain do bishops stoop to pick up the discarded arguments of the atheists of fifty years ago by pleading that the words of Jesus were in an obscure Aramaic dialect, and were probably misunderstood...”
Bishops futilely reuse old atheist arguments, claiming Jesus' words on divorce were in a difficult Aramaic dialect and likely misrecorded.
Criticism of clerical attempts to undermine Jesus' clear stance on divorce.
“...the Reformation left marriage where it was: a curious mixture of commercial sex slavery, early Christian sex abhorrence, and later Christian sex sanctification.”
The Reformation failed to reform marriage, leaving it as a strange blend of economic sexual exploitation, early Christian disgust for sex, and later Christian reverence for it.
Summary of marriage's unresolved contradictions after the Reformation.