In this letter,1 I will consider in brief the rules of the Eastern Church touching divorce and re-marriage. I feel keenly the necessity of dwelling at some length upon this question, but I must confess that I am unable to do so.
What God has joined together let no man put asunder. This is the first thought that will naturally occur to an ecclesiastical court when a question of divorce is brought before it. Nothing but death should part man and woman wedded together in lawful matrimony. The Rt. Rev. Nicodemus Milash, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Zara, Dalmatia, explains that it is the mind of the Church that death, which parts and makes null the marriage tie, is not the one kind of death, i.e., the physical; but death in all its aspects, i.e. (1) physical, (2) moral, (3) Spiritual.
According to the Seven General, Nine Local Councils, and other legislation of national Churches, which have become recognized and accepted in all the Orthodox East, the following are causes for divorce: (1) Adultery, also when the fruit of the womb is intentionally destroyed; (2) when one party abjures Christianity; (3) when married to the mother of one’s god-child; (4) when the husband is elected to the episcopate and the wife gives her consent; (5) when one of the party retires to the monastic life with the consent of the other.
Concerning re-marriage: After a definite period of malicious desertion, the innocent party is sometimes allowed to re-marry. The innocent party in a case of adultery is also in most cases allowed to re-marry.
When the question of corporate union of the Churches is finally and officially brought up for consideration—and, let us hope, for its consummation—I think the question of marriage and re-marriage of the priesthood, especially after ordination, will be perhaps the first on the discipline of Bishops and clergy. I admit that some of the canons of both local and even Ecumenical Councils have a purely local power of law. But the one I am referring to, has not. The Canons III. and VI. of the Council of Trullo have had an ecumenical acceptance. Who will deny that they are binding on the Catholic Church to-day, or assert that they are not of sufficient importance to be accepted in any true branch of the Church?
In all the Eastern Churches a Bishop is a celibate, i.e., either a monk or a widower. For marrying after ordination, though it be for the first time, a presbyter, deacon, or even a sub-deacon, would be deposed, much more so a Bishop.
In Russia, where the Church is wedded to the State, there are no civil divorces; all family troubles and all differences between man and wife are brought before a Church tribunal. But we must confess, that the civil government has influenced these ecclesiastical consistories to such a degree, that they are almost secularized. Consequently, there is to-day in Russia a complete code of laws touching upon the question of divorce and re-marriage.2 In my opinion the somewhat rigorous discipline of the Roman Church in regard to this question would be more beneficial to society at large.
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Publisher’s Note: This article was originally published in The Living Church, vol. xxvi, no. 24, April 12, 1902, pp. 841-3.
See Oustav Duhovnih Konsistorii, published in St. Petersburg with the sanction of the Most Holy Synod