[sitetest]

Dear 1stFreedom,

I thought I'd learned that the Western Church does not GRANT Ecclesiastical Divorces, but that the Western Church accepts the VALIDITY of those granted by the Eastern Churches.

Hermann may wish to elaborate further.


sitetest

[1stFreedom]

>>I thought I'd learned that the Western Church does not GRANT Ecclesiastical Divorces, but that the Western Church accepts the VALIDITY of those granted by the Eastern Churches.

The Church does not recognize divorce PERIOD. The Church believes that a valid marriages is indissoluable, PERIOD.

The Church, however, does recognize a civil limited divorce which amounts to a legal separation -- but the parties are not free to remarry since the marriage is still presumed to be valid.

No offense, the the Ecclesiastical Divorce and the concept of "economy" used to justify it is an error in the Orthodox Church. It's actually a much larger scandal then the anullment scandal.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

I thought I'd learned that the Western Church does not GRANT Ecclesiastical Divorces, but that the Western Church accepts the VALIDITY of those granted by the Eastern Churches.

Correct. Or more precisely, in the past millenium or so (since the birth of modern Canon Law in the Gregorian period), the Western Church has not granted Ecclesiastical Divorces. One need not look far back in Carolingian and Roman times to find that the Western Church did accept it. For example, the Code of Justinian of AD 528, which permits divorce for adultery and abandonment, was accepted by the Pope (then a citizen of the Roman Empire).

The formulation of Trent is that the Western Church has not erred in teaching as she does on matrimony, not that all who do not practice marital legislation by western standards are wrong. This formulation was due to the intervention of the Patriarch of Venice, who was familiar with the eastern custom.