I was reading, somewhere, I can't remember precisely, but recently, how Matthew's Gospel includes an extra clause in Our Lord's exegesis on the 7th Commandment,
and if a man put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and marry another, he commits adultery...... the writer I have forgotten was defending the Catholic Tradition against insinuations that the italics above might actually give some sort of loop-hole into serial polygamy, if you should happen to know that all your wives are at some point unfaithful.
As you may guess, given my choice to phrase the insinuation that distastefully, I've an alternative parsing of the "except ...", one that should ring in the heart of any Canonist (... IANAC...), but it starts with the gramatical ambiguity: "whose fornication might excuse?" That is, that word there is a noun with root a verb, which verb involves a subject and an object, and neither subject nor object are clear in the text I have been given. The principles of charity (Oh! what horror to find oneself exerting to be charitable with Charity Himself!) and of Divine Consistency (videlicet, the Holy Spirit speaking in Tradition cannot contradict the Holy Spirit speaking through the Evangelists) impell us to resolve this ambiguity as straight-forwardly as possible.
To be specific, it can happen that Percival, who is free to marry, falls in love with Rowena, who is not; but she conceals this and they proceed through a wedding ceremony. And it then is possible that in one shared act Rowena becomes guilty of fornication while Percival remains innocent; that is, untill he learn the truth. We could switch the names and respective pronouns without changing the content of the narrative.
Such happenings are not unknown; there were at least two Sherlock Holmes Adventures that involved a twist like this. So, the "Except": Percival and Rowena had a wedding, and while he was reasonably ignorant Percival could call Rowena "wife", but once the truth is out he must "put her away", which is to undo the semblance of a wedding as formally as required by law and neighborliness... The point: is he not then free to marry? For he was in fact never married before.
I think, O Reader, that that is what Our Lord is telling us in the "except". For it would be quite feasible, in a spirit of Scruple or of Fencing-Out the Law, to imagine that Percival "ought not" to try marrying again, especially given the bright clarity with which He is in these passages pointing out the Law; but that (I should probably try to finish this thought, eh? Especially if I'm linking hither from the future... here we go... ) Even More Than The Law, Jesus wants us to know that we can always forgive those who have sinned against us, that we can always repent (when we have sinned), and always turn again to Him (if we had turned away), and the Truth will set you free (even when you hadn't). And that is Good News.
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