What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Pyrrho]

Rob... for a catholic marriage is much more than a social contract.
It is also on of their most cherished sacraments.
And you can never break a sacrament... that's why Henry VIII decided to dissociate himself from the catholics and start the church of England... remember?

Sure But whatever it means to them, it is not stopping them having sex before marriage, on the whole, unless I'm misunderstanding the data. So it's not affecting their sexual activity in general, whatever else it may mean to people.

I suppose those people are not True Catholics™ that break it?

That is absolutely hilarious. I want to break god's laws, so I make a new religion. God goes, "Fair enough".

You are being unfair to Henry VIII with that remark, as the situation was more complex than you are making it appear.


For a start, Catherine of Aragon had previously been married to Henry VIII's brother Arthur for several months, and:

Marriage to Arthur's brother depended on the Pope granting a dispensation because canon law forbade men to marry their brother's widow[citation needed]. Catherine testified that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated as, also according to canon law, a marriage was not valid until consummated.[24][25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Aragon


It is likely false that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated (though, of course, there were no witnesses to prove this), and so she likely ought never have been allowed to marry Henry VIII in the first place.

And consider:

 Certainly, by 1527 he had convinced himself that in marrying Catherine, his brother's wife, he had acted contrary to Leviticus 20:21,[nb 2] an impediment the Pope had never had (he now believed) the authority to dispense with. It was this argument Henry took to Pope Clement VII in 1527 in the hope of having his marriage to Catherine annulled, forgoing at least one less openly defiant line of attack.[60] 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England


The case is not simply that Henry VIII wanted to get rid of his wife (though he clearly did); there is good reason to believe that his original marriage to Catherine of Aragon was not in accordance with the recognized principles of marriage of the time.

Worth mentioning is the penalty for marrying your brother's wife in Leviticus 20:

21 And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.


Keep in mind, at that time, it is sons who count, not daughters, and Catherine did not give Henry any sons (who survived; were their deaths a punishment from God?), which Henry seems to have interpreted as a punishment from God, as specified in Leviticus 20, for having married his brother's widow.

So there are theological reasons for Henry to say that he was not properly married to Catherine, which Henry did not make up, but were a part of the Catholic religion.  Indeed, Henry had been a very devout Catholic:

Henry himself, at least in the early part of his reign, was a devout and well-informed Catholic to the extent that his 1521 publication Assertio Septem Sacramentorum ("Defence of the Seven Sacraments") earned him the title of Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith) from Pope Leo X.[61] The work represented a staunch defence of papal supremacy, albeit one couched in somewhat contingent terms.[61] 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England


So, it is not simply a man wanting an annulment and just making stuff up to suit him.  Rather, it is that he had a problem of not having any male heirs, and the religion of the time gave a reason for that.  So he did not just "make a new religion," but rather objected to the fact that the pope did not seem to be properly following the Catholic religion.

Of course, there were political reasons why the pope did not grant the annulment, which you can read more on that if you are interested in the subject.  But suffice it to say that the Spanish king had a great deal of influence over the pope at that time, and Catherine was Spanish royalty.  That, of course, also at least partly explains why the original dispensation for the marriage had been given in the first place.