Annulment Witness Testimony

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ebee3

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I have been looking for some indication of an answer on this and I can’t find it anywhere.

My fiance was previously married and he has gone through all the beginning steps of the annulment process. Two and a half months ago, we gave everything to our priest (documents, petition, witnesses, addresses, etc.) and he said he would drop it off in a couple days for us at the Diocese.

We have heard nothing. We have no idea if his ex-wife, the respondent, has received her letter or not. We asked a month and a half ago and she had not and we haven’t bothered her since because we know she will just throw it away when she gets it either way.

So… our priest says if the respondent doesn’t answer in 30 days, letters are mailed to the witnesses and to my fiance. We have heard nothing. I thought the beginning part was supposed to go quick? Shouldn’t we have heard SOMETHING by now?

Monsignor said the actual “year” mark of when the process begins doesn’t start until after the witnesses send in their testimony… but they haven’t even gotten their paperwork yet!

I know this process is long and difficult, but I feel very frustrated already. I tried to contact Monsignor over a week ago, but he has not gotten back to me. Is this normal? Should we have heard something?
 
Depending on how big your diocese is, it could take a while for the process to happen. Try to be patient.
 
if the marriage hasn’t been annulled ,one is not free to date let alone be engaged.
 
I could be wrong, but I thought that until the annulment goes through your fiance is still considered married and therefore committing adultery? More to the point what if the annulment isn’t granted? Will you guys break up or get married anyway? If you would get married anyway, then why are you even paying lip service to the annulment process?
 
Seriously? Life is not that simple. I have not been married. He has and he is not even Catholic. But if you want to judge, even though you are not God, go ahead. Thanks for making me feel welcome here, April. I will not post again.
 
You may want to check with the diocesan tribunal to make sure the paperwork has actually been received by them. You should be able to get their number from your diocesan website.
 
ebee3 said:
Seriously? Life is not that simple. I have not been married. He has and he is not even Catholic. But if you want to judge, even though you are not God, go ahead. Thanks for making me feel welcome here, April. I will not post again.
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Please stay calm. If you want advice about what does and does not help a tribunal investigation along more quickly, you might ask 1ke, as I believe that poster has some first-hand experience in the area. For instance, I don’t even know what the Monsignor meant by the “year” mark. I’ve known couples seeking a decree of nullity for a prior marriage between non-Catholics, and the results were far quicker than a year. (This was also with an ex-spouse who was in no mood to get involved.) IOW, there is no mandatory waiting period before you can get your answer, as far as I know. The tribunals try to get through their investigations as quickly as due diligence allows.

Unfortunately, unless there was defect in form (like a Catholic marrying outside the Church without a dispensation or something like that) it can take a good deal of time. Hang in there. It is all meant to spare you from marrying someone who is already married in the eyes of God. The Church has that responsibility. There is also a responsibility not to deny someone who is free to marry the true knowledge of their state, so I hope you can help them to get with it.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Oh, good spotting, I didn’t even catch that…Of course they shouldn’t be engaged!

😦
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Well, they are. If I’ve ever heard of a non-Catholic willing to go through a tribunal investigation for the sake of someone they’ve not agreed in principal that they want to marry, I don’t remember it. The usual circumstance is that the Catholic starts dating someone who is a non-Catholic, finds that they were previously married but is satisfied by the accounts of the person and their family that the marriage was not valid, but then does not broach the subject of addressing legal investigations until things have gotten quite serious. Not according to Hoyle, but it is very common.

If Catholics never dated anyone with a spectacularly inappropriate marriage in their past without insisting on a decree of nullity before the first date, that would be a lot less Catholics marrying non-Catholics, that is for sure!! Maybe not a bad thing, but I don’t see that happening. It is usually engagement in principle that brings the non-Catholic to the table of the tribunal, and nothing less. (Kind of like making an offer on real estate contingent on professional inspection. If the parties aren’t at least very close to having an offer on the table, the inspector isn’t brought in to inspect.)
 
EasterJoy said:
Well, they are. If I’ve ever heard of a non-Catholic willing to go through a tribunal investigation for the sake of someone they’ve not agreed in principal that they want to marry, I don’t remember it. The usual circumstance is that the Catholic starts dating someone who is a non-Catholic, finds that they were previously married but is satisfied by the accounts of the person and their family that the marriage was not valid, but then does not broach the subject of addressing legal investigations until things have gotten quite serious. Not according to Hoyle, but it is very common.

If Catholics never dated anyone with a spectacularly inappropriate marriage in their past without insisting on a decree of nullity before the first date, that would be a lot less Catholics marrying non-Catholics, that is for sure!! Maybe not a bad thing, but I don’t see that happening. It is usually engagement in principle that brings the non-Catholic to the table of the tribunal, and nothing less. (Kind of like making an offer on real estate contingent on professional inspection. If the parties aren’t at least very close to having an offer on the table, the inspector isn’t brought in to inspect.)
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Common or not isn’t it a mortal sin for a catholic to get romantically involved with someone who has not had an annulment?
 
i apologize if my post came off unduly harsh. should have been more of a question than a blunt statement .and the question would have been why the priest didn’t bring this up.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Common or not isn’t it a mortal sin for a catholic to get romantically involved with someone who has not had an annulment?
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Define “romantically involved”. It is common for people to co-habitate prior to their first marriages, and that doesn’t make it right!! So thank you for clarifying: I did not mean to imply that any act becomes moral as soon as it become customary. As far as I know, however, it is not a mortal sin even for a man to kiss a woman who is happily married to someone else. That is not adultery on a mortal scale. It’s a very bad idea, a scandal, a near occasion of very serious sin, and possibly a good way to provoke tragic and avoidable violence, but as far as I know it is not a mortal sin, per se.

It would be a serious sin to alienate the affection between spouses, but if the marriage is over and in the past, then that is sometimes not an issue. For instance, two non-Catholics I know who dated Catholics before obtaining the annulment of the non-Catholic’s marriage, the non-Catholic had been abused in their prior marriages. They weren’t going back. In other cases, a defect in form was clear, although it had not been formally established. As for whether the couple did anything in private that wasn’t appropriate, I wouldn’t know. I have no idea if they were doing anything more scandalous or more a near occasion of sin than those who were dating after a decree of nullity.

The short answer, though, is that while it is better not to date anyone you don’t know for a fact is free to marry, there are many who play it closer to the yellow light than that. Not to encourage anyone to ignore the dictates of prudence, but not everything that is unwise is a mortal sin.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
I could be wrong, but I thought that until the annulment goes through your fiance is still considered married and therefore committing adultery? More to the point what if the annulment isn’t granted? Will you guys break up or get married anyway? If you would get married anyway, then why are you even paying lip service to the annulment process?
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I think it would only be adultery if they are having sex. They shouldn’t be doing that anyway, since they’re not married to each other. I’m not their priest, so I’m not asking. 😃 I may be wrong, however–I’ve never so much as held hands romantically with a man who is married to someone else, so I’ve never looked into it in any great detail.

The question about “what if the annulment isn’t granted” is an excellent one, and one that it would be great if people thought of much earlier in the relationship. I’m afraid that EasterJoy’s description is too accurate, “[the Catholic in a relationship with a non-Catholic] is satisfied by the accounts of the person and their family that the marriage was not valid…” Well, frankly, unless the Catholic is a canon lawyer, s/he is not really in a position to make that judgement, and in any case has only heard one side. There are a lot of people who set themselves up for heartache and/or spiritual damage by doing this.

–Jen
 
revert_jen said:
I think it would only be adultery if they are having sex. They shouldn’t be doing that anyway, since they’re not married to each other. I’m not their priest, so I’m not asking. 😃 I may be wrong, however–I’ve never so much as held hands romantically with a man who is married to someone else, so I’ve never looked into it in any great detail.

The question about “what if the annulment isn’t granted” is an excellent one, and one that it would be great if people thought of much earlier in the relationship. I’m afraid that EasterJoy’s description is too accurate, “[the Catholic in a relationship with a non-Catholic] is satisfied by the accounts of the person and their family that the marriage was not valid…” Well, frankly, unless the Catholic is a canon lawyer, s/he is not really in a position to make that judgement, and in any case has only heard one side. There are a lot of people who set themselves up for heartache and/or spiritual damage by doing this.

–Jen
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Bingo. And then when the Church says, “Sorry, your fiance is already validly married to someone else”, they get mad at the Church. It is imprudent, at the very least, but sometimes acquaintances do fall for each other almost before they know it. Other things can come into play, too, such as the person who doesn’t think the previous marriage is worth mentioning until very late in the game, because according to their own religious authorities, they are definitely not married any more, or the Catholic who does not understand that Christians outside the Catholic Church can have marriages that the Church would recognize as valid–and really, it does seem sensible that if two Christians got married in a tradition that allows divorce and fully intended to divorce if things got awful, that a Catholic might jump to the conclusion that the marriage was never valid. It is good to point out common sense precautions, particularly when serious sin is involved, but it is wrong to make any blanket judgments. We can’t know everything about them, either.
 
ebee3 said:
Seriously? Life is not that simple. I have not been married. He has and he is not even Catholic. But if you want to judge, even though you are not God, go ahead. Thanks for making me feel welcome here, April. I will not post again.
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No one judged you. Your accusation that anyone did is very unfair.

First, since you are the Catholic, then here’s a rehashing of some church teaching. Marriage lasts until death. A civil divorce does not undo a marriage. This includes those that are not Catholic. The church presumes all marriages are valid until proven otherwise. Therefore, it was not a prudent decision for you to enter into a relationship, much less get “engaged” with someone who is married to someone else.

And make no mistake. This IS is status. He is a married man.

I’m not just going through this to make you feel bad, or anything else. Perhaps you didn’t realize this, or didn’t care when you started dating him. The reason I’m going through this is for this reason:

Please do not blame the church, or be frustrated with the church for the time it takes when you have made decisions to put yourself in this situation. It is not the fault of the church. She, out of charity, is going to examine his first marriage to see if it was valid at its inception. It might be found invalid, or it might be valid. Then he is still not free to marry anyone.
 
EasterJoy said:
Define “romantically involved”. It is common for people to co-habitate prior to their first marriages, and that doesn’t make it right!! So thank you for clarifying: I did not mean to imply that any act becomes moral as soon as it become customary. As far as I know, however, it is not a mortal sin even for a man to kiss a woman who is happily married to someone else. That is not adultery on a mortal scale. It’s a very bad idea, a scandal, a near occasion of very serious sin, and possibly a good way to provoke tragic and avoidable violence, but as far as I know it is not a mortal sin, per se.

It would be a serious sin to alienate the affection between spouses, but if the marriage is over and in the past, then that is sometimes not an issue. For instance, two non-Catholics I know who dated Catholics before obtaining the annulment of the non-Catholic’s marriage, the non-Catholic had been abused in their prior marriages. They weren’t going back. In other cases, a defect in form was clear, although it had not been formally established. As for whether the couple did anything in private that wasn’t appropriate, I wouldn’t know. I have no idea if they were doing anything more scandalous or more a near occasion of sin than those who were dating after a decree of nullity.

The short answer, though, is that while it is better not to date anyone you don’t know for a fact is free to marry, there are many who play it closer to the yellow light than that. Not to encourage anyone to ignore the dictates of prudence, but not everything that is unwise is a mortal sin.
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I have to vehemently disagree. If he is married he is married and it is adultery. I don’t buy the whole “kissing isn’t technically in and of itself wrong and neither is spending time together.” That’s horse poop! If your husband were kissing another woman, spending lots of one on one time with her, entertaining his attraction and feelings to the point of falling in love and wanting to marry her you would say that he committed adultery. You would not go “…well, technically they didn’t have sex and he is divorcing me before he marries her…” You would say that he cheated, and the catholic church would say the same. And that is a mortal sin.
 
Maybe this ought to go in another thread, since I suspect this one will be locked soon enough…

I’ve been on a number of catholic forums over the years and I have yet to see a thread on annulment that didn’t get ugly. Someone always gets offended and calls someone else mean or judgmental and it goes downhill fast from there.

Here’s something to ponder: If one is involved in a courtroom proceeding - doesn’t matter if it’s criminal or civil - the lawyers generally advise that you say nothing outside the courtroom about it. Is this not correct? Then why do so many people broadcast their canon law problems to the public for comment?

Now, for the OP: I have heard tales that Tribunals prioritize cases based on the scheduled wedding. If someone is just seeking an annulment with no plans to marry at present, they go to the bottom of the stack. Sort of like the passport office - they have a space for scheduled travel date on the application. Not passing judgment on the wisdom of waiting to apply nor the wisdom of letting someone take cuts nor anything else you may want to read into it. It just is.
 
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