“As for divorce, Our Lord was pretty clear on the subject. The Church’s position is actually not so much against divorce, but against divorce and remarriage.”
So let me get this straight; if a Catholic was married and his/her spouse became a serial adulterer, an addict and abusive towards the fammily (my first wife) and refused to change, a divorce could be acceptable to your church BUT, the non-offending spouse is punished by never being allowed to remarry?
It smacks of muslims punishing the victim of a rape for the crime of adultery.
Can you show me a verse where Christ said divorced people should remarry or were permitted to remarry?
The rule that Jesus gave us is that one who divorces and remarries commits adultery.
In the application of that rule, the Church permits individuals to submit to the judgment of the Church whether a “failed marriage” was really a valid, sacramental marriage at all. Because obviously, if no true marriage was contracted, then one may marry - validly - for the first time after escaping the failed relationship.
A simple case of an invalid marriage would be one contracted through force or coercion. Shotgun marriages are not valid in the Catholic Church. If a person is compelled to marry, then he or she hasn't freely entered into the relationship.
Another simple case of an invalid marriage concerns those marriages contracted with a significant element of fraud. Thus, a homosexual who is in the closet who marries defrauds his/her putative spouse and vitiates her/his free choice to marry.
There are other grounds to declare a marriage invalid (or null), but as they get more complex, I'm less competent to discuss them intelligently, and perhaps, they may not be as readily discussed on a forum like this.
However, it is possible that in a marriage such as you describe, that the Church could determine there was no valid marriage in the first place.
But if a real, valid, sacramental marriage did take place, then the Church cannot gainsay the words of Jesus, and must uphold the bond of marriage. In such a case, the innocent party would be unable to validly re-marry in the Church.
sitetest
Well...then we have to enter the subject of annulments. Did a genuine marriage exist in the first place? You may have genuinely consented to such a thing, but did your wife? Was she capable of doing so? Problems like serial adultery, addiction, and familial abuse don't usually pop up overnight (in many cases, as I'm sure your aware, the underlying factors existed for many years beforehand...such factors could very well have caused her to not have the ability to give her full consent)
The bottom line is that did Jesus say, What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder or not? The sole exception to that is if the spouse engaged in fornication (πορνεία)...with the strong implication that this referred to πορνεία prior to the marriage. (You will note the use of the word πορνεία versus the word μοιχάω - adultery)
Did Jesus say, But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication (πορνεία), makes her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, commits adultery (μοιχάω)?
The only way out of that is if one or the other spouse did not give (or was not capable of giving) genuine consent to be in a marriage as defined by the Church (i.e., exclusive relationship, consummated, open and able to have children).
Those are Jesus' words, those aren't the words of some Pope.
And I am not trying to condemn you...please realize that. I am just defending the teachings of the Church.