Following Sabbath the confused guy started the same exchange. I don’t love her anymore, she makes my life unbearable, he complained.
Then divorce her answered the rabbi.
There was a time when I loved her and she made my life wonderful, the guy added.
Then don’t divorce her advised the rabbi.

On the third occasion the miserable man starts his venting again.
Convert to Catholicism snapped the rabbi. How will that solve my dilemna? Enquired the bewildered husband.
I don’t know snapped the teacher, at least then you can vex a priest and not a rabbi.

We observe the now impoverished level, socially as well as financially and of course familially, of the homemaking wife and mother. Maritally, both spouses (and parents)suffer under the deleterious and defeating effects of failing their unity. We see children who at one end feel ‘guilty’ and the other end feeling lifelong abandonment. We see adults giving in to unbecoming and selfish ‘arrested adolescence’ no matter any consequences. We saw in Chicago, very recently, how a neighborhood without fathers engenders a culture of turning on each other, when a 16-year-old was beaten to death for no apparent ‘reason’. Divorce surely is part of what leads to such sinful, felonious error and acts.

Jesus in effect says “I see nothing valid or necessary for anyone in divorce”. He may have conditioned that to such as domestic violence and such, but He was speaking to the general issue, not specific unfortunate exceptions. He witnesses that ‘what God has joined together in this unity let no man attempt to put asunder’ means powerful good comes out of the Matrimonial unity, starting with procreation for family. Any of us could ask ‘who has witnessed anything really good come out of divorce?’ Even a subsequent ‘good’ marriage has already been burdened.

And, observe closely: once divorce is considered a ‘solution’ in a given extended family, clan or tribe, virtually the whole group seems to be ‘infected’ with willingness to pursue such ‘solution’. The group is burdened for generations. Too many marriages are entered with the attitude (hardly a spirit) of ‘if it doesn’t work, we’ll [JUST] get a divorce’. After all, one or another beloved relative acted in such attitude.

One means of solution is to choose to do what my late wife and I chose. Before we wed, we chose to pull ‘divorce’ from our vocabulary. Thus bound, we had to find gracious, committed, united, ‘adult’ solutions, not mere puerile complaints.

All that said, I maintain that divorce more significantly mitigates against easy marriage, UN-CATECHIZED Matrimony. If marriage is to be profoundly considered ‘picking one’s LIFE partner’, it has to be seen that the path to joyful marriage and family is one of due diligence about that partner. All folks contemplating Matrimony simply must be helped and guided about the Sacrament that both life partners find its fulfillment in committed unity.

Blessed be God in His two-become-one of His gift of the Sacrament of Matrimony. Maybe, maybe all too likely, all of civilization rests on accepting God’s blessings in that gift.