Rights in the Family
Appendix 7. (1293).
Among the Hebrews only men were allowed to divorce, but this was not unjust to women because:
1. Divorce was a remedy granted to avoid greater disorders in domestic society. Hence it was not a right. The remedy had to be applied in so far as necessary to counter evil and no further. If it had been applied to the woman, it would have had the contrary effect of increasing, not reducing evil in the family.
2. Granted that it was sufficient to allow divorce to one of the parties for the good of domestic society, it fully accorded with reason to grant it to the man rather than the woman because: a) a man's passions are more active, and he is able to satisfy them more freely; b) a woman's passions are of a passive nature and find a corrective in her subjection to a man; c) divorce granted to a woman makes her mistress of herself and of the man. This is contrary to the order of nature and opens the way to infinite evils in the family; d) feminine levity and mutability would more easily abuse such an indulgence; e) in love the woman is more tender than the man, but her love more easily becomes depraved and changes its object. For these and other reasons divorce was permitted only to the man by both the Mosaic law and the ancient legislations of Greece and Rome. However, the divine legislation of Moses maintained unchangingly this limitation of divorce until Christ abolished it entirely. The permission given by Herod to women to divorce was not properly speaking a law of the Hebrew people. The human legislations of Greece and Rome gave in to the impetus of depraved morals, and later granted divorce also to the woman. The effect was immensely harmful. Bonald notes:
| Among the Romans divorce was rare in the first years, so that in five centuries we have no example of it. In the later years it became so habitual that, according to Seneca, the women counted their age by the number of their husbands rather than according to the consular annals. Augustus was forced to command citizens to marry (the only example in history!). In the early years of the Greeks, and of all other peoples, divorce must have been very rare, but in the time of peace, customary contempt for women and deviation from all natural laws reached such an excess that a single sentence of Plutarch, in his moral works, is sufficient to give us an idea of it: `We know that as far as true love is concerned, women have no part in it'. (Du Divorce considéré au 19 siècle, etc. Résumé, §8) |