The trouble with trying to find porneia as an exception justifying the divorce of a valid marriage is that it does not work within the context of what Jesus is saying. All of this stems from seeing porneia as a sexual sin by one of the married couple outside of the marriage. Rather, I would ask you to see the porneia of which our Lord is speaking as occurring between the couple themselves, i.e. a sexually sinful union. There were many such unions in the Greek world that the Jews would hold to be sinful, and thus invalid. This reading alone does not negate what our Lord says in the rest of the passage.
For the reality that even after divorce the married couple are bound by marriage fidelity to each other I refer you to Saint Paul:
To the married, however, I give this instruction (not I, but the Lord): A wife should not separate from her husband—and if she does separate she must either remain single or become reconciled to her husband—and a husband should not divorce his wife. (1 Cor. 7:10-11)There is no exception here, after divorce "either remain single or become reconciled to her husband." And this, Paul says, comes from the Lord.
Polite request to make sure to read it all before responding. I don’t believe that you are being tl;dr, but I just like to not deal with piecemeal replies, so I request that you continue with that.
As I said, I cannot get past the textual analysis. I see the context, as I told you. But once again, I simply cannot see how you reach that definition except by fiat. Not when I don’t see it used that way anywhere else.
And if Jesus was talking about invalid marriages, why would divorce even be applied, since the marriage never properly happened?
Moving on from your 1 Corinthians quote, I am looking at the verses after for a spouse whose mate has abandoned her, but I have not fully analyzed that section yet, and what is meant by bondage slash slavery. So I’ll request that we don’t go into that right now and let me do some study, please.
But please let me say this. I do not LIKE adding exceptions. I am not looking for an easy out. I hate hate hate HAAAAAATE divorce, and the wounds from what happened in my family are still raw ten years later.
Maybe remarriage is sinful. In many cases, probably is. But I simply cannot, in honest assessment, bring myself to agree completely with you, at least in regards to denial of the Sacrament in all cases.
Sorry, but I’m not going to lie to you just to make this easier on me.
...
Pause here, then I change the subject.
But. Going back to the article.
The other question being whether second marriages, whether sin or not, are still marriages. As with my earlier comment about David, or Jacob’s two marriages, a marriage that began in sin still seems to be a marriage. Jesus never called it a fake marriage or a non marriage or ordered the woman at the well to go back to her first husband.
To add another divorce to that seems to be adding sin to sin.
Or, in common parlance, two wrongs don’t make a right.
If I understand correctly, Catholics would say that it isn’t actually a marriage, but I cannot see where they slash you get that. At least not in Scripture.
If it comes from tradition, then I suppose we can drop it here since that discussion would last for months.