Divorce & Remarriage by Jim Blackburn “explains Church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and examines the pastoral and canonical realities for Catholics who wish to end their common life and marry another.”
Blackburn provides a lot of clarity to a complex and challenging component of Church teaching. Overall, I thought he did a good job cross-referencing, providing clear support for his answers, and addressed this topic in such a way that a Catholic going through this situation would not feel insulted. I also think this book did a nice job of describing God’s view (and ultimately the correct view) of marriage. That being said, I did think there were some opportunities for improvements. A minor issue I had with this book was there were a few formatting errors. There was a sentence where all the words were crammed together. There were a few times where he said “above” or “below” which didn’t make sense in the print format. A bigger issue I had with the booklet was there were several instances where the reader would have benefited from having a quick reference guide for some of the terminology. While I recognize that defining a valid marriage does take several pages, I think it would’ve been helpful to have a sentence or two summary at the end of the book with other things like licety. That being said, I still recommend this as an introductory resource for anyone who is trying to understand what the Church teaches on this topic.
