What Binds Marriage Forever

We invite you to join us on February 13 at 3:00 PM EST as Dr. Jonathan Bieler outlines Austrian author Ida Friederike Görres’s What Binds Marriage Forever, which has a new English translation by Jennifer S. Bryson being released. He is an assistant professor of patrology and systematic theology at Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family at The Catholic University of America.

RSVP to join us in-person or virtually through the livestream.

Görres’s What Binds Marriage Forever is a startlingly relevant and engaging defense of the indissolubility of marriage. Görres reflects on the nature of marriage in relation to human anthropology. She presents her case with a sensitive and realistic view of the sometimes lovely, sometimes challenging relations in marriage between a man and a woman.

Against those who claim that indissolubility is “unnatural,” Görres demonstrates how the Church’s teaching balances eros and kinship, the two main poles of intimacy found in human cultures. Görres explains how the Catholic sacrament of marriage elevates the significance of the marriage bond, even in cases of unwilled infertility.

Indissolubility, argues Görres, uniquely supports the emergence of wholesome love within marriage. For those who may be struggling, she offers precious insights. Along the way, Görres reveals how efforts to undermine the Church’s teaching on marriage are linked to broader attempts to unmoor Catholic theology at its roots.​

Görres’s valuable contribution to modern debates about marriage was first published in 1971, when the sexual revolution was transitioning from a threat at the walls of the Church to a mindset some were attempting to smuggle inside. Today, as marriage faces ever more challenges and debates within the Church continue, What Binds Marriage Forever, forgotten for over fifty years, is now available in English translation for the first time.

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) was a prominent Catholic writer in German-speaking Europe. In his eulogy for her, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger praised how Görres “spoke with an insightful certainty and a fearlessness about the pressing questions and tasks of the Church today.” In 2025, Bishop Erik Varden called her, “A crucial voice for the present moment.”

In his introduction, Jonathan Bieler highlights the book’s central themes and he will do the same during this program. For this English edition, the translator has added a study guide with questions for personal reflection, classroom use, and book clubs.

View the book’s trailer.

Read this interview with translator Jennifer Bryson by the Catholic University of America Press.

February 13th Schedule:

• 3:00 PM: Presentation begins – this portion of the afternoon will be offered both in-person and virtually via a livestream
• 4:00 PM: Coffee social and a chance to buy the book
• 4:30 PM: Afternoon concludes