Vatican Alters Guidance on Annulments

W Post ^ | February 9, 2005 | Daniel Williams and Alan Cooperman

[swilhelm73]

ROME, Feb. 8 -- The Vatican issued revised and slightly streamlined procedures Tuesday for Roman Catholics to annul marriages but urged church tribunals to apply the rules more stringently. Church officials said an increase in annulments reflected a contemporary mentality of easy divorce that threatens the institution of marriage.

The revisions do not change the limited justifications for annulment, which is a ruling by a church tribunal that a marriage never existed. Although some procedures have been slightly liberalized, Vatican officials said the rules are mainly designed to make it easier to determine whether an annulment should be granted.

Vatican officials said that annulment procedures must not, even in appearance, contribute to matrimony's decline. "In the context of a divorce mentality, even canon annulment cases can be easily misunderstood, as if they were nothing more than ways to obtain a divorce with the blessing of the church," Cardinal Julian Herranz, who heads the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, told reporters.

[Thebaddog]

Did they include the price list?

[madprof98]

"In the context of a divorce mentality, even canon annulment cases can be easily misunderstood, as if they were nothing more than ways to obtain a divorce with the blessing of the church," . . .

Which is exactly how just about everyone who ever heard of annulments now regards them. I've overheard people joking about it in stores.

[tessalu]

Anyone, just anyone with enough money can get an annulment.
Why all of this pretense?

[joshhiggins]

I annul you! I annul you! I annul you!
This will make church law more amenable to anticipated changes in about 20 years.

[Question_Assumptions]

Can someone explain to me why the Catholic Church does not allow the one exception for divorce cited by Jesus in Matthew (infidelity)? I'm not trying to pick on Catholicism. I actually think that many Protestants go way too easy on divorce given how explicit Jesus was about it in the Gospels. But Jesus did allow for one justification for divorce and the Catholic Church seems to allow none.

[sinkspur]

A valid marriage can only be broken by death of one of the spouses. Even adultery cannot be justification for divorce in the case of a sacramental marriage.

Annulment cases determine whether or not one or the other of the spouses were able to contract a sacramental marriage in the first place.

[shaggy eel]

,,, will bishops quietly move offending parishioners to other parishes?

[passionfruit]

I have never understood why the Catholic Church sanctifies this. The only cases I have heard of where the church allows annulment is where the marraige produced children, and the party seeking the annulment was rich.

What does that say about the sanctity of marraige? What kind of message does that send to the kids?

[Question_Assumptions]

Yes, I understand the distinction. What I'm asking for is the theological basis for the Catholic Church not accepting the acception provided for by Jesus, Himself, in Matthew. Is it because they are relying on Mark 10, which does not contain an exception, rather than Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, both of which allow an exception for unfaithfulness?

I'm asking because I know of several people affected by these distinctions, including two women who could probably get anullments if they wanted to. One is getting one because her ex-husband wants to marry Catholic but it won't help because she married a divorced man who has gotten himself into a situation where he can't make things right with the Catholic Church (he has children by both marriages). I also know a Catholic man who is being divorced by his wife and he suspects adultery (on the wife's part) is part of the cause and another Catholic man who was divorced under similar circumstances. In those cases, they can't get remarried even though they have done nothing wrong.

In some cases, this makes a lot of sense to me. In other cases, it seems a little harsh and unfair. Again, I'm not trying to pick on Catholicism. I give the Church a lot of praise for putting it's foot down on divorce. Some of the details just don't make a lot of sense to me.

[Question_Assumptions]

From what I've heard, it's normally fairly difficult to have a marriage annulled if you have children. I know of at least two people how have lookined into annullments for marriages with no children, in both cases using the justification that they were young, stupid, and didn't know what they were doing.

[RadiationRomeo]

That's nonsense. You should be ashamed. And I know what I'm talking about. The only expense in an anullment is to pay for the actual expense of all the paperwork involved. In my case it was about 200 dollars.

[B Knotts]

Here is a Catholic perspective on the question you are asking:

Did Jesus Say Adultery Is Grounds for Divorce? by Jimmy Akin

[passionfruit]

I was thinking specifically of the annulment that Congressman Joe Kennedy, son of Bobby Kennedy began in 1993. He had children, twin sons by his first wife. He had divorced, but wated to marry, one of his staffers. Apparently he had hot pants and couldn't wait for the annulment to come through, and married the staffer anyway.

[B Knotts]

If annulments were rare, Rome would not be asking that the rules be applied more stringently. The granting of annulments is not at all rare these days.

[Question_Assumptions]

Thanks. That's exactly what I was looking for.

Now I have one further question. It seems as though a person who has children by one wife, divorces her, and then has children by a second wife can do nothing to set things right with the Church. They are pretty much stuck not being able to take Communion, even if they realize what they've done wrong and repent. Or does the Church simply consider the second marriage illegitimate and demand that they stop living together, despite the fact that they have a child?

[B Knotts]

Disclaimer: IANACL (I am not a Canon Lawyer), but here's my best shot at answering:

Well, as the Church sees it, barring an annulment of the first marriage, the second marriage does not exist. So what you have is a situation involving adultery. That children are the result cannot really change that.

So, what would probably be required would be an attempt to regularize the second marriage, by examining the first marriage to see if it was valid. If it was, then the only remedy remaining would indeed be for the parties in the second marriage to stop living as husband and wife.

Mind you, none of this makes the children from the first marriage (or the second) "illegitimate" in the eyes of the Church, as that is not anything that the Church would determine.

[lainde]

Did they include the price list?

If you have to ask, you can't afford one....

[Thebaddog]

Can you really say that the second marraige is adultery without a discussion of the woman's past and present circumstance when she met the man? And what about the church blessing marraiges not in the church? Methinks that the church has found enough ways of looking at things that work around the absolutes.

[kidd]

I have received an annullment through the Catholic church. The process focuses almost entirely on the conditions that existed BEFORE and AT the marriage. There is no emphasis on what took place after the wedding.

Thus, it doesn't matter if children were produced. It doesn't matter if there was adultery, abuse or addictions unless those conditions existed before the marriage.

The Catholic church will not annul a valid marriage. It will, however, consider if a marriage was valid or not.

If a layperson ends a valid marriage through a civil court, the church still considers that person married to the ex-spouse. So if that person has intercourse with anyone else, that person is committing adultery (whether it is with a new spouse or not). If that person wishes to receive Communion, they would have to refrain from intercourse and go to confession. The Church is not concerned with living conditions.