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Pauline Privilege: A Pastoral concern in the South African Catholic Church

The study aims at initiating a productive dialogue on the issue of Pauline privilege (privilegium Paulinum) in a South African context. Pauline privilege is basically a Roman Catholic church instrument for resolving marriage problems by dissolving marriages between two people who were not baptized at the time of their marriage. The Pauline privilege derives from Paul's instructions in the First Epistle to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 7:10–15. Paul teaches us that a Christian convert from paganism should not use baptism as a cause to divorce an unbelieving spouse "but if the unbeliever departs, let him depart”. From the 4th century most Catholic analysts have understood 1 Corinthians 7:10-15 to mean that the marriage bond between two unbaptized
persons is dissolvable when the unbaptized spouse refuses passive living together with the baptized spouse, and that it is essentially dissolved when the baptized spouse contracts a sacramental marriage (Dulau, 1951). The failures of Pauline privilege are investigated and described in this article, as well as how these failures have become a pastoral problem in South Africa. It provides some solutions that the Catholic Church in other countries can use. The methodology of textual analysis of marriage pastoral care was used in this article, which was based on Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 7: 10-16).