News Item: : G.K. Chesterton on the Superstition of Divorce and Re-''marriage''
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
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Friday 21 October 2016 - 11:44:08

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During the opening decades of the 20th-Century, the marriage laws of the State here in England came under increasing pressure from the secularizing zeitgeist.

G.K.Chesterton was one of those clear-sighted folks who recognized early on that, if the State were to cave to such pressure, this would lead to widespread wreckage for both the family and the wider society.

In 1920, a couple of years before he converted to the Catholic Faith, he penned a series of articles for the New Witness under the heading, ''The Superstition of Divorce''. There follows below an interesting section from one of these articles, wherein Chesterton resists the notion that sacramental marriage is a mere superstition, by logically turning the argument back on his opponents.

Before reading Chesterton's words, it is worth reflecting that, when he wrote them, the polemic was aimed at immoral anti-Christian secularists. Such is the tenor of our own times, that it could just as easily be applied today to Pope Francis, Cardinal Walter Kasper, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Cardinal-elect Blase Cupich, the Bishops around Buenos Aires, Archbishop Javier Martinez; and all others who have either led or encouraged the disgraceful attack on Holy Matrimony during the last three years.

The Superstition of Divorce

While free love seems to me a heresy, divorce does really seem to me a superstition. It is not only more of a superstition than free love, but much more of a superstition than strict sacramental marriage; and this point can hardly be made too plain.

It is the partisans of divorce, not the defenders of marriage, who attach a stiff and senseless sanctity to a mere ceremony, apart from the meaning of the ceremony. It is our opponents, and not we, who hope to be saved by the letter of ritual, instead of the spirit of reality. It is they who hold, that vow or violation, loyalty or disloyalty, can all be disposed of by a mysterious and magic rite, performed first in a law court and then in a church or registry office. There is little difference between the two parts of the ritual; except that the law court is much more ritualistic.

But the plainest parallels will show anybody that all this is sheer barbarous credulity. It may or may not be superstition for a man to believe he must kiss the Bible to show he is telling the truth. It is certainly the most grovelling superstition to believe that, if he kisses the Bible, anything he says will come true. It would surely be the blackest and most benighted Bible-worship to suggest that the mere kiss on the mere book alters the moral quality of perjury.

Yet, this is precisely what is implied in saying that formal re-marriage alters the moral quality of conjugal infidelity.

Logical and Theological Consistency

Chesterton's argument here is consistent with the logical principle of non-contradiction. In any given case, we need to simply ask the objective question: is this person seeking ''re-marriage'' already validly married to someone else, or not? For one cannot already be married and not be married at the same time!

This has ever been the teaching and law of the Church from Our Lord Jesus Christ, through the Apostles, the Church Fathers, and on to our own times through all of the reigning Popes and those Bishops in communion with them.

As Pope Pius XII recalled, during an address to parish priests in Rome on 16th March, 1946: ''The matrimony between the baptized, validly contracted and consummated, cannot be dissolved by any power on earth, not even by the Supreme Church Authority.''



This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1442 )