New Thinking on Divorce

The new frame of mind of the Roman Catholic Church--its fresh awareness of living in a pluralistic world and its strengthened commitment to the liberty of man's conscience--is softening its historic opposition to easier civil divorce laws. In New York, the state legislature is about to enact, with Catholic acquiescence, the first reform bill since the 1787 passage of a statute that permits divorce only on grounds of adultery. Speaking through their Albany lobbyist, Charles Tobin Jr., New York's bishops made it clear that they would not use their spiritual authority to influence the votes of Catholic legislators, though they still question specific proposed changes, such as the granting of divorce after two years of voluntary separation.

The Rev. Joseph Hassett, S.J., professor of philosophy at Fordham University, assured Catholics that they could support divorce reform in good conscience, because civil law is made "not to uphold religious convictions of a particular group, but to promote the common good of all citizens." Lined up behind reform were New York's top Catholic politicians, from Senator Bobby Kennedy to New York City Council President Frank O'Connor.

What God Has Joined. The new emphasis in Catholic opinion is the distinction between civil and religious law, each of which remains valid in its own sphere. The Catholic Church believes that marriage is a sacrament instituted by Christ, when he said, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." Catholics who have been civilly divorced remain in good standing in the church if they do not remarry. Remarriage, however, is forbidden while the ex-spouse lives.

The big out is the annulment, granted when the marriage contract can be proved in some way defective, and thus invalid from inception. Among grounds for annulment are impotence, refusal to have children, lunacy at time of marriage, coercion of one of the partners into wedlock, or some technical defect of the ceremony itself. French church tribunals, for instance, granted Napoleon an annulment from Josephine because the required two witnesses were not present at the marriage. Last year, the New York Archdiocese got 1,500 annulment petitions, of which it granted nearly half--mostly on the "technical defect" that the marriage was contracted before a civil authority or non-Catholic clergyman.

Pope Paul VI is openly alarmed at the thousands of annulment petitions submitted in recent years to the Sacred Rota in Rome, the church's final court of appeals on marital matters. Annulment can be a temptingly clear-cut solution to complex legal and human dilemmas, although sometimes it seems to non-Catholics like a merry-go-round that permits influential Catholics such as Lee Radziwill and Moviemaker Michelangelo Antonioni to shed old spouses and acquire new ones with the approval of the church. Currently, Italian Actor Vittorio Gassman, twice mar ried (to Actresses Nora Ricci and Shelley Winters) and twice civilly divorced, is asking the Rota to annul his church marriage to Ricci on grounds that she did not accept the indissolubility of marriage at the time she contracted it, which would make it invalid in the eyes of the church. The annulment, if granted, would permit Gassman to wed French Actress Juliette Mayniel, who gave birth to their son Alessandro last month.

Recognizing the spiritual anguish caused when people can neither live together in conjugal love nor get a divorce, some priests have been known to advise young couples, pressured to marry because the girl is pregnant, to contract a civil wedding. Later on, if they see that their life together is working out, they can get married in church.

"Subtle Casuistry."The church's willingness to grant annulments while refusing to permit divorce troubles many Catholics. At the Vatican Council's concluding session, Melchite Archbishop Elias Zoghbi denounced the "subtle casuistry" of the church: "It happens that after ten or 20 years of marriage, they suddenly discover an impediment that permits everything to be resolved as though by magic. Our faithful are sometimes stupefied and scandalized by it all." He suggested that the Catholic Church allow divorce on certain grounds, such as abandonment, as the Orthodox churches do.

Switzerland's Charles Cardinal Journet, presumably on Pope Paul's orders, hastened to spike further debate by reasserting the church's traditional teaching. But Zoghbi's jarring plea, says Dominican Theologian Eduard Schillebeeckx, "placed the problem on the table, and that in itself is most important."

The Vatican Council has already tempered the harsh Augustinian notion that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation; the new concept is that marriage is first and foremost a "union of love."

This may gradually change the church's view on what constitutes a valid marriage. If the chief end of marriage is conjugal love, says one theologian, its absence could flaw the marriage contract to the point that the union itself becomes invalid.

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