A chara, Warm thanks to The Irish Times for printing my appeal (April 8th) for prayers, especially the Rosary that Ireland be safeguarded from the evil of divorce and be given a second chance in a fair referendum free from the unconstitutional mis spending of taxpayers' money. Some hostile reaction from readers in Finland and the USA. The Irish Times goes far afield. Aiden Traynor of Dun Laoghaire, however, asks (April 15th) for an explanation re a Catholic marriage he recently attended. May I please make these points in reply:
(A) The essence of the question of divorce is summed up by Christ: "What God has united man must not divide . . . The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her and if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too" (Mark 10).
(B) in the case which Aiden Traynor cites, God had not united them, as the bride had been "married" in a registry office. That "marriage" was null and void, but having gone through the necessary procedures, including repentance, she was now perfectly free to got married validly in the Catholic Church. To have obtained a civil divorce from a "marriage" that did not exist in God's eyes was perfectly right.
(C) The new Cathechism (paragraph 2,385) states that (legal) divorce is "immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatised by the separation of their parents and often torn between them and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a plague on society."
Thus to vote for legalising civil divorce (and adultery) is a very serious matter.
May I please ask two things: a prayer for April 30th in the Supreme Court case: and that everyone get a new catechism and so have clearer ideas of the church's teaching. - is mor mheas,
Salesian House,
Ballinakill,
Portlaoise.