No-Fault Divorce Laws: Bad for Everyone, What Role the Conciliar Church

By: Dr. J. P. Hubert

Numerous credible studies now document the tragedy that follows divorce. The sociological data confirm what already is known from the Natural (moral) Law and Divine Revelation that life-long marriage is in the interest of the marital partners, the children thereof and society in general. Please
see THIS... THIS... and THIS…for example.

No-fault divorce is contrary to the Natural Law, right reason individual/social justice as well as being incompatible with charity. It would be better if people never married and did not have children than to do so and then divorce. If this means maintaining a single life of sexual continence and chastity instead (as taught in Traditional Roman Catholicism), the individual and common good of society would be appreciably enhanced. In the secular neo-pagan West this would no doubt mean instead that single adults would continue to engage in contraceptive sex in order to avoid a more rigorous form of marital union in which morally licit sexual expression is part of a life-long total commitment on the part of the spouses.

Ultimately, it is not in society's interest to allow civil contract marriage which is subject to divorce, whether on the basis of no-fault laws or for just-cause. The former (no-fault divorce) virtually guarantees that over half of all marriages will end in divorce--a situation which is extremely destructive of and costly to society. The latter (divorce for just-cause or grounds only) while historically associated with a much lower overall rate of divorce (at least in the West) is inherently defective because it preserves the fiction that divorce is a reasonable (personal and societal) option if only one of the partners wishes to end the marriage and is able to demonstrate just-cause. It almost never is salutary (e.g. severe abuse perhaps being the only exception) when all of the costs--personal, economic, health and societal) are tabulated.

Covenant or life-long marriage as is characteristic of sacramental marriage (in which the marriage itself is recognized as a metaphysical reality) is the ideal (as well as statistically most successful long-term) and would be far easier to normalize and codify into law in Roman Catholic nation-states or other more traditional forms of government where Natural law and Divine Revelation serve as models for the civil law. Unfortunately, the world is almost totally bereft of any remaining Roman Catholic countries--perhaps Lichtenstein being the only example. I leave it to others to provide further potential examples.

In this day of almost deification of "science", the scientistic mentality and the "worship of empirical evidence, it would be logically consistent for all governments to reform their marriage and divorce laws by making them compatible with the now indisputable evidence that no-fault divorce and civil contract marriage are harmful. Given that the requisite empirical data is now available, logic dictates that this should mandate a return to or institution of legally binding covenant/sacramental marriage in which divorce is allowed only for serious "just-cause" (if allowed by mutual consent of the partners in the case where there are no children involved, the adverse health effects for the individuals and society including the cost to the health care system persist).

Under a system of covenant/sacramental marriage, permission would be granted by the appropriate civil authorities only after couples were properly educated about the benefits and responsibilities of the marital state. It should be made impossible to argue after the fact that the couple was 1) not given adequate warning as to their obligations or 2) not supplied with proper and legally binding informed consent. To do otherwise is to engage in a suicidal form of social engineering in the name of a rabid form of individual freedom/liberty absent the required personal and societal responsibility commensurate with the seriousness of the marital state.

The Traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on Sacramental marriage and the proper use of the sexual faculty is born out by the sociological data on divorce including its negative impact on the former marital partners, the children involved and society in general. This further proves that the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church taught the immutable truth which Our Lord desired man to have. In His transcendent position beyond the confines of the space/time dimensions of the known universe, God being omnipotent is/was well aware of what we mortal human beings are only now beginning to document through experience and empirical/retrospective analysis.

Unfortunately, the Conciliar Church has undermined the 2000 year old teaching on marriage, divorce/remarriage and the meaning of human sexuality through a variety of destructive innovations including the plethora of annulments being granted. A list of some of the negative effects include: the homosexualization of the Catholic clergy, the practice of artificial contraception among professed “Catholics” which now equals the non-Catholic population as does the overall incidence of divorce and abortion. There has been a total denial (e.g. through a failure to preach) of sexually related sin including sodomy, fornication, masturbation, abortion and the normalization of sins against chastity--in behavior, language and provocative dress. These are only some of the areas in which the Conciliar Church has contributed to the moral depravity of contemporary society.

Credible estimates suggest that almost half of the living Roman Catholic clergy is homosexual in proclivity and or practice. Absolutely nothing has been done by the Conciliar Church to rectify this abhorrent situation, one which is well-known to the Holy See and the world-wide Episcopal Conferences. Some so-called seminaries are known to be nothing but homosexual palaces of debauchery and yet they are allowed to remain in existence. For example see Good Bye Good Men by Michael Rose.

Empirical evidence clearly establishes quite apart from other available evidence (e.g gross incompatibilities between Traditional and Conciliar Church teaching on faith and morals including the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass) that the post-Vatican II Church is the cause of a marked decrease in morality among Catholics in particular and Western society in general through its rejection of Traditional Roman Catholic teaching and the adoption of heterodox innovations. Retrospective empirical Social Science data now support the conclusion as well.

For these and numerous other reasons too extensive to catalogue, Rome should reinstitute the Tridentine Mass of Pope St. Pius V establishing that it is henceforth the only valid and licit Catholic Mass to be offered throughout the world, declare the Novus Ordo Missae to be a tragic experiment which will be placed on the trash-heap of history never again to reappear and either completely repudiate or radically correct the documents of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar reforms so as to be harmonious with the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church--before it is too late. Perhaps only in this way (barring Divine intervention) will a faithful remnant survive through which the authentic Gospel of Christ can continue to be preached throughout the world. “But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)