"Divorce" is not a word you will find in the Code of Canon Law.
God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) and so do I.
(Image taken from the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Vatican’s website: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P87.HTM)
This is a tough post to write, and I do not wish to single out people who have limited knowledge of the law of the Catholic Church (canon law) for their difficulties in understanding it. There is a book making the rounds of a few Catholic media outlets, part of which book apparently is about the Catholic Church’s canonical/ecclesiastical tribunals, alleging how these tribunals contribute to the prevailing divorce culture of our times by “mandating” divorce. I have not read this book, and most likely will not. But to claim that any Catholic tribunal “mandates” divorce is not correct, given what the Catholic Church teaches regarding divorce.
As one can read in the image above from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, among the other strong terms, divorce is called immoral.
As such, no bishop can give formal permission for something which the Catholic Church, in its official teaching, calls immoral. Nor can the bishop’s own court — his ecclesiastical tribunal in his diocese — “mandate” something which is immoral.
An article in the National Catholic Register (https://www.ncregister.com/blog/betrayed-without-a-kiss-divorce-mandate) by the author about his new book — and the author, John Clark, is listed as a regular contributor at the National Catholic Register — also states that “[s]ome readers might be quick to point out that the Catholic Church allows divorce under some circumstances.” But this is not true either: there are no circumstances in which the Catholic Church allows divorce.
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