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Indissolubility of Marriage (OSV Encyc. 1997)
For centuries men and women have repeated the vow, "till death do us part", feeling that they express the natural resolve of two people who are so in love as to get married. The Catholic Church continues to take these words seriously; and sees them as corresponding to the fact that marriage is naturally meant to be an indissoluble union. She continues to teach the indissolubility of the marriage bond, not as a law of the Church applying just to the marriage of Catholics, but as a law of God for all marriages.
God, the author of marriage, instituted it as indissoluble from the very start. Jesus specifically confirmed this as the divine plan. "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, 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'? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder" (Mt 19:4-6). So even if one saw no other reason in favor of indissolubility, our Lord's teaching should be enough, at least for a Christian.
But it is not enough to accept or defend indissolubility as the law of God. We should also try to see and to get others to see that the indissolubility of marriage, hard as at times it may seem, is a law of love, of fulfillment and of happiness.
The Second Vatican Council, in its major document about the modern world, set forth an anthropological principle of fundamental importance: "man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself" (GS 24). The self-gift the Council has in mind is not to things but to values and above all to persons; self-giving in a spirit of service and of love. When we give ourselves so, we find ourselves. If we do not manage to give ourselves in love, we lose our self.
Without giving oneself truly, in a committed way, one cannot fulfill oneself. One can "triumph" externally, in this or that job or position; inside however, one remains closed and shrunk as a person. Life without love is the most poverty-stricken existence there is. No one is at a lower standard of living than the person who lives without love. We all want to love, but we don't all know how. Love is beautiful, but difficult. We need to love, but we have to learn.
In saying that we need to commit ourselves to others, in order to fulfil ourselves, Vatican II directly challenged a central tenet of modern secular psychology, which insists that we ought above all to protect ourselves (i.e. not give ourselves), so as to fulfill ourselves from within. We should be skeptical about bonds, suspicious of loyalties and avoid commitments. Self-concern or self-sufficiency, rather than self-donation, should be the ideal for us. It is not possible to understand or live a christian life unless one grasps the falseness of this. Christianity sees living for oneself, caring just for one's own happiness, as the way of growing frustration, where the possibilities of any real happiness gradually die out.
Love - or rather learning to love - is a task we must commit ourselves to; a task that lasts a lifetime, marked by efforts and failure and starting again and again. But if we don't stick it, we may end up as thoroughly selfish persons who have never learned to give themselves because they have only wanted to receive, who never learned to love because they only wanted to be loved. And that is what they are less and less likely to experience, since it is hard to love a thoroughly selfish person; only God has no trouble in doing that.
God who created us, knows our ways, possibilities and needs better than we do. That is why he wants to bind us to the task of loving and not to quit when (as is bound to happen) this becomes hard or seems impossible. It cannot be impossible; otherwise we would be predestined to hell, the abode precisely of those who never learned to love, who never faced up to the challenge it implies and the self-forgetfulness it calls for.
We all need to give ourselves to God: to love him, as he has first loved us (cf. I Jn 4:19). Some people give themselves to him directly by total donation in a celibate life. The majority are called to marriage as the normal way of self-giving. For, as the Church's theology insists, marriage originates precisely in the gift of oneself to another and in the acceptance of the self-gift of the other. Gaudium et Spes speaks of the "irrevocable personal consent by which the partners mutually give and accept one another" (no. 48; cf. CCC 1627; c. 1057, § 2). Marital self-giving and acceptance - for life - is the way and challenge of fulfillment and growth for the great majority.
When two people are truly in love, they want to belong to each other, to be united. Each wants to give his or her self and to receive the self of the other in return. It is a poor love which does not want to be united for life. "I'll love you and accept your love for a day..., for five years..., until April 22, 2005...": this has more the air of a commercial transaction than of a proposal of love. "I'll love you, provided you suit me, I'll give myself to you and accept you, for as long as I feel happy doing so...": this sounds much more like one-sided calculation and selfish reserve than generous self-giving.
Since no small measure of self-centeredness accompanies each of us to the end of our days, anyone marrying needs to weigh the tensions and possible outcome of the struggle between love and selfishness. If one's underlying approach is "I love you, but in the end I love myself more", is a faithful or happy marriage likely? "I'm interested in me; marriage has got to make me happy": whoever marries with that sort of approach is always going to put self first.
Marriage, in God's plan, is a great school of love. When two people marry, they pledge their love to each other; they pledge to keep loving, to love the other with his or her defects. All of this makes deep human sense. What sort of love would they be pledging otherwise? To love is to want the good of the other person. To want to make one's partner happy, to be prepared to sacrifice oneself to do so, is of the essence of married love. "It is natural for the human heart to accept demands, even difficult ones, in the name of love for an ideal, and above all in the name of love for a person" (John Paul II: General Audience, Apr. 21, 1982).
To "give" self is not the same as to "lend" oneself. A person who lends, holds on to what is his; he wants to be able to take it back. Real marital love is proved to be genuine because it is really given. It would not be genuine if the person were to retain the right to withdraw it. "Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an arrangement 'until further notice'" (CCC 1646). So indissolubility is an essential property of every marriage. There cannot be any real marriage where the partners will their commitment to be temporary or rescindable at will.
Nevertheless, while few would question that true human love wants to be be united to the loved one for ever, the attitude of many today often remains: - a permanent bond? - Well, yes; for as long as love lasts. A bond with love is OK, but not a bond without love. If love dies then it is natural that the bond dies with it...
At first sight this might seem logical. But it has more calculation than logic to it. It follows neither the logic of God, nor the logic of human love itself. Only the calculator, not the person truly in love, wants to have a "money-back-if-not-satisfied" warranty, a "way out" in case it "doesn't work". Where there is love, there is confidence that it can work and determination to make it work. Where this is lacking, then people have forgotten what it means to "fall in love", and what it takes to stay in love.
But - if difficulties come up!? Of course there will be difficulties. But - if the other person does not quite suit me!? This could be the nub of the matter. If a person marries just to be pleased and not to please, and quits once he or she experiences dissatisfaction, was it love or selfishness that motivated the decision to marriage? Here is shown the readiness for sacrifice, so as to be faithful to one's original love, and to improve it.
The meaning of indissolubility is that God, taking people at their word, wants them to be faithful. This can only be understood if one recalls that love lies essentially in the will; it depends on the will, not on feelings. "Love for a person" (see the Pope's words quoted above) does not mainly mean "feelings for a person". Feelings of love are generally strong at the start of a marriage, and tend to wane or even disappear altogether later on. What the Pope states to be natural, is the desire and determination to remain faithful - feelings or not - to the love one freely pledged to give, for better or for worse. If one remains faithful, it is always for better.
It is human nature to want a love that lasts. If a person is moved by a sexual-sentimental instinct, no more, he or she can drift from one casual relationship to another, and end in isolation. But man has more than a mere sexual instinct: he - she - has a conjugal instinct, which spurs a person (also out of a healthy fear of remaining alone) to establish a relationship on a permanent basis of mutual commitment for life. As there is a human instinct to keep one's life alive, so there is a conjugal instinct to keep one's marriage alive.
If Christians understand these anthropological truths, they will be firmer and more persuasive in their defense of indissolubility: for instance, before the frequent objection that it is harsh on the Church's part to bind two people together, when this is no longer want they want. Apart from other points (is it truly harsh to be bound to the love one once freely pledged? Is it not a call also to be faithful to one's self?), we should recall that, at least at the start, it is seldom that both husband and wife coincide in wanting to put an end to their union. Much more frequently it is one who wavers, who begins to center on their partner's defects, who stops forgiving and asking for forgiveness, who fails to pray or to seek good advice in time, who lets his or her heart stray elsewhere, and so in the end wants to walk out on the other. Doing so is also to walk out on oneself, for it to choose the "easy way out" of a challenge of growth and generosity. If there are children, it is also to walk out on them. In moments of tension, parents need to remember that their children have a right to their father's and mother's fidelity. "For the sake of our children, we will learn to get on": God blesses such a resolution, and gives the grace to live it. If it is pursued it can even lead to the rebirth between the spouses of a love that seemed to have died.
When a couple run into difficulties, those around them - friends, neighbors, pastors, counsellors - have a special responsibility in the advice they give. If they have reflected on the meaning and importance of the indissolubility of the married bond in God's plans, their advice will be a powerful support. Thoughtless advice can be destructive of the happiness of many people.
A major crisis today is the loss of faith in indissolubility: people want a lasting love, a permanent bond of love - but no longer trust it. It is christian married couples themselves who can restore faith in God's plan for marriage. Those couples who despite their differences learn to get on, not only have a great reward reserved in heaven, but bear witness to the ability of human love to be generous and faithful when strengthened by God's grace.