Dr. Towers astutely asks..” Where one mother has an affair and forces a divorce upon the family she created, another mother does everything she can to save her marriage to an unfaithful husband. Can it be merciful to the spouses, the children, and the communities involved to treat the women in these two situations the same?”

The problem seems to be that the meaning “mercy” has shifted to the temporal from where it ought to be focused, which is the eternal. Jesus repeated at least five recorded times that divorcing a spouse and marrying another while that spouse lives is ongoing, continuous adultery. Serious Protestant students of the bible know this beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite all the scripture and commentary manipulation orchestrated by church leadership in a vain attempt to justify what Jesus forbid. If it ended there, Pope Francis might be excused in his views, not the least of which was the shocking formal liberalization of purported “annulment” that accompanied. But it doesn’t end there at all, does it? The Apostle Paul warns twice (1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Gal. 5:19-21) that no unrepented adulterer will enter the kingdom of heaven. True mercy would convey that warning and carry out a church discipline similar to what is described in 1 Cor. 5, focusing on the souls of those involved and seeking to persuade them to sever their immoral union. True mercy would have no part in allowing such adulterous unions to form in the first place. True mercy keeps sinners out of hell by influencing them toward repentance. True mercy would recognize what Jesus and Paul made plain as day, that man was delegated NO authority to dissolve holy matrimony, which only death accomplishes, and would therefore prioritize the compassion toward the wronged covenant spouse and covenant children.

Whether it’s the Vatican or the ERLC, there is a certain lack of credibility for any ecclesiastical authority to expound on “the culture of marriage” while doing nothing politically to repeal or reform the unconstitutional provisions of unilateral divorce, while acting as an agent of the state in signing civil marriage licenses, the terms of which no longer reflect the covenant of holy matrimony in any respect (neither indissolubility nor complementarity – Matt..19:4-6) , and while continuing to perform weddings over divorced people that they’d be embarrassed to perform in the actual presence of Jesus Christ, our Lord.