The modern family lives in a culture where the word "divorce» has long ceased to sound like a tragedy. It has become an administrative procedure, a psychological outlet, a way to “start over”, sometimes even a sign of personal strength. The Ukrainian context is especially painful: war, emigration, financial instability, trauma, separation, exhaustion, wounded psyche of children and adults. According to data published by Opendatabot based on the Ministry of Justice and the State Judicial Administration, In 2025, there were over 165 marriages and over 124 divorces in Ukraine — approximately 7 divorces for every 10 marriages. This does not mean that “seven out of ten concrete couples will definitely break up”, because statistics compare events in one year, not the fate of the same couples. But the moral message is clear: society has become accustomed to living as if marriage is a temporary union that lasts until it becomes too difficult.
For a Christian, such logic is dangerous not because the Church does not see human pain. On the contrary, the Church sees it more deeply than the world. She knows that people can be wounded, exhausted, abandoned, humiliated, that there can be violence, addiction, betrayal, psychological destruction in the family. But the Church also knows something else: not every fatigue is the death of love, not every crisis is the end of a marriage, not every disappointment is God's sign to leave. Very often, divorce begins not in court, but in a thought that a person stops rejecting. First, this word is uttered during an argument, then it becomes an option, then a fantasy of relief, then an excuse, and then a whole internal case against a husband or wife is formed.
This is where the moral theology of marriage begins. Christian marriage is not just a private agreement between two people. In the Catholic Church, and therefore in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, marriage between baptized persons is a Sacrament. The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, which the UGCC uses, states that the conjugal union of a man and a woman arises through irrevocable personal consent, encompasses the community of the whole of life, is aimed at the good of the spouses and the birth and upbringing of children; among the baptized it is a Sacrament in which the spouses are united by God and strengthened by grace. It is also said there that the essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility.
The UGCC, being an Eastern Catholic Church, has Byzantine spirituality and liturgical tradition, but is in full communion with the Roman Apostolic See and uses the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. Here the principle is different: a valid and consummated sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved by any human authority and for no reason other than death. This is how the CCOC formulates can. 853. The Catechism of the Catholic Church also teaches that between the baptized, a valid and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human authority other than death; at the same time, the Catechism recognizes that separate residence while maintaining the marital bond may be lawful in certain cases, and civil divorce may be tolerated if it is the only way to protect rights, children, or property.
Therefore, in the Catholic and Greek Catholic understanding, it is necessary to distinguish very clearly between three things: divorce, separation and declaration of nullity of marriage. Divorce in the civil sense does not break the Sacraments if the marriage was valid. Separation means that the spouses can live separately when living together has become dangerous or morally impossible, but the marriage bond remains. The CCOS explicitly states that after adultery, the innocent party may have the right to end the life together, although the Church encourages forgiveness if possible; also canon 864 recognizes a legitimate reason for separation if one of the spouses creates a serious danger for the other or for the children, or makes life together too difficult. Declaration of nullity of marriage is not “Catholic divorce”, but a church decision that a true marriage bond did not initially exist due to lack of consent, obstruction, coercion, inability to assume the essential duties of marriage, or another canonical reason.
This is where confusion often arises. The Orthodox pastoral approach might say: the marriage was tragically destroyed by sin, so after a penitential path, the blessing of a new union is possible. The Catholic approach says: if the marriage was valid and consummated, it is not dissolved by a court, a bishop, or the state; if there is serious reason to think that the Sacrament did not occur, this is investigated by an ecclesiastical tribunal. In both traditions, divorce is not good. But in Catholic discipline there is no “church divorce” valid sacramental marriage.
The greatest danger in modern marriage is that people enter marriage with a hidden condition: “I will be with you as long as I am well”. Such a condition may not be said out loud, but it lives in culture, in TV series, on social networks, in advice from friends, in psychological phrases taken out of context: “choose yourself”, “You don’t owe anyone anything”, “If you’re not happy, leave”. There may be a grain of truth in these words when it comes to violence, humiliation, danger, addiction, or the actual destruction of a person. But when they become a universal key to any crisis, they kill marital fidelity.
Because love in the Christian sense is not just emotional comfort. Love is a covenant. It is a decision to be faithful when feelings change, the body ages, the character turns out to be more complex than it seemed before the wedding, children take away strength, money is scarce, and romance gives way to the daily cross. The Apostle Paul compares the union of a man and a woman to the mysterious unity of Christ and the Church. Christ does not love the Church only when she is beautiful, grateful, and obedient. He loves her sacrificially, purifying, exalting, giving Himself.
Therefore, the first therapy against divorce is to stop building an internal indictment. In every marriage, you can collect evidence against the other. You can remember every insult, every bad word, every indifference, every injustice. And then a person begins to live no longer with their husband or wife, but with their own case against him or her. It seems to say: “I have the right to leave because look how much evidence I have”. But such logic is dangerous: it does not heal, but trains the heart in hostility. A person convinces himself every time that his marriage has no future, and then wonders why he has lost the strength to fight for it.
The Church today must speak about divorce not only in the language of prohibition, but in the language of spiritual medicine. A couple that has been living in a cold war for several years is not always able to immediately return tenderness. But it can start by stopping destructive actions: not humiliating, not threatening divorce, not involving children in the conflict, not looking for an emotional replacement on the side, not taking every quarrel to the circle of people who only add fuel to the fire. Confession, spiritual guidance, family counseling, honest conversation with the priest are needed, and in difficult cases, professional therapy. For church families, this is not a shame. It is a shame to go to church for years and at the same time destroy the home with contempt.
At the same time, it must be said firmly: the call not to divorce does not mean a call to tolerate violence. Catholic law recognizes the legitimacy of separation when there is a serious danger to the partner or children. A woman or man who saves themselves and children from violence does not “betray the Sacrament.” They defend life, dignity, and truth. But there is a great moral difference between a dangerous situation and an ordinary crisis. This difference cannot be erased. If there is violence, addiction, a threat to children, one must act, seek protection, involve competent services, spiritual and legal assistance. If there is fatigue, pride, resentment, disappointment, a struggle of characters, then the first path should not be a breakup, but penitential work on oneself and the union.
The Ukrainian Greek Catholic family today faces a special temptation: to justify the breakup with war, emigration, trauma, fatigue. These factors are real. They hurt. But that is precisely why the family cannot be another front where everyone fights against everyone. If a man and a woman have survived under the pressure of history, losses, relocations, poverty, fear for the future, they need not a romantic fairy tale, but spiritual endurance. Marriage in wartime is not a beautiful wedding photo. It is a joint carrying of the cross, when sometimes love looks like silence instead of a cry, like a timely "Sorry", like a refusal to take revenge, like a decision not to say in front of the children something that can't be taken back later.
The Church must return to people the understanding of marriage as a promise. Not as a formality on the wedding day, not as a ceremony for pretty photos, not as “traditions for parents”, but as words spoken before God. When the friends stand before the tetrapod and receive a blessing, they are not asking God to adorn their love. They are asking God to enter their union and make it the path of salvation. And salvation almost never looks like continuous pleasure. It goes through a purification of the heart.
So before you say “our marriage is dead”, a Christian should ask himself: Have I really done everything I could? Have I stopped humiliating? Have I learned to listen? Have I acknowledged my own sin, not just someone else's? Have I sought help? Have I prayed for my husband or wife not as an enemy, but as a person with whom God has linked my life? Have I turned my children into allies in the war against the other parent? Am I living in a fantasy that somewhere outside this marriage, easy happiness awaits me without a cross?
The most terrible thing about divorce is not only the legal separation. The most terrible thing is the spiritual habituation to the idea that a covenant can be nullified if it has become difficult. This logic is then transferred to everything: to parenthood, to the parish, to vocation, to faith, to God. A person learns to get out of everything that has ceased to provide comfort. But the Gospel teaches otherwise: fidelity bears fruit where selfishness saw only losses.
That is why the article against divorce should not be a stumbling block for those who have already experienced the collapse of a family. There are people who have been abandoned. There are those who have struggled for years and have not been heard. There are those who have saved children. There are those who have sinned themselves and are now bearing the consequences. The Church has no right to pursue such people. But it also has no right, out of pity for the wounded, to start calling divorce the norm. Mercy without truth becomes sentimentality. Truth without mercy becomes a stumbling block. The Christian voice must hold both poles: marriage is holy and indissoluble; a person who has fallen or been wounded does not cease to be a child of God.
The UGCC today needs a new culture of marital pastoral care. Preparation for marriage cannot be a short formality before the wedding. Young people need to hear about money, conflicts, sexuality, having children, addictions, boundaries with parents, family prayer, fidelity, forgiveness, about what “trial cohabitation” does not prepare for the covenant, but often accustoms to temporality. Girlfriends after the wedding should not disappear from the parish's field of vision. We need meetings for young families, spiritual conversations for couples in crisis, parents' communities, access to Catholic psychologists, honest preaching about sin and no less honest preaching about grace.
For the Church’s main response to divorce is not fear or statistics. The main response is a renewal of faith in the reality of the grace of the Sacrament. If God has truly united a man and a woman, then this union is not based solely on their mood. It has a source deeper than emotions. But grace does not work magically. It requires cooperation: humility, prayer, honesty, asceticism of the tongue, discipline of thought, a willingness to ask for forgiveness, the ability not to inflate every offense to the scale of a sentence.
Modern culture says: “When things are difficult, look for a new life”The Gospel says: “When it’s hard, look for a new heart”. Sometimes, after all their efforts, girlfriends do indeed reach a canonically and morally difficult situation that the Church must consider. But many marriages could be saved if the word "divorce" did not become the first tool in the conflict. The family does not die in one day. It is taught to die for a long time: through indifference, sarcasm, pride, silent revenge, comparisons, escaping to the phone, interference from relatives, spiritual laziness. It can also be taught to live for a long time: through prayer, forgiveness, work, responsibility, tenderness, truth and the fear of God.
A Christian family is not an ideal family without conflicts. It is a family that knows where to take its wounds. Not to a lawyer as a first instance, not to social networks, not to random advisors, but to Christ, Who was faithful to the end. It is His faithfulness that is the measure of marital fidelity. And if the Church today has something strong to say to Ukrainian families, it will not be a phrase "endure everything". This will be different:
Do not be in a hurry to destroy what God can still resurrect.
