is exactly the same as marriage in a registry office; the same promises are made, lifelong companionship, monogamous marriage. No magic aura descends over the parties, no permanent bond of forged steel is made. If they marry for love; well and good. If they marry for lust, or for reasons of social convenience; not so good.
All is changed however when the man and woman are people whom God knows. Here he promises to be faithful to them, if they promise to be faithful to him. Then the marriage really is indissoluble! One of the parties can only get out of it, if he or she is prepared to lose the God, who till then had meant everything. Of course you do get men who would exchange God for a woman; but not very many. For practical purposes the relationship would be indissoluble.
I make no apology therefore for stating that in my opinion the permanent marriage bond to which the Church pays lip-service has no connection with reality, except for those people who (rightly or wrongly) do believe in God. For them the bond is permanent at least as long as they continue to believe in God. Even if their belief in God collapses, the parties may continue to believe in their marriage bond, if they continue to believe in each other. In other words the permanent marriage bond exists in the consciousness (or possibly the shared consciousness) of the parties; it does not exist in some place called heaven, written in a book in which some angel is scribbling away. Similarly if the parties believe in God, their marriage will exist in his consciousness. Similarly it will exist in the consciousness of all the parties' friends and relations. But the marriage bond does not exist anywhere else.
This dichotomy between the theory and practice of marriage is similar to what Hume must have meant when he said that there was no connection between logic and experience. Or again it is similar to the chasm between…