47. Sacrament of Matrimony

Letter#47 Sacrament of Matrimony
My dear Mr. Isaacs:
I am sure you will agree that marriages contracted according to God's law are the best, as they have always been considered by Jews as well as Catholics. That is why Orthodox Jews and Catholics never considered unions contracted solely before magistrates to be marriages in the religious sense of the term, though they are legal. Jewish marriages, I mean of religious Jews, were "consecrated unto God according to the Law of Moses and of Israel"; whereas Catholic Christian marriages are consecrated unto God according to the Law of Christ, "in Christ," "till death do us part." While Jewish marriages were of the highest order known and practiced in priestly Judaic times, polygamy and divorce were permitted. Both of these practices were specifically and emphatically declared by Christ to be anathema. The Sacrament of Matrimony, which is the subject of this letter, is the sixth in the list of sacraments. It is the most important from a sociological point of view, because upon the permanency of family life depends the integrity of conjugal relationship and the stability of the state. The family is the primary and most perfect form of human society. Therein is seen the most perfect communal relationship - common ownership, distribution according to needs rather than deeds, and the authority of love, exercised with consideration for the well-being of each and all. It was the purity, holiness, and sublimity of the sacrament of matrimony that was the first Christian sociological factor that awakened in my heart a friendly feeling toward the Catholic Church, though it was not the thing that led me to the baptismal font. My attitude had been one of indifference as to what the Catholic Church taught, rather than hostility toward her. Strange to say, it was not Catholic association, nor any Catholic publication, that called my attention to the attitude of the Church towards marriage. It was a Unitarian, the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, the most competent Labor Commissioner America ever had. I was in a battle against the Marxian principle of marital relations terminable at the will of either party, without the intervention of the Church or the State, as set forth in the writings of Socialist doctrinaires. It was then that I came across our Government Report on "Marriage and Divorce," by the Commissioner of Labor. In it he said, "Large and increasing as the number of divorces in the United States is, it is an undeniable fact that were it not for the wide-spread influence of the Roman Catholic Church the number would have been much greater. The loyalty of Catholics to the teachings and doctrines of their Church, and the fact that one of the cardinal doctrines of the Church is that Christian marriage is a holy sacrament which, when consummated, can be dissolved for no cause and in no manner, save by death, has unquestionably served as a barrier to the volume of divorce which, except among the members of that church is, and during the past twenty years has been, assuming ever increasing proportions throughout the country" (p. 122). Matrimony, says Christ through His Church, is a sacrament that binds a baptized man and woman into an indissoluble conjugal union. The sacrament, by virtue of its institution by Christ, confers the grace necessary to lighten the burdens that arise in this sacred and most intimate relationship, sanctifying, unifying and perpetuating it. Christ paid an eternal honor to marriage by performing His first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana in Galilee. There, at the mere request of the mother of Jesus, He turned water into wine, thus saving the hosts from embarrassment and prolonging the joy of the wedding guests. It was the first manifestation of the divinity of Christ through miracles. That divine act caused Bishop Ellicott to say, "The conscious water saw its God, and blushed." The first New Testament contrast of Christian marriage to Jewish marriage is seen in the Sermon on the Mount. It comes to mind every time some prominent writers or preachers among modern Jews claim to believe in the Christ of that great discourse. The Sermon shows that divorce, from a religious point of view, is from Moses and not Christ; that it is Jewish and not Christian. Hence so long as Jewish leaders believe, as they do, in the right of husband and wife to separate and remarry, they cannot claim the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount. The Mosaic Law permitting divorce is set forth in Deuteronomy 24:1-4. It is said to have been promulgated because Moses was unable to stop the divorce practice common in Israel and among other oriental peoples. It is contrary to the original law of marriage (to which Christ referred in St. Matthew 19:1-9), in which man is told that God made husband and wife "two in one flesh," God having given Adam one wife, and she so remained until death severed her earthly relations with her husband. To lessen the anti-God marital conditions in Israel, Moses permitted a wife to be divorced by her husband. That law still obtains among Orthodox Jews, as you well know. It is called "Get" (bill of divorce). As others besides you will read this letter, I herewith present a statement of it, from the pen of Dr. Abraham Maurice Silbermann, of London, author of many Jewish books, including a dictionary of the Talmud, Midrash and Targum, "Husband and wife can be separated only by a Bill of Divorce, Get, which the husband writes, or orders to be written, and hands to his wife, saying: `This is thy Get, thou art divorced and are permitted to marry whomsoever thou wilt.'" Christ, exercising His divine power in the Sermon on the Mount, abrogated the law of "Get" that Moses promulgated: "It was said, `Whoever puts away his wife let him give her a written bill of dismissal.' But I say to you that everyone who puts away his wife, save on account of immorality, causes her to commit adultery; and he who marries a woman who has been put away commits adultery" (St. Matt. 5:31-32). This same principle applies to a wife who puts away her husband, as recorded in St. Mark 10:11-12. This does not mean that remarriage of the innocent party is permitted. It permits what we term a limited divorce, separation from bed and board, and then for an act that vitiates the marriage relation, as does adultery. The further declaration of Christ warrants this interpretation. "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder" (St. Matt. 19:6-7). On another occasion, Christ made a more detailed declaration regarding the Mosaic in contrast to His law of marriage. Before quoting it, it seems advisable to say that Jewry in the days when Jesus came to Israel was divided into two schools, that of Shammai, who limited divorces to extreme delinquencies; and Hillel who favored giving divorces for trivial causes, for instance, the wife burning the food she cooked for her husband. So long as I have mentioned these two intense disputatious schools, which came into existence not many years before the advent of Christ in Palestine, I may be pardoned for digressing with a further word about them. They are credited with having given shape to the Oral Law of Israel. In so doing they led Jewry away from Moses of old, by putting an end to the teaching of the Oral Law from Biblical texts. Thus Jewry was led into an exaggerated dialectical quibbling and hair-splitting, far removed at times, from the Law, that made Orthodox Judaism an intellectual and moral burden. This is important as a clue to an understanding of the present-day departure of Jewry from the Judaism of our fathers of old in Israel. The Shammaites were stringent, "inclined to be very rigorous in their interpretations of the Law," as the Jews themselves say. On the other hand, the Hillelites were "more tolerant--, ready for compromise and concession." The latter dominated after the destruction of the Temple, when the Aaronic priesthood and its sacrifices were no more. They organized the "new sanhedrin" in Jabneh, under the leadership of Johanan ben Zaccai (100 A.D.). This group declared that Hillel is to be followed in deciding disputed matters. Thus were they able to "compromise" by doing the abrogation stunt I wrote to you about some time ago. I am referring to the abrogation of the Mosaic sacrifices (which Christ had already displaced with the Sacrifice of the Mass), substituting prayers. To return directly to the subject of this letter, the Pharisees, hostile to Christ and anxious to embroil Him in the heated controversies between the two wrangling schools of Jewish thought, asked, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for any cause?" They expected some specific cause to be named which, no matter what it was, would most likely displease one side or the other. Instead of that, Christ answered by going back to the primary marital relationship, which was of God's direct making, viz. - "Have you not read that the Creator, from the beginning, made them male and female, and said, `For this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder" (St. Matt. 19). A direct answer of a disputatious nature was desired, for it was trouble and not information that the Pharisees sought. So they pressed the issue, "Why then did Moses command to give written notice of dismissal, to put away?" Christ replied, "Because Moses, by reason of the hardness of your heart, permitted you to put away your wives; but it was not so in the beginning, and I say to you, that whoever puts away his wife, except for immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and he that marries a woman who has been put away commits adultery." Christ did not condemn Moses, who had set down the perpetuity of the marriage bond in Genesis 2:24. Christ knew that Moses had condemned his own people for putting away the wives of their youth. Moses tried to mitigate the evil. Marriage in the Old Law was dealt with as a function of nature. But under the New Law, Christ, by the exercise of His divine power, gave matrimony a supernatural status by elevating it to a sacrament. I am dealing herein with the principle of matrimony, knowing very well that, though divorce is permitted, there is an intense family spirit among religious Jews, and great devotion of the children for their parents. Yet its status in Jewry was always a precarious one, especially as far as the wife is concerned. That is perhaps one reason among many that Orthodox Jewish men thank God that "thou hast not made me a woman." The status of woman was elevated by Christ, not only in the family but in the worshipful functions of the Church, though they are barred from the priesthood. The unit of the Church is the individual soul in prayer, at the Sacrifice of the Mass, and in the reception of all the sacraments, and in the attainment of salvation. In Orthodox Judaism, which is the dominating synagogued part of Jewry, women have a negative, an inferior status. They are not allowed to worship by the side of their husbands, being seated in the women's galley of the synagogue; forbidden to deck themselves with a tallit (prayer shawl), or to invest themselves with phylacteries; and their marriage vows can be annulled by their husbands. The Catholic Church stands virtually alone with Christ when it comes to matrimony. This is recognized by men of all faiths. That is why Goethe, noting the matrimonial stability of the Catholic Church, says in his "Autobiography," "Here a youthful pair gave their hands to one another, not for a passing salutation, or for a dance; the priest pronounces his blessing upon the act, and the bond is indissoluble."
	Sincerely in the Messiah D.... G........
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