Week 3 Day 5
Listen: 
The Legitimate Causes for Divorce
Conjugial Love 462
[B]y concubinage is here meant an agreed-upon conjunction of a married man with a woman.... But as there are two kinds of concubinage, and these are to be totally separated, therefore this chapter, like the former ones, is to be divided into its parts, which are as follows:
(1) That there are two kinds of concubinage, which differ very greatly from each other: one conjointly with a wife, the other apart from a wife.
(2) That concubinage conjointly with a wife is to Christians altogether unlawful and detestable.
(3) That it is polygamy, which by the Christian world is condemned, and ought to be condemned.
(4) That it is scortation, by which the conjugial, which is the precious jewel of Christian life, is destroyed.
(5) That concubinage apart from the wife, when engaged in for legitimate, just, and truly weighty causes, is not unlawful.
(6) That the legitimate causes for this concubinage are the legitimate causes for divorce, while the wife is nevertheless retained at home.
(7) That the just causes for this concubinage are just causes for separation from the bed.
(8) That weighty causes for this concubinage are real, and not real.
(9) That the weighty causes are real which are [the ones that are] from what is just.
(10) But that the weighty causes that are not real are such as are not from what is just, although from an appearance of what is just.
(11) That those who from legitimate, just, and really weighty causes are in this concubinage may at the same time be in conjugial love.
(12) That while this concubinage lasts actual conjunction with the wife is not lawful.
The exposition of these now follows.
Conjugial Love 468
(6) That the legitimate causes of this concubinage are the legitimate causes of divorce, while the wife is nevertheless retained at home. By divorce is meant the abolition of the conjugial covenant and thence complete separation, and entire liberty after that to take another wife. The only cause of this total separation or divorce is scortation, according to the Lord’s precept in Matthew 19:9.
To the same cause belong also manifest obscenities, which dissolve modesty, and fill and infest the house with infamous intrigues, from which arises a scortatory shamelessness in which the whole mind is dissolved.
Add to these, malicious desertion which involves scortation and makes the wife commit adultery and thus to be put away (Matthew 5:32) [quoted on Day 1].
These three, because they are the legitimate causes of divorce, the first and the third before a public judge, and the second before the man as judge, are also legitimate causes of concubinage, but when the adulterous wife is retained at home.
That scortation is the only cause of divorce, because it is diametrically opposite to the life of conjugial love and destroys it even to the point of extermination, may be seen above, n. 255.
Conjugial Love 485
That circumstances and contingent factors vary every case is something people know. However, events are still regarded in one way by a person on the basis of his rational sight, in another way by a judge on the basis of the law, and in another way by the Lord on the basis of the state of the person’s mind. Therefore attributions, convictions, and imputations after death are spoken of. For attributions are determined by a person in accordance with the light (lumen) of his reason; convictions by a judge in accordance with the law; and imputations by the Lord in accordance with the person’s state of mind.
These three judgments are very different in nature, as can be seen without need for explanation. For a person may, from a rational evaluation in accordance with the circumstances and contingent factors, exonerate one whom a judge while sitting in judgment cannot exonerate on the basis of the law; and a judge, too, may exonerate one who after death is condemned. The reason is that a judge determines his verdict in accordance with a person’s deeds, whereas everyone is judged after death in accordance with the intentions of his will and consequent intellect, and in accordance with the persuasions of his intellect and consequent will. Neither of these does a judge see. Yet each judgment is nevertheless just, the one looking to the good of civil society, the other to the good of heavenly society.
Questions and Comments
- Concubinage is permitted if a man’s wife is too seriously ill in body or mind to act as his wife; or if she is involved in scortation/adultery but still is retained at home.
- One reason she might be kept at home is because the man fears the damage she could do to his reputation by lies. Another reason is for the care of young children (CL 469).
- Causes of concubinage that are not real include abstinence after childbirth, a wife’s transitory illnesses, and other spurious and fallacious reasons (CL 474).
- Conjugial Love 468 gives two more cases of scortation, along with adultery itself. Manifest obscenity refers to a wife who obviously exhibits utter scortatory shamelessness, but whose infidelity may not be provable before a judge. Malicious desertion refers to a wife hatefully running out on her husband and later, being without income or without a companion, she enters into adultery.
- In Matthew 5 (see Day 1), the husband, by sending her away unjustly, makes her commit adultery, or at least gives her cover to marry someone else as if legitimately. But in CL 468, it is the wife’s desertion that makes her commit adultery.
| previous |  |
next |
|---|