Losing a life partner or two could happen to anyone, but going through seven requires some effort. The vast majority of Americans ”” about 97% ”” wimp out and do not wed more than three times. As an octospouse, the 76-year-old [Larry] King is in rarefied company. Elizabeth Taylor has also hatched and dispatched eight unions. (Recent reports of a ninth have proved erroneous.) So has Mickey Rooney. Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married nine times. William Shatner has an impressive number of exes, as do Billy Bob Thornton and Joan Collins. Like news anchoring, the field of extreme spouse collecting is dominated by women who were once considered very good-looking and men who almost never were.
The official record holder until recently, it’s gratifying to note, was not a celebrity. The late Linda Wolfe of Indiana had 23 ex-husbands, although she admitted she married the last one as a publicity stunt. The other 22 were thus completely, totally genuine and heartfelt, and when last contacted by the press, Wolfe said she wouldn’t mind marrying again. She was hoping for a straight man; on the two occasions she married a gay guy, it didn’t take….
All of which raises the question: How many marriages are too many? Statistics show that more second marriages break up than first ones and more third marriages ”” about 75% ”” break up than second ones. Given that trajectory, shouldn’t a referee step in after the third or fourth and suspend play for the good of all?
Just an observation; at one time there was a universal discipline of the Church (both East and West) related to marriage that followed what we might today call the baseball rule… three strikes and your out. That discipline fell away in the Christian West sometime in the second millennium thought it is still enforced by the Churches of the Christian East. In a nut shell there are no fourth marriages.
I think this is a generally good and wise discipline which has never really been controversial in the East. If you know you are limited in how many bites you get at the apple you are likely to take marriage a bit more seriously.
Food for thought.
#1, is that rule in keeping with Christ’s admonition to “let man tear asunder three times, but not a fourth”?
Phil,
That second marriages are permitted at all is an act of mercy and sacramental oikonomia. It is done out of pastoral care recognizing the weakness of men and a desire that no one be placed under a burden too heavy. It is also a recognition that sometimes a failed marriage was doomed from the beginning. The concept of “annulment” is alien to Orthodoxy as it was to the early church both East and West. This is why there are provisions in the canons of several of the local synods of the Church (including the Western) that made provisions for second and in rare cases a third marriage. Likewise spousal abandonment and some other situations (apostasy etc.) were considered.
Even so the Church discourages second marriages in all cases. There is no right to a second marriage. Such is always an act of economy. When they are permitted the rites for a second marriage are not the same as those for the first. The ceremony including the hymns are highly penitential in nature. The whole thing is quite somber and subdued. In the rare cases where a third marriage is allowed the service is positively funereal. Almost all expressions of joy are absent. And the priest often forbids any form of reception.
AO, according to my wife, even first marriages are “highly penitential”.
AO, when you say that annulment is alien to Orthodoxy are you saying, for instance, that the marriage between a brother and sister is a valid sacrament in the Orthodox Church?
Phil,
No. The concept of annulment from a legalistic point of view is what I was referring to. We have nothing comparable to Rome’s vast Code of Canon Law.
AO, so would a brother/sister Orthodox married couple receive an ecclesiastical divorce or annulment?