The Orthodox Churches have been permitted couples to receive Communion after divorce and re-marriage. Perhaps this is because they have drawn more from the Fathers like St. Jerome. Consider Jerome's remark about his friend -- divorced and re-married.
Jerome’s remark
The Catholic Church is split, left against right. The most
visible manifestation of the split: immigration versus abortion. Most
pro-lifers oppose the Church’s teaching on immigration, and most
pro-immigration activists oppose the Church’s teaching on abortion. This weird
split in the Church, setting justice against morality, is new, going back
perhaps two generations. But there are some hints of it in the past. In about
400 AD, the story of St. Fabiola extracted a tantalizing remark from St.
Jerome: “… after repudiating her husband she did not continue unmarried … I
readily admit this to have been a fault, but at the same time declare that it
may have been a case of necessity. It is better, the apostle [Paul] tells us,
to marry than to burn.”
Fabiola’s story
If St. Jerome was the Father of Christian Hospitality, then
St. Fabiola was the Mother of Christian Hospitality. The two were friends, and
worked together in the hospitality movement. St. Jerome was the first (as far
as I know) to attach a hostel to a monastery; this significant new pattern of
hospitality began in Jerome’s monastery in Bethlehem and spread around the
world. Fabiola also built a hostel about the same time, near Rome, for pilgrims
and the needy there.
But before her years of service and hospitality, Fabiola had
a somewhat scandalous life. She married a man who became notorious for sexual
license, details unspecified. She left him, got a civil divorce, thought she
was free to re-marry, and did in fact re-marry. After her second husband died,
she was reconciled to the Church, and poured her life into serving the poor.
After her reconciliation, questions about her second marriage subsided.
Nonetheless, Jerome says this [slightly more extended quote]:
“So terrible then were the faults imputed to her former
husband that not even a prostitute or a common slave could have put up with
them. [Fabiola chose not to give detail about her husband’s behavior, so Jerome
doesn’t either.] The Lord has given commandment that a wife must not be put
away ‘except it be for fornication, and that, if put away, she must remain
unmarried.’ Now a commandment which is given to men logically applies to women
also. For it cannot be that, while an adulterous wife is to be put away, an
incontinent husband is to be retained. … Earthly laws give a free rein to the
unchastity of men, merely condemning seduction and adultery; lust is allowed to
range unrestrained among brothels and slave girls, as if the guilt were
constituted by the rank of the person assailed and not by the purpose of the
assailant. But with us Christians what is unlawful for women is equally
unlawful for men, and as both serve the same God both are bound by the same
obligations. Fabiola then has put away – they [her critics] are quite right – she
put away a husband who was a sinner, guilty of [unmentionable sins]. … On the
other hand, if someone makes a charge against her that after repudiating her
husband she did not continue unmarried, I readily admit this to have been a
fault, but at the same time declare that it may have been a case of necessity.
‘It is better,’ the apostle [Paul] tells us, ‘to marry than to burn.’ She was
quite a young woman, she was not able to continue in widowhood. In the words of
the apostle she saw another law in her members warring against the law of her
mind; she felt herself dragged in chains as a captive towards the indulgences
of wedlock. Therefore she thought it better openly to confess her weakness and
to accept the semblance of an unhappy marriage than, with the flame of a
monogamist, to ply the trade of a courtesan. … Fabiola therefore was fully
persuaded in her own mind: she thought she had acted legitimately in putting
away her husband, and that when she had done so she was free to marry again.
She did not know that the rigor of the gospel takes away from women all
pretexts for re-marriage so long as their former husbands are alive.” (From
Letter LXXVII, “To Oceanus,” in Philip Schaff’s compilation in A Select Library
of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church.)
Jerome is a hero to the left because he was committed to
hospitality. It’s a little disorienting to find the same kind of left-right
split that affects the 21st century cropping up in the 4th
century: a hero of hospitality slightly lax about divorce laws. Jerome (like
Pope Francis today) does not deny the authority of the teaching against divorce
and re-marriage, but (again like Pope Francis today) he is ready to see and
understand mitigating circumstances. He seems (to me) to suggest that what
Fabiola did was indeed wrong, but not mortally sinful.
I think it’s fair to connect Jerome’s attitude toward
Fabiola’s situation with his fierce fights with his bishop. Jerome argued fiercely
with his bishop, Bishop John II of Jerusalem, and called him a chamber-pot. The
angry arguments were – at least in part – about the teachings of Origen. Origen
was an original and provocative thinker, and he spurred fascinating discussions
about the Trinity that have been of great value to the Church ever since. However,
Origen had some troubled theories about the human body. For example, he
speculated that since the saints in heaven have perfect bodies, and since the
perfect shape is a sphere, perhaps everyone in heaven is spherical. How about
that? I’m not sure why Peter and James and John didn’t notice that at the time
of the Transfiguration.
Spherical speculation is one thing, but action is another –
for better or for worse. Origen read that if your arm leads you to sin, you
should cut it off; and if you eye leads you to sin, you should pluck it out.
Origen’s arms and eyes didn’t lead him to sin, but he did have a troublesome
appendage – and in perhaps excessive obedience, he lopped off his peccant parts.
Just about every Christian thinker since then has suspected that his attitude
towards the human body was flawed.
By contrast, Jerome was an ascetic, but he had a respect for
human bodies, and a patient awareness of frailty.
