What Binds Marriage Forever

What Binds Marriage Forever: Reflections on the Indissolubility of Marriage is a collection of texts written from 1956 to 1971 by Ida Friederike Goerres, herself a married lay woman. Her main focus is the indissolubility of marriage.

In the Preface, Goerres observes the emergence of a marriage crisis in the West. "Each passing day," she writes, "the conversation about marriage grows in gravity and urgency." She wrote this in 1956; she could have written this and the other parts of this book in 2023.

The centerpiece of the book is Chapter 1, written in 1971. She argues against Catholics who are trying to reframe marriage a mere love-bond that ceases when love ceases. She mounts a defense of the Catholic teaching on marriage against her counterparts' calls to allow divorce and remarriage. She exposes the central role modern individualism in their arguments. Shedemonstrates how their arguments are ahistorical, a recipe for relational instability, and harmful to those who suffer when their spouses are adulterous, especially when the adulterous spouse is cheered on for acting out of "love." Her core argument is that what binds marriage forever is a combination of "covenant, law, and grace, that is, sacrament."

Chapters 2 and 3 are essays on mixed-marriage, that is, marriage of a Catholic to a baptized non-Catholic or a non-Christian. Unlike those who avoid this topic today, Goerres makes clear the many problems generated by such marriages, not least of all for children.

Chapter 4 is an overview of the sacramentality of marriage. She explains how marriage relates to the indissoluble bond between God and creation and she explains how the three traditional goods of marriage (fidelity, sacrament, offspring) are reflected in the marriage liturgy.