stanley123:
See the article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, January 2005, by Sheryl Temaat, Judging invalidity the American Way:
"Some argue that people getting married today aren’t properly catechized, that the culture we live in doesn’t teach them to value commitment so they don’t know how to do that, and that they lack integrity and maturity.
But I argue that information is available today as it has never been available before. Hardly anyone can claim invincible ignorance about the Church’s teachings today. But above all what is so difficult about understanding words like, “For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health until death do us part”? "
You and I have already had it out in another thread concerning this woman’s opinions.
In short, she shows no knowledge or understanding of law at all , let alone Canon law. She attempts to take a line buy line approach to issues that are evidentiary, and feels that she can show that annulements are improperly garanted because she has an answer to each line, as if a counter arguement to an issue of evidence disproves the evidence.
In short, it doesn’t. She acts as if a single evidentiary fact is the critical turning point of a case; and most are not. Most are simply evidence of something else; the point sought to prove.
For example, in reworking line by line a whole series of evidentiary examples of what a narcissistic personality consists of, she attempts to say that everyone is rude to their mother at times, or gets distracted by hobbies (in this case working out in a gym several hours a day); in the end, because she says that almost everyone has done one or more things that a narcissistic personality has done, and therefore all could get an annulment by showing some of the evidence similar to the example. That is unadulterated poppycock by an ignoramus.
Could a tribunal be too pastoral in its approach and grant an annulment on weak evidence? Of course; they are human just as much as every one else; but I am still waiting hard evidence that the tribunals as a whole, or even as a majority, or even as a signifcant minority, are abusing the rules of evidence and finding lack of consent where there was adequate consent.
When that evidence comes in, if it ever does, it is going to have to come from the cases themselves; and as I presume there is an element of confidentiality to them not existing in civil cases (which are public), it will have to come from case histories cleaned up enough that one cannot easily identify the parties.
If the arguement is simply that psychology is “soft”, that is a different issue. Some psychology has been (and that is being charitible), and some of it hasn’t. The Church felt that in its Widom, there were issues of a psychological nature that went to the heart of the Sacrament, namely, intent. I don’t see that changing; that is, I don’t see anyone bringing evidence that psychology cannot assist us in determining if the proper intent was there at the beginning of the ceremony.
