Note: the following is my reflection on the Gospel passage.  It is intended to start discussion about the issues involved.  It does not claim to represent Catholic teaching on divorce, but I do believe it represents Catholic teaching on hardness of heart.

After the Transfiguration, Jesus warns his disciples that he will be killed and will rise again.  Then he starts to walk to Jerusalem, where he will die.  Early Christians saw this journey as symbolic of the Christian life; in fact, they called their sect “the Way.”  On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus preaches to his followers about problems that come up in life.  In last week’s gospel, the problem was people who are serving God but aren’t doing it our way or aren’t members of our group. This week the topic is divorce, and next week it’s money, and then status.

Obviously, marriage and divorce customs are very different in our day from the first century.  Among young people today a “single” person is anybody who isn’t “with” somebody else in a longish-term relationship.  Serial monogamy is the norm for many people, and marriage is considered to be about love between persons rather than the creation of families and dynasties.  Same-sex marriage is generally accepted.  We’re not going back to first century mores, so what can today’s Gospel passage possibly say to us about divorce today?

The thing that strikes me most about Jesus’ teaching on divorce is his approach.  The approach of the Pharisees was legalistic: learn the rule and then follow it.  This was the approach of the Catholic Church when I was young and the church still tends that way today.  In this approach, the rule was established in Genesis 2, our first reading, quoted by Jesus—no divorce—and that’s the rule.  Not only is divorce sinful; it’s not even possible.  Once married, you are married, and nobody can get you out of that.  Wiggle room is provided today by annulment, a finding that the marriage was not a real marriage to begin with.  My brother-in-law left the church after his divorce from his first wife, because he was not willing to get an annulment and thereby declare that his children from the first marriage were illegitimate. 

So the legalistic approach starts with the law.  The pastoral approach, favored by Pope Francis, begins from the fact that many people do get divorced, and it’s not enough to tell them not to divorce or to be celibate afterwards.  The pastoral approach is more like the approach of Jesus with the woman at the well.  He didn’t condone her multiple marriages, but his pastoral focus was on her spiritual life.  The pastoral approach to divorce takes into account that there are many reasons why marriages end.  My grandmother divorced my grandfather because he was a wino and didn’t support his family (this was at a time when only men could hold jobs).  Some people are dumped by their spouses.  Some couples realize that they are just not compatible and never will be.  The pastoral approach tries to find a way for people in these various and complex cases to proceed out of a bad situation. I’ve heard that Orthodox churches accept civil divorce in many cases, such as adultery, addiction, and long prison sentences.

In today’s Gospel passage, some Pharisees challenge Jesus to say whether divorce is allowed.  Deut 24:1-4 talks about a case in which a man divorces his wife and gives her a certificate saying that she is free to marry somebody else.  Of course, only the man could initiate divorce.  Actually, Deut 24 does not rule on divorce but simply accepts it as a custom.  The passage ends with a rule about whether the man can later accept his wife back.  Here is the text that the Pharisees rely on:

Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. (Deut 24:1-4)

The future of a divorced woman was not great, since women couldn’t own property or have jobs.  The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 was comparatively lucky; apparently she was always able to find a new man to support her.  In Morocco I’ve seen abandoned old women begging on the street.

Jesus’ response starts not from rules, nor even from pastoral concerns, but from his insistence on justice and compassion.  He says that Moses allowed divorce “because of the hardness of your hearts.”  Look at how Deut. 14 begins: “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her.” To send away one’s life’s partner with nothing more than a certificate of divorce because “she does not please him” is to selfishly abandon all concern for her welfare; it violates all the tenets of love, compassion, and justice.  We’ve all seen how often divorce tears apart the fabric of a family and can destroy the lives of children.  This is an issue of selfishness versus justice in Jesus’ eyes.

The Pharisees found an applicable law in a rather obscure text in Deuteronomy.  But Jesus goes straight to the Ten Commandments and says that the hard-hearted man who divorces his wife (and will presumably replace her) commits adultery against her.  Now adultery in biblical times was an offense committed against a woman’s husband, not against the offender’s own wife.  But that’s just what Jesus says it is: he “commits adultery against her,” just as a woman commits adultery against her husband if she has an affair.  Because Jesus’ concern is selfishness and hardness of heart, not property rights.

So Jesus is not about the law.  He is talking about hardness of heart.  He is not talking about cases in which an abandoned spouse or partner seeks divorce, or cases of insanity or abuse.  He’s not talking about divorce as a desperate measure after prayerful reflection and attempts to reconcile.  He’s talking about people who casually marry and divorce because of the hardness of their hearts.  And that’s a message that applies today no matter how much marriage mores have changed.