Catholic marriage is a binding contract that the church forces those who enter it to remain in it, even if problems arise and the marriage is not working.
No one is forcing anything. You CHOOSE to make the promise "for better or for worse until death do us part."
If you are not ready to keep that promise, don't make it.
AFAIK, nowadays churches do grant divorces, though it's a lengthier and more expensive process, and it is subject to approval from church authorities. Could be wrong.
There is no divorce in the Catholic Church. You can get an annulment in very extreme cases, but that is not the same as divorce.
"Declaration of Nullity" is not the dissolution of an existing marriage but rather a determination that consent was never validly exchanged due to a failure to meet the requirements to enter validly into matrimony and thus a marriage never existed."
1- Being wise in choosing a spouse isn't a guarantee that a marriage will work out, or will continue to work out in the future. There are no guarantees. All you have is hope
, or the choice to be in an unhappy marriage simply to satisfy a religious requirement by the Catholic Church.
No. All you have is not hope. You have a brain and the ability to communicate with your partner before marriage, to make sure you are on the same page regarding the most important aspects of your life together. And you have your will, which means you choose to behave towards your spouse the way you promised you would, so that disagreements don't turn into irreparable conflict.
Marriage is not about luck or chance. It's about choices you make, both before and after the wedding.
2- Point being: Marriages can fail, and they fail more often than not. Reasons may be stupid or selfish to you, but they aren't to others. It is a subjective matter, and it's not always easy to draw the line between what is selfish and what is not. For example, if your spouse develops a drug addiction and your repeated attempts at helping him ended in failure because he refused to help himself or it was too hard, would you be selfish if you left him? Some would say leaving a spouse in such a vulnerable condition is selfish no matter what. Others think attempting to help him overcome addiction makes it OK to leave if such efforts failed for whatever reason. We can't predict the future, nor can we prepare for everything. Making the choice to remain in an unhappy marriage also harms the children because, guess what, your unhappiness spills over into other facets of your life, be it your interaction with children, spouse, coworkers, or community. You can only play 'pretend' for so long. Children need a stable, loving, nurturing environment and that can be provided in a marriage (Catholic or otherwise) or outside. And when a marriage is no longer providing such environment, it is time to let go of it and stop using the children as an excuse.
Most divorces are caused by these reasons:
- Either the partners got married for the wrong reasons...
- Or they got married without a real understanding of what marriage is...
- Or they got married without a real understanding of who their partner is...
This could be avoided with proper education on marriage, but instead we have the liberal media teaching people the opposite.
As for children, they don't care why you want a divorce. It's a bad deal for them to live with parents who hate each other and it's a bad deal for them if their parents divorce. So you shouldn't get married or have children if you don't have the kind of relationship that can sustain parenthood.
