If an Old Testament Jew could get a divorces painlessly...

[BarnOwl]

…why did the Church make it tough for Catholics to divorce - or at least used to.

We’re taught that Joseph intended to quietly divorce Blessed Mary when he learned she was pregnant (with Jesus). From what I can gather, such a divorce under Hebrew rules was easy to obtain.

Where did the Church get off making a divorce much tougher to get, at least back in the old days? (Although a Catholic, I don’t really know how difficult it might be these days.)

If this has been asked and answered, mods, kill it, please.

[ultrafilter]

Jesus speaks pretty explicitly against divorce at several points in the Gospels (although I can’t provide chapter and verse).

[Anne_Neville]

Jesus came out very much not in favor of divorce:

@Matthew 5:31-32

And it was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of dismissal’; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

There was debate about divorce among rabbis of roughly that time. The school of Shammai said that divorce should only be allowed in cases of the wife doing something seriously wrong (remember, in Judaism then, as now, a woman can’t give a man a divorce- the man has to give the divorce to the woman). The school of Hillel, which eventually prevailed, said that a man can divorce his wife for pretty much any reason at all. Hillel and Shammai were contemporaries of Jesus, so the debate was still open at that point. Christianity sided with the stricter opinion on divorce; rabbinic Judaism later settled on the more lenient opinion.

@BarnOwl

From what I can gather, such a divorce under Hebrew rules was easy to obtain.

In that specific case where your wife is pregnant by another man, so there’s very good evidence that she has been committing adultery, both schools probably would have allowed a divorce. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it would have been easy to get a divorce in a different set of circumstances.

I don’t think the Catholic Church grants divorces at all now. They will grant an annulment, but that’s not the same thing.

[BarnOwl]

@Anne Neville

Jesus came out very much not in favor of divorce:

There was debate about divorce among rabbis of roughly that time. The school of Shammai said that divorce should only be allowed in cases of the wife doing something seriously wrong (remember, in Judaism then, as now, a woman can’t give a man a divorce- the man has to give the divorce to the woman). The school of Hillel, which eventually prevailed, said that a man can divorce his wife for pretty much any reason at all. Hillel and Shammai were contemporaries of Jesus, so the debate was still open at that point. Christianity sided with the stricter opinion on divorce; rabbinic Judaism later settled on the more lenient opinion.

In that specific case where your wife is pregnant by another man, so there’s very good evidence that she has been committing adultery, both schools probably would have allowed a divorce. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it would have been easy to get a divorce in a different set of circumstances.

I don’t think the Catholic Church grants divorces at all now. They will grant an annulment, but that’s not the same thing.

Excellent. Thanks, Anne Neville.

[Lamar_Mundane]

Strictly speaking, a divorce is as easy for a Catholic as it is for anyone else. It’s the making it right with the Church afterwards that is the hard (expensive and time consuming) part.

[KneadToKnow]

@ultrafilter

Jesus speaks pretty explicitly against divorce at several points in the Gospels (although I can’t provide chapter and verse).

The only mention I see in a quick perusal of Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (1996) leads me to the following:

Matthew 5:32
But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

Edit: I see I’ve been beaten to it and back.

[Anne_Neville]

@Lamar Mundane

Strictly speaking, a divorce is as easy for a Catholic as it is for anyone else.

That’s true where there is civil divorce that isn’t governed by a religious court, as is the case in the US and Europe these days. It’s probably not true in a country like Israel, where marriage and divorce are up to religious courts (if you’re Catholic, AIUI you are subject to the rulings of a Catholic religious court in Israel in matters of marriage and divorce).

I know people get around Israel’s religious marriage laws by getting a civil marriage in another country, which Israel then recognizes. I’m not sure if they do the same thing for divorce.

[muldoonthief]

@Lamar Mundane

Strictly speaking, a divorce is as easy for a Catholic as it is for anyone else. It’s the making it right with the Church afterwards that is the hard (expensive and time consuming) part.

Well, only if you plan to re-marry. If you and your spouse want to stop living together forever and want to go through a legal process to figure out who gets what and what to do with the kids, the Church is generally accepting of that. If you want to marry someone else afterwards, or have sex with anyone else ever again, the Church has a big problem with that.