Divorce and Remarriage

True but I am not so sure that divorce and remarriage is scriptural or possible

 

Think of Abraham. Our loving Lord might yet bless you with a faithful wife and more children. It doesn't hurt to ask Him; He might say yes! We never know for sure what the future might hold. God can make a way for you.

As for the divorce/remarriage issue, I hope you'll take counsel with a pastor you feel comfortable confiding in. He is bound to have studied the issue, as it comes up often.

 

I would love to be blessed by like that. My only real issue is that I don't want to find out 20 years from now that the pastor was wrong and that I am living in adultery .

 

One of the difficulties about this area is that there is no neutral ground as all of us who speak on this subject are in the game, married, not married, divorced or remarried, it speaks to the deep seated need we have within ourselves to matter to, and to care for another. Indeed when we think about our creation in the image and after the likeness of God, male and female he created them, we understand something of this being expressed. There is a charism of celibacy however that tends to be the exception rather than the rule.

Monogamy suggests one partner for ever. In it's lived reality for the most part it meant one partner for life, and if one's partner died then one was free to marry another. More recently most Churches have been ready to accept the notion of serial monogamy, where the intent of life partnership is affirmed, and the pastoral reality of our failure is acknowledged, but also the hope of a new day.

In the rcc there has been the practice of annulment where the idea seems to be to affirm some deficit in the prior relationship so we can wipe it off the board. Most of us recognise that this approach has a number of flaws and ultimately is nothing much more that come fancy tape in the window box. I think that there are several reasons why the Anglican Church has come to accept divorce and remarriage:

1. We are flawed human beings and perfection is not yet within our grasp
2. We are Christians and we believe in death and resurrection, forgiveness and a new beginnings.
3. To perpetuate a marriage when people fall out of love is to use marriage to imprison people in mutually destructive relationships is to be pastorally cruel to those in the relationship and to be outside the sacramental intent of marriage to be a sign of the love God has for his Church.
4. Once people are released from a failed marriage it is mindless to suggest that they must now be celibate given that is a particular charism.

So we affirm the following

1. The sacramental intent of marriage is a lifelong partnership
2. The sacramental intent of marriage is to be a symbol of the love God has for his Church
3. The sacramental intent of marriage to to liberate people in love that they may better serve God and all creation
4. Despite the best intentions we do not always get things right the first time.

I really don't think you should look at it like this. Firstly you concern in a healthy relationship should be for the other person, first and foremost. Secondly I think Jesus approach to this was a lot kinder than some people would have us imagine. Read the John 4 account of Jesus meeting with the woman at the well.

 

I am with @bwallac2335 on this, the sin here has to be carefully discerned, and not papered over by "therapeutic moral deism"... Let's just discover the truth, and be frank with God's will rather than hiding everything behind gooey toleration and acceptance which has no reality behind it..

I would love to know the historic Anglican doctrine on divorce and remarriage... does anyone know?

 

I am under no illusion that you intended to be anything but insulting.

As for the historic Anglican position, it clearly has to have some complexity, especially if you look at what we know of Henry VIII. None the less it is clear that for much of Anglican History since say 1662 the general expectation of the Church was that one was not free to marry unless one's former spouse was deceased. There were cases of annulment, but there was a much stronger civil support of the indissolubility of the union and no such thing as we know it today of 'no-fault' divorce. I have no desire to return to the rubbish that sort of system perpetuated.

I commend the reading of the woman at the well, again.

 

Wha?....

Wait so we have a historic doctrine on this? That's awesome

 

Divorce and remarriage isn't possible. However: it is possible that the initial marriage didn't actually take place. That's what the process of annulment is all about. You need to speak to a canon lawyer and look into this, for things like whether she made a firm commitment to be true to her marital vows, whether she was open to children which are the #1 purpose for marriage, whether she was intending to be your spiritual companion, and be of help for you in dealing with concupiscence (#2 and #3 purposes of marriage). If she had no intent to be one or all of these, for instance, then it is possible that you were never initially married to the first woman, and may legitimately marry the second woman under God's care and protection.

 

BCP argues that the purposes for Marriage are:

• It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.
• It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication;
• It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

The order of the purposes does not specify their importance, and there were those who argued that mutual society should be first on the list, as it is in many of the contemporary rites.

It would be difficult to argue that all three needed to be intentionally met for a valid marriage. The Anglican Church has since the time of Henry VIII married people where the bearing of children was no longer at stake. The marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine Parr is not in doubt, though clearly the thought of them having children was by that stage off the table. I might also note that in Henry's case in earlier marriages it had been an effective remedy.

The moment you say, as you do here, 'Divorce and remarriage isn't possible', I wonder what the real issues are and how we can effectively, constructively and lovingly deal with people whose relationships are flawed, failing, or destructive. I imagine you have no intent to force people to remain in situations of domestic abuse and violence, no to leave their only options as poverty or adultery. In an ideal world divorce and remarriage don't happen, however we do not live in an ideal world. Despite the best of intentions, and the honesty to true intentions at the outset of a marriage, some of those relationships do fail. If all we had was the law, I might see your point, but we also have grace, the power of the cross, the triumph of the resurrection, and I see no valid reason to suggest that forgiveness and new beginnings are not part of the hallmarks of the Christian Faith as expressed in the Anglican Church.

 

It's interesting, first you say the order of the purposes shouldn't matter, and then you say that the purpose which you prefer should be more prior than others.

I'm not a canon lawyer and have not studied the specifics of the various the impediments to a valid marriage. All I know is that merely the initial intent to marry isn't enough. You have things like degrees of consanguinity for instance, which do not care about intent; if you are in these degrees of consanguinity, you have never married, no matter how many vows you profess on the wedding day. That's all I meant: the intent is far from enough to produce a valid marriage in the eyes of God (the only kind of marriage we're talking about here).

As for law and grace, I agree.

 

Seems like there is a lot of confusion here. How should or how does the ANCA and other Anglican Churches stand on people who show up and want to join who are already divorced and remarried?

 

So I talked to a priest. He said my case fit the Biblical definition of divorce and remarriage through abandonment because abuse is abandonment. Is that true?

 

Perhaps this will be helpful:

http://www.anglicandoma.org/uploads/Marriage and Remarriage Policy.pdf

 

https://www.anglican.ca/ask/faq/divorce/

 

That portion of the question was interesting. I studied my church's canons and that particular circumstance is not specifically addressed. My training is, when the canons are unclear or in this case irrelevant, consult the bishop for guidance.

 

Yeah, in the RCC such cases would need to go through the annulment process (which usually happens concurrently with RCIA). But I don't get the feeling that many Anglicans (even of the more Anglo-Catholic stripe) bother with that.

Also, unlike the RCC, Anglican practice seems to be broader in allowing adultery and abandonment to be grounds for a valid divorce (which is different from annulment, which says that the marriage never actually happened). "Valid divorce" is closer to the EO understanding of remarriage (which doesn't do annulments) and I think has a lot to recommend it, practically, pastorally, and canonically speaking.

 

How do you personally feel about it and why? What are the other works? Are they available anywhere else?

 

I wonder does Anglican thought and canons change over time as more knowledge is gained or what. I know that the Catholics believe something along the lines that theology continues to evolve and grow more exact as more knowledge is gained. I could be wrong how I termed that but I think it was Cardinal Newman who said something like that.