“Let your yes be yes and your no be no,” says Jesus, commanding his disciples never to swear. “Everything else comes from the evil one.”
Jesus is no casuist. We do not catch him saying it is all right to walk past a man suffering in the ditch, so long as you have something important to attend to. He does not say you may hate your enemies if you have cause. He does not say you may let your eyes go wild with lust, if only you restrain your hands.
We do not even catch him laying conditions on whether or when it is permissible to put away your woman. I phrase it that way, rather than “to divorce your wife,” because in both Hebrew and Greek – as in German, and many other languages – the words for “man” and “woman” do further duty as “husband” and “wife,” binding together biological and social realities.
A man can no more be a wife than he can be a woman. A man can no more be a woman than a human being can be a beast; though he can mimic their behavior, badly.
So when Jesus forbids putting away your woman, in one of the accounts he appends a parenthetical phrase, “except on account of porneia.” I take that to mean, “I am not speaking about fornication,” in which case putting away your woman as a woman is not the same as putting away your woman as a wife. That is not a condition but a clarification.
In any case, the words of Jesus are truly a two-edged sword, cleaving between the marrow and the bones. He makes sharp distinctions, not to split hairs but to set apart what human beings want to confuse. He is the Creator, who in the beginning created by distinguishing, dividing light from darkness, day from night, earth from sea, the birds from the creatures of the sea, the beasts of the field from one another in their distinct kinds, and man from the beasts; and when he created man, we get the first mention of male and female, distinct, meant for one another in sexual union.
Continue reading at the Catholic Thing