Some twenty years ago, that wise and good man Gerald Vann wrote an article in Blackfriars about ‘The Muddled Marriage’. It was concerned with the plight of those spouses whose unions are canonically irregular, and apparently without remedy; it contended that they deserve a love and a sympathy they do not usually get; and it suggested they should be told that they were not in a state of grievous sin or cut off from the life of the Church. Such assertions could hardly go unchallenged, and a lumbering attack, Roman in origin, appeared shortly afterwards. Indeed, rumour attributes to the incident the subsequent residence of Father Vann in the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, whither he was sent, like some latter-day Ovid, to expiate his sins by the Black See.

Times have changed, and even Canon Law is not exempt. Ever more is being written on the matter of divorce and re-marriage. The bibliography at the end of this article (to which all references are made) shows that an up-to-date survey is available of how things stand in France, Germany and the United States; New Blackfriars, in June 1973, published several interesting articles to do with African attitudes in the matter; and the items by Harrington and O’Callaghan give useful accounts of scriptural and theological reflexion, with some further reading. Still more recent are the two works that provide the starting-point for this article. The first is an essay on the theology of indissolubility, the second an account, by a former presiding judge of the marriage-tribunal in the archdiocese of New York, of his own pilgrimage towards a change of heart in the matter. The two books contain between them most of the themes to be encountered elsewhere in what is being written : I wish to use them as an occasion for some remarks on the point myself.