re when are two people married in god s eyes i have a question for you all related to this jesus condemns divorce several times in the new testament and i have a hard time with this the catholic church as far as i can tell does grant annulments with the statement that the marriage never really existed in god s eyes please if i am mistinterpreting correct me however i have witnessed marriages where two people were very much in love but recognized that they were destroying themselves and each other by staying in a marriage and that the problems were due to personal childhood issues that had never been resolved i ask you is divorce justified in such a case they knew who they were what they were doing they were deeply in love but in the end it did not work out i must admit that i don t see jesus forcing them to live together or even condemning that they go and seek happiness with someone else later on opinions vera i am your clock i bind unto myself today vera noyes i am your religion the strong name of the noye midway uchicago edu i own you trinity no disclaimer what lard st patrick s breastplate is there to disclaim this is a commonly discussed question though it s been long enough that i ll allow it to be asked as you might expect there is a range of answers catholics and some others will say that divorce is never justified by the way in situations where someone is being abused or for other serious cause separation is allowed by all traditions that i know no one should be forced to stay in a situation where they are in danger others see it as a last resort in situations that have fallen apart badly enough that the best we can hope for is to choose the lesser of evils in some sense the difficult legal question turns out not to be divorce but remarriage that s because of jesus statement in mark and par as with so many other things this turns on your approach to the bible conservative protestants tend to see statements like this as having no exceptions more liberal ones are willing to make allowances for situations where a literal interpretation would lead to painful results it is noted that at the time it was possible for a man to divorce his wife almost on a whim thus a common explanation in the more liberal approach is that jesus was trying to protect people from this sort of thing not to establish an absolute rule to which there could never be exceptions catholics as is typical with catholic ethics take a theoretical hard line but allow for exceptions in practice through the process of anullment in the last discussion most of our non catholic readers seemed to accept with some reluctance that in some cases there might be no good alternative but there was a feeling that the church should often be doing a better job of helping people prepare for marriage and deal with problems that come up during it and that in a properly run church divorce should not be necessary clh
