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To: jimbo123

Pass that to Joe 3’s mummy Sheila Rauch Kennedy

When Joe 2 knocked up his secretary and wanted an “annulment” so he could marry again and remain an unfaithful catholic, she refused to cooperate, took on the Kennedys and the Catholic church, and won


41 posted on 01/14/2012 8:52:23 AM PST by silverleaf (Common sense is not so common- Voltaire)
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To: silverleaf

yes—from Wiki. entry on Joe II:
(Joe II married Sheila Rauch in 1979)


The couple had twin sons, Matthew Rauch Kennedy and Joseph Patrick Kennedy III (born 1980, in Boston); and (they) were legally divorced in 1991. Two years later, Kennedy asked the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds of “lack of due discretion of judgment”, meaning that he was mentally incapable of entering into marriage at the time of his wedding. An annulment would give the marriage the status of never having existed, and allow Kennedy to marry Anne Elizabeth “Beth” Kelly—his former staff member—in a Roman Catholic ceremony, as well as allow him to participate in other sacraments of the church, such as Holy Communion, not available to a divorced person who remarries. Rauch refused to agree to the annulment, and Kennedy married Kelly (born April 3, 1957) in a non-Catholic civil ceremony on October 23, 1993.

The Boston Archdiocese initially granted Kennedy the annulment, which was only discovered by Rauch after the decision in 1996. Rauch, who is an Episcopalian, wrote a book Shattered Faith: A Woman’s Struggle to Stop the Catholic Church from Annulling Her Marriage explaining that she was opposed to the concept of annulment, because it meant in Roman Catholic theology that the marriage had never actually existed, and claiming that the Kennedy family influence made it possible to unilaterally “cancel” a twelve-year marriage. A tribunal decision in favour of annulment is automatically appealed, and the decision is not effective until a second, conforming, sentence is granted. Instead of allowing the appeal to take place in the United States, Rauch appealed directly to the Holy See.

The original decision was overturned by the highest appellate tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church, the Roman Rota, in 2005. Rauch was informed of the decision by the Boston Archdiocese in 2007. As the first decision was never confirmed, there was no time at which the Church declared the marriage to be null or gave Kennedy permission to remarry.

etc


44 posted on 01/14/2012 9:03:32 AM PST by raccoonradio
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