Divorce and annulment is always a touchy subject, particularly because of the complexities of marital situations people find themselves in.

This article isn’t meant to address particular situations – that’s always best done with your pastor. But there is much confusion as well, with some insisting an annulment is simply “Catholic divorce.”

Let’s look and see what Scripture and the Church have to say about marriage and how divorce and annulment fundamentally differ.

Jesus’ very clear teaching on divorce and remarriage is in Mark 10:2-12: “The Pharisees … asked, ‘Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?’… He said to them in reply, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They replied, ‘Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.’ But Jesus told them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate’ … the disciples again questioned him about this. He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’”

Luke 16:18 is similar: “Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

Jesus’ answer takes the Pharisees back to the beginning in Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

God’s original plan for marriage was absolute indissolubility. One-flesh unity that no human could break, “for I hate divorce, says the Lord” (Mal 2:16). But God temporarily tolerated divorce in Old Testament times because of the hardness of the Israelites’ hearts.

As Jesus came to institute a new covenant, he offers new sacraments and graces to help his followers live married life the way God had originally intended – with no divorce and remarriage. Divorce, permitted in the past, never had the power to end a valid marriage. Someone who remarried would then be committing adultery because they would still be married to their first wife – divorce or not.

St. Paul re-emphasizes Jesus’ teaching in Romans 7:2-3: “a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.”

Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11, 39, he adds: “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband) – and that the husband should not divorce his wife … A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.”

The Church also echoes this teaching in her constant insistence on the indissolubility of marriage: “The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it ‘what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder’” (CCC 1614-15). Similarly, canon law confirms that “a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death” (Code of Canon Law 1141).

Some will point out Jesus seems to make an exception to this teaching in Matthew 19:9: “Whoever divorces his wife, except for fornication, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Similarly, Matthew 5:31-32 states, “It was said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you, everyone who divorces his wife – except for fornication – causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

The word translated here as “fornication” (“unchastity” in other translations) is the Greek word porneia (from which the word pornography is derived), which can have various meanings. Looking at how this word is used in other situations in the New Testament provides good insight into how Jesus is using it here.

St. Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 5:1 when he refers to an illicit union between a Christian and his dead father’s wife. The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 uses it in the same sense in a letter to new Gentile converts in Antioch. The four prohibitions of the letter conform to the four prohibitions in Leviticus 17:8–18:26 on any foreigners who wished to live in Israel. It was common for Gentiles in those days (and in Jesus’) to have marriages between close relatives. These were forbidden by Jewish law, and such illicit relationships were referred to collectively as porneia.

Acts 15 echoes this usage, reminding Gentile converts to refrain from porneia. These marriages within forbidden degrees would be seen as invalid by the Christian Church, as under the Old Testatment.

The New American Bible makes the point clearly by translating this verse as the Church has always understood it for 2,000 years: “But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Similarly, the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition adds this footnote to Matthew 5:32: “unchastity: The Greek word used here [porneia] appears to refer to marriages that were not legally marriages because they were either within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity (Lev 18.6-16) or contracted with a Gentile.”

Jesus’ whole point on marriage was to restore it back to its original form: one flesh that no man can separate. It would make no sense to then return to the Mosaic concession he had just repealed. In using the word porneia, Jesus is not allowing divorce in the cases of unchastity/fornication. He’s allowing civil divorce in cases where no marriage exists at all.

In my next article we’ll look at the difference between divorce and annulment.