468. VI. THAT THE LEGITIMATE CAUSES OF THIS CONCUBINAGE ARE LEGITIMATE CAUSES OF DIVORCE, THE WIFE BEING NEVERTHELESS RETAINED IN THE HOME. By divorce is meant the abolition of the conjugial covenant and thus plenary separation and entire liberty thereafter to take another wife. The one only cause of this total separation or divorce is whoredom, according to the Lord's precept in Matthew 19:9. Referable to the same cause are also manifest obscenities which banish modesty and fill and infest the house with shameful panderings, from which arises a scortatory shamelessness into which the whole mind is dissolved. To these causes is added malicious desertion which involves whoredom and causes the wife to commit adultery and thus to be put away (Matt. 5:32). These three causes, being legitimate causes of divorce the first and third before a public judge, and the second before the man himself as judge, are also legitimate causes of concubinage, in case the adulterous wife is retained in the home. That whoredom is the one only cause of divorce is because it is diametrically opposite to the life of conjugial love and destroys it even to the point of extermination. See above (no. 255).