‘Ontological’ is another word that is used in slightly different ways when predicated of the marriage bond. In a valiant attempt to paper over some wide ethical cracks, Marriage and the Church’s Task affirms that the marriage bond has an ontological character because it unites two people at the centre of their beings. Again, one has to say that most people who use the term ‘ontological’ in the context of marriage mean far more by it than that. ‘Indissoluble’ is itself a slippery word. Words ending