I am a senior citizen, divorced 20 yrs against my will…I need info on annulments…I’ve been doing some reading and know the church differentiates between divorce and annulments, but am having trouble with “getting a second divorce”…the first one was painful enough…I would hope to remarry some day and hope to do it in a catholic church…would appreciate any insight into the subject. my feelings are that since the divorce was against my will, i should not have to go through the process of annulment.SC
Hi Sandra: It isn’t a divorce and it is actually very helpful. I went through it 8 years ago after 20 years of marriage (and after much work to try to save the marriage).
First, it addresses both parties to the marriage (even if your ex doesn’t respond, it will not affect your pursuit of it).
And it doesn’t address what happened DURING the marriage as the main focus (though indeed it is considered ) but rather whether you, your husband, or both of you understood and were CAPABLE of consenting to the marriage AT THE TIME OF THE VOWS.
IOW, you did of course have a perfectly valid ‘civil’ marriage in the eyes of the State. And your children (like mine) are perfectly legitimate born in the ‘civil’ marriage even if it turns out the marriage was not valid in the eyes of God AT THE TIME THE VOWS WERE MADE. . .and yes, you could have thought everything was fine and yet STILL perhaps your husband was not really capable of understanding or fully consenting to the vows.
Perhaps when you married your husband said the vows ‘until death’ but really in his heart he was thinking, “I am sure she is the one, but just in case, if I ever fall out of love, I will divorce her”. This could show that his understanding of true marriage was wrong and that when he consented to marry you, he wasn’t consenting to marriage as it is, but to a kind of false idea of marriage, in which case it is very possible that the marriage was ‘false’ or not valid in the eyes of God right from the start, and could receive a decree of nullity.
Yes, it is ‘work’ to fill out the questionnaire, ask your family and friends to be witnesses. Yes, it takes a while. Yes, at times as you ‘relive’ what happened you’ll have painful moments. (I waited 2 years before I even started the proceedings myself). But it is extremely helpful.
I did not think that I was being punished for my ex husband’s faults and that it wasn’t fair that I had to pursue this ‘on top of’ suffering a divorce that I didn’t ask for. . .I viewed it as trying to come to the best possible understanding of myself and what ‘happened’. It’s been 8 years since I received the decree and I haven’t even dated, so it’s not like I ‘needed’ to have this in order to have a Catholic marriage, but it helped me understand myself spiritually much better. That alone made it worthwhile.
I hope you’ll decide to pursue it, but do it on your own timeline. Even after I received the form I didn’t start out ‘right away’. Keep on praying for guidance and know that this is not a punishment but a help, in the end.
