racter of marriage validly
contracted.

"The Pharisees came to Jesus, tempting Him and saying: Is it lawful for a
man to put away his wife for every cause? Who, answering, said to them:
Have ye not read that He who made man from the beginning made them male
and female? And He said: For this cause shall a man leave father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath
joined together let no man put asunder. They say to Him: Why, then, did
Moses command to give a bill of divorce and to put away? He said to them:
Because Moses, by reason of the hardness of your heart, permitted you to
put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to
you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication,
and shall marry another committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her
that is put away committeth adultery."(539) Our Savior here emphatically
declares that the nuptial bond is ratified by God Himself, and hence that
no man, nor any legislation framed by men, can validly dissolve the
contract.

To the Pharisees interposing this objection, if marriage is not to be
dissolved, why then did Moses command to give a divorce, our Lord replies
that Moses did not command, but simply _permitted_ the separation, and
that in tolerating this indulgence the great lawgiver had regard to the
violent passion of the Jewish people, who would fall into a greater excess
if their desire to be divorced and to form a new alliance were refused.
But our Savior reminded them that in the primitive times no such license
was granted.

He then plainly affirms that such a privilege would not be conceded in the
New Dispensation, for He adds: "I say to you: whosoever shall put away his
wife and shall marry another committeth adultery." Protestant commentators
erroneously assert that the text justifies an injured husband in
separating from his adulterous wife and in marrying again. But the
Catholic Church explains the Gospel in the sense that, while the offended
consort may obtain a divorce from bed and board from his unfaithful wife,
he is not allowed a divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_, so as to have the
privilege of marrying another.

This interpretation is confirmed by the concurrent testimony of the
Evangelists Mark and Luke and by St. Paul, all of whom prohibit divorce _a
vinculo_ without any qualification whatever.

In S