POPE UNCONDITIONALLY CONDEMNS DIVORCE AND DIVORCE LAWYERS
Vatican says lawyers, judges, have moral duty not to participate in "spreading plague."

If you glance out your window toward the court house square and you happen to see some men in black robes piling up logs and brush around a big wooden post out there, don't relax: it could be for you. According to a Reuters News Service dispatch of January 28, Pope John Paul has issued a worldwide warning that lawyers and judges should not work on divorce cases, and should refuse to use their professional skills to contribute to ending marriages. This Papal bull came during the annual meeting of Vatican magistrates. The Pope explained that divorce "has devastating consequences that spread in society like the plague."

And while we divorce lawyers will miss our Catholic brethren, the Pope is quite unequivocal about the duty of those among the one billion or so Roman Catholics worldwide who labor in the legal profession. He declared that "lawyers, who work freely, should always decline to use their profession for an end that is contrary to justice, such as divorce."

And while judges may find it hard to get out of divorce-related duty, that's no excuse: they must try to avoid hearing divorce cases. The Pope declared that no one should cooperate in divorce, and perhaps more naively, that everyone has a duty to look for marriage-friendly solutions such as mediation and conciliation.

Explaining that divorce and the concept of homosexual marriage are the two greatest threats to the institution of marriage today, Pope John Paul said that it makes no sense to talk of imposing human-made laws upon marriage, because marriage is natural, older than our statutes, and a part of divine law.