Nierozerwalność małżeństwa w Kościele prawosławnym
Indissolubility of Marriage in the Orthodox Church

Summary/Abstract: The Orthodox Church lays a big emphasis on indissolubility of marriage as the Roman Catholic Church does. However, the Orthodox Church does not treat the indissolubility as an absolute requirement of the law, but as a moral ideal which should be defended by the Church. When the indissolubility turns out to be inaccessible - the spouses having not become mature enough for receiving the mystery which the Church entrusts them with – then the Orthodox Church allows for a divorce and another marriage of the divorced. Attempts at justifying the practice of divorce in the Orthodox tradition focus on three basic arguments: 1/ a literal interpretation of Matthew’s clause (5:32); 2/ a specific concept of marriage in which the emphasis is put on its personalistic and synergic dimension; 3/ reference to the “principle of oikonomia”. So far, the issue of marriage indissolubility has not been subject of a broader debate in the ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. The documents of the dialogue were confined to stating the differences between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox positions on this issue. These differences have their pastoral implications, especially in the context of determining the singleness of persons who were ever married in the Orthodox Church.

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