How common or culturally accepted is divorce in Poland?

Just trying to know how common or culturally accepted divorce is in Poland?

It's quite common in Poland, is nothing new, and plenty of people are divorced. Most extended families will have members who are divorced.

Commonlaw marriages are also accepted and there are provisions in the law which give certain rights to cohabiting couples.

You must be referring to the 'legalism' law and not the law that will count for eternity.
When you get married in the church you take a vow to God Almighty that you will honor and cherish that vow until "death do you part".

Of course the non believers take that same vow, to whom I have no idea, which renders it meaningless so they can justify cohabitating.

Those millions of divorcees are free to consider any sort of philosophy they like, or not. Anyway, plenty of religions (including the predominant one in Poland) permit divorces under circumstances they feel appropriate. In theological terms, the death in 'till death us do part' can also mean the death of the marriage.


If they marry in church. The Polish civil ceremony talks about the commitment being 'trwaly' or lasting. It doesn't refer to any Scientology-style billion year contract.

Just to be clear, the Roman Catholic Church does not permit couples married in the Church to divorce under any circumstances, period. A valid sacramental marriage is in force until one of the couple dies. Only then is remarriage permitted. There is no provision for divorce in Catholic Church canon law.

"Annulment" is not a form of divorce. It is a decree from the Church certifying that there was never any valid sacramental marriage in the first place. Of course, there are a lot of mental, and financial, shenanigans involved, but, in the strict sense, it is not the equivalent of a divorce.

Contrary to common belief, Henry VIII never asked the Pope for a divorce. The Pope cannot grant divorces. He asked for a annulment on the basis that Catherine was his brother's widow. The Pope refused to grant it because Henry had received a dispensation to marry her from a previous pope.

If a couple that is validly married in the Church get a civil divorce, the Church does not recognize it, and considers the couple still married in the eyes of the Church. No exceptions. It is not a sin to get a civil divorce in the eyes of the Church, but it is a sin to get remarried outside of the Church because then you would be committing adultery.

Not if you are a Christian and get married in the Church jon.
Pedal your propaganda elsewhere.


Sources please or did you mean legalism terms.

Ah so does that mean if you got married outside of the church such as a registary office then got a divorce you would be ok to find a new bride and get married in church without any problems?

That's a bit Jesuitical. It is in effect a divorce.


I've only been married the once, but as a cradle Catholic am I committing the sin of fornication because I didn't get married in a Catholic Church?

yes i think so dolno, because in the eyes of the church, you have never been married.
My mother managed to get remarried in a church despite being divorced after long long chats with the vicar.
A friend of hers was Catholic, and paid loads to the Vatican to annull her first marriage , on the grounds 'that they had been so young'.! !!

I wish they'd fix the attribution wiggly, or whatever you call the thing that says who posted what.

Thats interesting

As long as you never petitioned the Church to get that marriage recognized by the Church, yes, you can get a civil divorce and get remarried in the Church.


No, there is an essential difference. Today, it doesn't make much difference, but in the times when inheritance of property and titles depended on legitimacy, it made a huge difference.


Not necessarily, and probably not. The Church can recognize you as being married even if you did not get married in the Church. In Canon Law, the concept is referred to as "natural marriage". If you were to get married to the same person in a Catholic Church, chances are that the ceremony performed would not be an actual marriage, but the blessing of an already existing one.

If you were to civilly divorce your wife, on the other hand, and try to get remarried to someone else in the Catholic Church, then it may be allowed. Or not. Canon law in these circumstances is devilishly convoluted. A lot depends on where you got married, the nature of the state's definition of marriage, whether your marriage was performed or recognized by a different religious group, and which one. And also on whether you had previously explicitly or implicitly asked the Church to recognize that marriage.

Very much yes. Millions of people who were married in mosques, churches, whatever, get divorced.


Pedal your propaganda elsewhere.


Just to be clear, every RC diocese has a Diocesan Marriage Tribunal to deal with dissolving marriages. The RCC prefers anullments, however they also issue divorces - a friend (now dead) worked as a Defender of the Bond, basically a devil's advocate automatically arguing against dissolving a marriage.

The Orthodox Church has always taken a more practical view - if a marriage dies, bury it.

Not quite. Canon law clearly states that a marriage that has been validly entered into and consummated may never be dissolved by anyone under any circumstances, and remains in force until the death of one of the spouses.

Can. 1141 A marriage that is ratum et consummatum can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death.

A marriage that has been validly entered into CAN be dissolved if, and only if, it has not been consummated. For example, if the husband becomes incurably impotent after marriage, but before consumation. (A famous example of this was the dissolution of the first marriage of Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of then-Pope Alexander VI). It is possible that your friend was called upon to help with such a rare case, but much more probable that he was involved in an annulment.

Can. 1142 For a just cause, the Roman Pontiff can dissolve a non-consummated marriage between baptized persons or between a baptized party and a non-baptized party at the request of both parties or of one of them, even if the other party is unwilling.

Provided that the rather stringent conditions for dissolution are met, the decision to do so belongs to the Pope alone. No one else can grant a dissolution. The Diocesan Marriage Tribunal only decides if the conditions have been met, and, if so, prepare the request to be sent to the Pope.

Once a valid marriage has been consummated, though, even the Pope is powerless to dissolve it.

The clue here, Dominic, is 'validly entered into'. This is (fortunately) interpreted very liberally, so marriages that are in every way normal are often dissolved. There's an interesting and oft-relaxed get-out clause.

So did someone have the job to prove or disprove consummation or was it ok for just one party to say the marriage was never consummated?

The mind boggles.

I doubt the head of that organisation even looks at 1% of 1% of the decisions made by his minions. The conditions, by the way, are not stringent, hence the huge numbers of Catholics who dissolve their marriages.


Again, the rather Jesuitically used word 'valid'. A friend had her (in every way valid, legal and ordinary) marriage dissolved on the grounds that she said she was too young at 22 to be fully aware of what she was getting into yet her family wanted her to marry. Fortunately she had witnesses to vouch that she'd said at the time she was unsure. This was interpreted very loosely, as it so often is.

And of course, anyone, whether a magical thinker or not, can end a marriage in court and religious groups can say whatever they like (and frequently do), but can't do a thing.

As Roz said, the powers that be can be very accommodating when it suits them. The 'immaturity' line has been used many times.

Then the marriage was not valid according to Canon Law, which is why an annulment was granted. She was never married in the eyes of the Church. Whether you and I consider that BS is immaterial in the eyes of the Church.


And won't, unless the person tries to remarry, in which case the Church can do a lot to make the life of that person miserable if that person continues to practice the faith. To a practicing Catholic, having the sacraments withheld is a very serious matter, a matter of heaven and hell. Also, living in a rural community where everyone else is Catholic can be difficult. That describes a large part of Poland.

If the person chooses to abandon the faith, on the other hand, there is nothing the Church can do except deny them a funeral. Or lobby to make civil divorce for all citizens difficult or impossible.


I agree. The annulment business is a bit of a money-making racket and an opportunity for clerics to throw their weight around and lord over the faithful. However, that does not change the fact that those are the rules of the Church, and that those rules are taken very seriously by many. To the point that the greatest dispute in the Church at the present moment and the probable cause of any eventual schism is precisely over those rules and how they should be enforced.

It was entirely genuine and valid. This is normal with Diocesan Marriage Tribunals - they just pretend it isn't.

Most rational adults are not scared by the antics of clergy. Register office weddings in Poland are very nice, as millions of divorced and remarried people can testify..

@jon357

Your argument isn't with me. It's with the Church. I'm just telling you what their rules are, as laid out in Canon Law. Whether you like them or not is your concern. The fact remains that many people in Poland do take them very seriously, and don't want to risk alienating family and friends by breaking them, or risk eternal damnation. For them, the real-life consequences can be very real and very nasty indeed. And a rational person stuck in that sort of environment would be acting very reasonably indeed if they made every effort to avoid them.

What argument?

What's written in a club's rulebook isn't always how it works out in reality

Millions have divorced in Poland. If a particular family's so dreary that it's a problem for them, it probably doesn't take much to alienate them.

Very much NO jon as I have never met a Christian that got married in a Mosque and NO if you are a Christian you don't have the option to consider another sort of philosophy of legalism that contradicts the Bible.


Millions of unsaved people consider legalism a philosophy that trumps Gods words.
You don't get it because you don't want to get it.
Guess who wins in the end.

I have


The Vatican do just that.


So many religions to choose from, so many gods. And still a marriage that is dead should still be buried, and Poland fortunately still has plenty of divorces.

Okay, this discussion has turned more into a religious/legal discussion about divorce. Just to clarify that my question was to figure out how common and socially acceptable is it to get a divorce in Poland?

The relevance of the question, a person X who grew up in a country Y where divorces are pretty common and the society is more accepting of it might be more accepting and inclined to get a divorce in a marriage. Whereas, a person A who grew up in country B where divorces are pretty rare and the society is not very accepting of it might be little less accepting and inclined towards a divorce personally too.

personality-development.org/content/importance-social-environment-personality-development

There is only one God jon, there are a lot of gods however and your OPINION of "should be buried is merely that, an opinion.

@unknownuser1

The error you are making is focusing on "countries", rather than societies. Poland is not culturally monolithic. There is a huge difference between younger, liberal, well-educated, high-earning, secularized urban residents and those who are older, conservative, less educated, poorer and religious rural dwellers. They might as well live on two different planets. Divorce would generate little controversy in the first group, but be highly stigmatized by the second. Being divorced in a religious rural setting can upset your relations with family and friends, and exclude you from being accepted in local society. Of course, people living in those circumstances are more reluctant to divorce.

It's hard to make generalizations about a country that is so deeply fractured in terms of culture.

The rate is about 35 percent - one of the lower in Europe. I disagree with Dom - I think it is roughly as common in villages as it is in towns - partly due to the strains caused by lots of villagers working. Don't have any evidence for that but this just my observation.

I don't think there is any social stigma to being divorced here, most people would not bat an eyelid. There is a stigma to walking out on your kids when they are young however - that tends to be done by people who are not married in the first place.

I'm surprised that it's as high as that. Poland is changing rapidly, and as people become less terrified of bronze age deities and their priests they are escaping from miserable marriages in greater numbers.

I wish people took their marriage vows more seriously, whether made to their deity or to each other as rational adults. Having said that, I appreciate that people do change and grow apart. Call me old fashioned but I've thought highly of 'for better, for worse'.

Millions would disagre with you.

Just as millions divorce. In Poland, divorce is very common, not least because of the tradition that used to exist of marrying young.