When your marriage is in dire straits . . . there’s a book for that.

It is with great joy that I pass onto you the news of Dr. Greg Popcak’s latest book release When Divorce Is Not an Option: How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Everlasting Love.  I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my wish list.  There’s a huge void in the marriage literature between the cliffs of Marriage is Wonderful!  and Better Luck Next Time!  I’m glad to see Dr. Greg making a stab at filling that chasm.

You can read more about it here.

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Lest we forget the Catechism does have a few words to say on civil divorce as a legitimate recourse in extreme situations:

2383 The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law.¹⁷⁷

If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.

And:

2386 It can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce decreed by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage.¹⁷⁹

Kat Fernandez has a few choice words for those who insist on asking, “Why didn’t you leave??”.  Must-read.

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Christian marriage isn’t easy, but it’s not complicated either.  It’s the doing what we need to do that always gets us.

Cover image courtesy of Amazon.com.