The civil divorce epidemic (GS 49), hence the constantly increasing number of divorces, in addition to widespread legislation and our society’s divorcists mentality, represent a worrying indication for conjugal and family communities also influencing the lives of Christian couples.

One must on this subject first of all bear in mind that civil divorce legislation does not consist in a human right. It is not in the absolute sense a question of acknowledging a right but rather, in most cases, of providing "an alleged remedy for a serious social problem", such as the breakdown of a marriage.

Effectively however divorce legislation encourages society and its authorities towards a slow but progressive change in the interpretation of the marriage bond, persuading people to think that marriage is dissoluble; thereby introducing through the law’s social and pedagogic functions – knowing full well that legality is not simply identified with morality – a concept that deprives from within one of the most important realities for the creation of a personal and social life.

Experience on the other hand shows that this kind of legislation tends to become progressively radicalised. Cases requesting marriages to be legally dissolve multiply; couples without insoluble problems, but going through passing crises are encouraged to resort to this legal solution; legal principles are frequently introduced allowing married couples to establish the duration of the conjugal bond, or even allowing one or the other to make this decision unilaterally, as if one could simply repudiate the other. In such a manner – from a legal point of view – marriage is provided with less stability and protection than is provided for far less important contracts both in a personal and in a social sense.

In doing this, what was supposed to be a remedy for a problem, effectively opens the door to attacks on marriage and on the family.

In treating the conjugal bond this way, the State does not fulfil its fundamental duties as far as respecting the common good of society is concerned; furthermore, without adopting any particular religious confession, the legislator cannot feel he as at a superior level as far as the respect of the human’s being’s dignity and fundamental rights are concerned, the real issue here.

The generalisation of a divorcist legislation and mentality is not in fact required by the "autonomy" of society and the civil authorities, but rather by the wish to accept a certain kind of ideology, an understanding of humankind and its freedom that on this occasion could be defined as utilitarian individualism.

The origins of this phenomenon are to be found in a corruption of the concept of freedom perceived as pure autonomous self- determination, thanks to which a person establishes what must be done exclusively according to taste and usefulness, without considering the other person and that person’s good, or the needs of the objective truth; the person in this case does not accept the sincere renunciation of self but only its egocentricity and selfishness. A utilitarian understanding of freedom, incapable of acknowledging responsibility is the opposite of love and soon becomes a systematic threat to families.

The truth on the contrary is that "love is the inborn and fundamental vocation of each human being" (see FC 11), that man ", cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself (GS 24); because as all Christians know, God is love and created men and women for a destiny with a shared life.

The gift of self, paradigmatically achieved by man and woman in marriage, must for its very nature be lasting and irrevocable. The indissolubility derives first of all from the essence of giving oneself, from the nuptial characteristic of love and achieves an authentic consecration by its sacramental integration in the final nuptial gift of self, fulfilled by Jesus Christ on the Cross.

While understanding the real problems and human beings, moral weakness, the Church must remain faithful to the truth as regards to human love. Without this there would be the risk of losing freedom and love itself, humankind’s happiness when no longer able to understand itself. If on the contrary the truth regards to humankind’s freedom and the communion of persons within matrimony are safeguarded, the creation of a civilisation worthy of that name, a civilisation of love will become possible.

Civil divorce, as the negation of the unity and stability of the nuptial bond, means denying love and constitutes an authentic counter-testimony that damages the personal and family common good. Therefore the values of marriage and the family are placed at the centre of humankind’s existence, of culture and of society. God’s People, announcing and living Jesus Christ’s Gospel, fulfil these values in the splendour of their truthfulness, as the primordial form of the sincere gift of self, founded on God the Creator and the Redeemer’s gift of Himself, on the grace of the Holy Spirit invoked by the bride and groom during the celebration of the sacrament of matrimony.

Alfonso Carrasco Rouco

The St. Damaso Faculty of Theology

Madrid