Anyone else uneasy about annulments?

[EasterJoy]

This is, to me, a large part of the problem when I read about annulments (declarations of nullity). The point is not about forgiveness. It is not about denying the Sacraments to “faithful Catholics” who were “forced to get out of a bad marriage”.

Forgiveness comes with the repentance of sin. It has nothing to do with declarations of nullity, except insofar as some people might have “remarried” without having found out whether or not they were free to marry. Then they would need to repent and turn away from their sin. But again, the declaration of nullity has nothing to do with it.

The Gospel is about accepting those who have repented. The Church will accept anyone who repents. It’s just that sometimes people don’t want to repent. It’s “too hard”. Live alone? Who can do that?

No one said the way of Our Lord was easy. In fact, He said it would be hard.

A decree of nullity does not say an attempt at marriage failed because it was too hard. If, however, a spouse pretended a commitment that they never intended to give, that is not just a sin against marriage. It is a failure (or refusal, take your pick) to give the consent necessary for a valid marriage. When consent is not valid on both sides, there is no marriage, and when there is no marriage, those who were free to marry are still free to marry.

I don’t mean to say there aren’t exceptions, only that repentance for sins against marriage and freedom to marry after a civil divorce are apples and oranges.

 

[Sillara]

A decree of nullity does not say an attempt at marriage failed because it was too hard. If, however, a spouse pretended a commitment that they never intended to give, that is not just a sin against marriage. It is a failure (or refusal, take your pick) to give the consent necessary for a valid marriage. When consent is not valid on both sides, there is no marriage, and when there is no marriage, those who were free to marry are still free to marry.

I don’t mean to say there aren’t exceptions, only that repentance for sins against marriage and freedom to marry after a civil divorce are apples and oranges.

I am sorry. I was unclear. I was referring to the idea that declarations of nullity ought to be handed out as a means to keep people who have divorced and “remarried” from being unable to participate in the Sacraments. When even those who are defending the Church’s position and trying to state that declarations of nullity are not “Catholic divorce” give that as a reason why the nullity process exists, as a reason for granting declarations of nullity, I think it contributes to the misconceptions of what nullity is.

What I was referring to as “too hard” was something else. The idea that those who are divorced and “remarried” ought to be granted declarations of nullity because otherwise they would be required to live a life that is “too hard”, whether because it would entail, best case separation from the current “spouse”, or, failing that, complete continence while retaining a shared life (which really is supposed to be for the sake of children, is it not? Or am I misinformed?). Those options are often considered “too hard”, and thus a declaration of nullity is “needed”.

I think that the duty we all owe to the Truth outweighs the difficulties people might incur. As I wrote, following Our Lord is not easy.

 

[GraceDK]

I …the fact that we were left having no clue what it was we were getting ourselves into. Just from what I’ve seen at our parish and heard about at other parishes, it would seem that there’s a much better focus on proper pre-Cana now than 15-30 years ago. I’d hope that would lead to less of a need for divorce and annulments.

So, if I consider what other poeple say… then your marriage is invalid or what?
Because you say you had no idea what you were getting yourself into… and thus you cannot have been comitting to the reality of marriage, or what?
That is, according to the logic I pick up from many posters here…

I guess what is true for all people who want to get divorced is that they wake up one day thinking: “I had no idea what it would be like to be married to this person. I would not have married to this person if I had known how hard it would be.”

In the bigger picture I feel that God must have known when he said, 2000 years ago that divorce and remarriage was unlawful in the New Covenant, and that one may not leave his wife except for pornea, that many people married without proper understanding.
I think people always have… and maybe in earlier times even more so than today…

If I only looked at CAF I would think that most marriages in history are not valid, and that God didn’t really mean it when He said that - despite our falleness - our marriages have to be fruitful, faithful and loving…

 

[GraceDK]

I can only offer anecdotal evidence on this thread. I am a Baptist who has been married to a Catholic for 25 years (and two days). When we were looking into a church wedding in 1987, we were informed that because I (a non-Catholic) had married a non-Catholic in a cermony by a non-Catholic in a place other than a Catholic Church, that we were bound to have the marriage annuled by the Catholic Church in order for my wife to continue receiving communion. We have gone through years of trial and effort to get this done and now are in the position where we are finally ready to proceed with the tribunal.

Why has this already taken years?

All I can say is this is not something I do lightly. It’s something I am doing for my wife. It’s important to me because it’s important to her. Getting the Church to overturn a quickie short-lived wedding when I was young and foolish in order to recognize a lifelong commitment to the person I love and allow her to resume an active role in the Church is something that I just don’t see causing scandal or ruining the Church’s credibility.

**According to Church teaching a wedding is a very serious thing. Church cannot overturn anything… only look at the facts and say what was there or what wasn’t there. **

I think that it should be viewed in another light - as a good thing that so many are willing to go through the trouble of completing the process in order to have the Church recognize their commitment. It’s not an easy process, despite what some may say or think, and it’s not something one entertains without a lot of thought and dedication.

**I believe you. I think it does indeed take alot of effort. But are you living like sister and brother now, since you are married to your first wife until proven otherwise? And what if the tribunal does not give you the anullment? I respect that most people are good and honest and they seek the truth, over and above their own dreams… But I also think that precisely because its an area where you will have alot of people desperately trying to rationalize past behaviours and trying to get an annullment so they can continue living with people they already are bound to… the Tribunals have to be clear and trustworthy… I mean eg. how seriously can I take the anullment procedure when I hear serious people on CAF advising others to try in another state, if the first one doesn’t succeed?
My before mentioned canon-lawyer and teacher told me that indeed in some areas - depending on who is in the tribunal there - anullments are given in far more cases than in other places…
**

 

[Gordon_Sims]

So, if I consider what other poeple say… then your marriage is invalid or what?
Because you say you had no idea what you were getting yourself into… and thus you cannot have been comitting to the reality of marriage, or what?
That is, according to the logic I pick up from many posters here…

My wife & I certainly wouldn’t consider it invalid, but had something happened and we decided to pursue, I think we’d have had a strong case for annulment. I think a big reason for the large number of annulments is just how many other people had similar experiences.

 

[Sillara]

My wife & I certainly wouldn’t consider it invalid, but had something happened and we decided to pursue, I think we’d have had a strong case for annulment. I think a big reason for the large number of annulments is just how many other people had similar experiences.

I think what Grace is saying that is something similar. Your marriage, which you hold to be valid, could probably have been declared null had you chosen to look at its validity. But the validity or invalidity of the marriage does not change based on your opinion of it. Either it is valid, or it isn’t. If it is, then why wouldn’t those others which would have garnered decrees of nullity on those same grounds actually be valid? If it isn’t, umm, that is a rather scary thought, too, isn’t it?

 

[mini_me640]

So, if I consider what other poeple say… then your marriage is invalid or what?
Because you say you had no idea what you were getting yourself into… and thus you cannot have been comitting to the reality of marriage, or what?
That is, according to the logic I pick up from many posters here…

I guess what is true for all people who want to get divorced is that they wake up one day thinking: “I had no idea what it would be like to be married to this person. I would not have married to this person if I had known how hard it would be.”

In the bigger picture I feel that God must have known when he said, 2000 years ago that divorce and remarriage was unlawful in the New Covenant, and that one may not leave his wife except for pornea, that many people married without proper understanding.
I think people always have… and maybe in earlier times even more so than today…

If I only looked at CAF I would think that most marriages in history are not valid, and that God didn’t really mean it when He said that - despite our falleness - our marriages have to be fruitful, faithful and loving…

Grace, believe me when I say I believe in the importance and permanancy of marriage. I think some people on here may be to flippant about suggesting that other people could easily get an annullment, etc. because we don’t know all of the facts.

I agree that God knew what he was talking about when he said divorce and remarriage was wrong. But there is no divorce if the marriage was unlawful to begin with because there was no marriage. God gave the apostles and their successors the authority of binding and loosing with the power of their decisions being binding in heaven. So I have to believe that if those that have been given that authority rule that a marriage is invalid after reviewing all of the facts, it must be true that a proper marriage did not occur. I trust that Jesus gave them the authority that He said he did.

 

[hurting]

First, let me say that I mean no offense whatsoever to those who’ve endured the annulment process and do not mean to insinuate that your or any person involved in your particular situation are bad actors. Please accept my prayers.
It is to be expected that these forums would be over-represented by those who have had some experience with the annulment process, petitioners in particular. We regularly hear from folks who’ve successfully obtained a declaration of nullity and are pleased with that outcome as well as those who are seeking same (and presumably would be happy with the outcome). Finally those who’ve been denied an annulment and are unhappy about the result weigh in regularly as well. The missing voice from the discussion, so far as I can tell, are the respondents, notably those marriages have been declared null but who believe that sentence to be in error – an invalid annulment, if you will.
I would strongly recommend reading Dr. Robert Vasoli’s book on the subject, What God Has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism. Although the book is now dated a bit (published in 1998), it presents a pretty good argument that the number of invalid annulments handed down by U.S. tribunals is not insignificant, particularly in light of the fact that the vast majority of U.S. annulments are tried as “defect of consent” cases.
Here are a couple of observations:

1.   The alleged poor pre-Cana work is a bit of a red herring.  The requisite maturity to understand the duties and obligations of marriage is simply not that unattainable to believe that literally tens of thousands of people can be found, oftentimes many years after the fact, not to have possessed it.

2.   I doubt that parish priests actively dissuade would-be petitioners from filing except in “defect of form” applications where it can be reasonably well determined beforehand on the basis of objective evidence that some impediment existed so as to render the putative marriage null (e.g., lack of freedom to marry based on a pre-existing marriage).  Even in these cases I would expect that their pastoral healing bias would incline parish priests to encourage applicants to pursue a defective consent route.

3.   The solicitation of annulment petitions in the way of bulletin announcements, information sessions and other outreach at the parish level belies the pastoral bias I allude to above.  Why would parishes and dioceses go to such lengths if they did not know of believe that the likelihood of findings of nullity were great?

4.   Vasoli documents pretty well the explosion of annulments in the U.S. since around the time of Vatican II, from a couple hundred per year to 50-60,000, as I recall.  Insofar as most of these are granted on defective consent bases, one has to wonder what new insights came to the fore that could possibly explain such an increase.

5. Defective consent annulments trade on the assumption that ex post facto assessments (with assistance of those in the ‘helping professions’) of supposedly deficient individuals can accurately p(name removed by moderator)oint the deficiency having been in place at the exchange of consent. If such diagnoses can be made thusly, surely they could be made much more readily and precisely prior to the exchange and avoid a tremendous amount of heartache for all involved. Yet the same church leadership has not imposed such scrutiny on the front side, preferring to allow itself the option of the easier ‘pastoral’ solution of low-hurdle annulments.

 

[promethius]

I am uneasy when I look at reversal rates from the Roman Rota, which are very high (although sometimes the problem is sufficiency of inference from evidence rather than a point of law). While the Rota is not infallible, it’s probably more reliable than lower courts combined.

Unfortunately this reveals as little as the high success rate of annulments before the tribunals, insofar as the Rota only sees cases where the following are true:

1. That at least one person WANTS the marraige and has appealed to overturn an annulment (this alone is a rare case).
2. That said person had such a justifiable argument that it was worth their time and money to submit to the Rota.
3. That such argument is good enough that the Rota has even a minute chance of overturning the local tribunal.

In the case of no one wanting the annulment overturned… those do not get referred to the Rota. In the case of a person not having the justifiable argument, the Rota is unlikely to approve, and therefore the person is unlikely to even waste the time and money submitting it to the Rota.

In other words, the polling sample is biased here as well…

 

[promethius]

If I only looked at CAF I would think that most marriages in history are not valid, and that God didn’t really mean it when He said that - despite our falleness - our marriages have to be fruitful, faithful and loving…

If you took that perspective based on CAF, then you would be guilty of basing life changing decisions on a VERY biased sample source… an intellectual error that would be your fault, not the church’s.

 

[GraceDK]

Grace, believe me when I say I believe in the importance and permanancy of marriage. I think some people on here may be to flippant about suggesting that other people could easily get an annullment, etc. because we don’t know all of the facts.

I agree that God knew what he was talking about when he said divorce and remarriage was wrong. But there is no divorce if the marriage was unlawful to begin with because there was no marriage. God gave the apostles and their successors the authority of binding and loosing with the power of their decisions being binding in heaven. So I have to believe that if those that have been given that authority rule that a marriage is invalid after reviewing all of the facts, it must be true that a proper marriage did not occur. I trust that Jesus gave them the authority that He said he did.

I believe you are wrong. From my understanding what God has joined together man does not have the power to break apart. Church doesn’t have authority to unbind the marriage covenant… only she has the authority to investigate and declare if there was a valid marriage or not… But even the Church cannot change reality.

 

[mini_me640]

GraceDK:
I dont think the Church is breaking apart, I believe they are finding the marriages to be lacking in one or more required aspects of validity.

 

[EasterJoy]

I am sorry. I was unclear. I was referring to the idea that declarations of nullity ought to be handed out as a means to keep people who have divorced and “remarried” from being unable to participate in the Sacraments. When even those who are defending the Church’s position and trying to state that declarations of nullity are not “Catholic divorce” give that as a reason why the nullity process exists, as a reason for granting declarations of nullity, I think it contributes to the misconceptions of what nullity is.

What I was referring to as “too hard” was something else. The idea that those who are divorced and “remarried” ought to be granted declarations of nullity because otherwise they would be required to live a life that is “too hard”, whether because it would entail, best case separation from the current “spouse”, or, failing that, complete continence while retaining a shared life (which really is supposed to be for the sake of children, is it not? Or am I misinformed?). Those options are often considered “too hard”, and thus a declaration of nullity is “needed”.

I think that the duty we all owe to the Truth outweighs the difficulties people might incur. As I wrote, following Our Lord is not easy.

If you’re saying that the adage that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission ought not ever operate here, I have to agree. A petition for a decree of nullity that would not be granted to a Catholic who is divorced and single ought not be granted to a Catholic who is divorced and re-married with children from the second marriage. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that having remarried has that effect, though. I’ve never heard of evidence that it does.

 

[EasterJoy]

I dont think the Church is breaking apart, I believe they are finding the marriages to be lacking in one or more required aspects of validity.

Yes.

The problem is, too, that sometimes it is very hard to judge initial capacity and intial true intention. The consequences of judging a case wrongly in either direction are so serious that I am very glad to not have that judgement as my responsibility!

 

[joanofarc2008]

Yes.

The problem is, too, that sometimes it is very hard to judge initial capacity and intial true intention. The consequences of judging a case wrongly in either direction are so serious that I am very glad to not have that judgement as my responsibility!

And what many forget is that BOTH parties had to have the correct intention and capacity. All we hear here is USUALLY one of the parties.

 

[twoangels]

The marriage tribunals are not covered by any doctrine of infallibility and they can be corrupt. My husband is very well read, loves history and has taught a Church history course at a very good orthodox Catholic school. We’re not letting history be an excuse for disobedience, but definitely things like Canon law and what not have been used to legally get around Church teaching.

That said, God gave us the Church as our guide. If the leaders of the Church misguide us by granting annulllments too easily, and by all the other things that happen, that’s not our fault. If they mislead us into sin, they are morally culpable for any actions we do in good faith. We can trust at least that if a marriage tribunal annuls our marriage, that we are free to marry in good faith.

What needs to be emphasized though to the couple who has never been married is that marriage is indissoluble. You should be working to exchange that matrimonial consent and shouldn’t risk entering an invalid marriage. Priests should be refusing to marry people whom it is clear are not seeking to validly marry. They shouldn’t be just going through the motions for fear of ruffling people’s feathers.

My husband and I prepared so completely in our understanding of marriage, that unless years down the line I saw evidence that my husband had greatly deceived me prior to marriage, I would not apply for an annullment nor date if I felt the neccessity to seperate from him. I would only seperate from him if he abused me in a serious manner, and i would ignore everyone who might council about getting an annullment and dating again to “move on.” My husband will always be my husband whether I’m happy with him or not.

But I’m not going to judge people who’ve gotten their marriages annulled and certainly I think its far better when people get the annullment before they date than when they’re trying to set their wedding date with some new person.

 

[Netty1]

I was asking a rhetorical question which wasn’t meant to be answered here when I said, “is this valid?”.

Of course no one here can answer that.

I have no plans of marriage or dating until annulment is complete and only if they find it an invalid marriage, and even then- that might just be the thing I need to free me up for something else than marriage.

Most women I encounter are too weak and ridiculous for me to consider as wife material. I want a woman who can out-shoot me or at least be counted on to provide accurate cover fire without crying about it. Anyone dolled up is automatically someone’s potential headache and would bear no consideration by me for anything other than avoidance.

Apologies for missing the bit where you said it was a rhetorical question.

 

[mini_me640]

I guess the bottom line for me is this: God gave the Church authority on earth. The Church appoints tribunals to rule on the validity of marriages. Therefore, I feel that the tribunals, who have both authority from God and detailed knowledge on the particulars of the cases in question are FAR FAR more qualified to make decisions on annullments than any of us are. Are they infallible? No. Is it possible they make errors? Sure. But none of us are infallible either, so why would I think I know better than those who have been given this authority?

 

[styrgwillidar]

1.   Defective consent annulments trade on the assumption that ex post facto assessments (with assistance of those in the ‘helping professions’) of supposedly deficient individuals can accurately p(name removed by moderator)oint the deficiency having been in place at the exchange of consent.  If such diagnoses can be made thusly, surely they could be made much more readily and precisely prior to the exchange and avoid a tremendous amount of heartache for all involved.  Yet the same church leadership has not imposed such scrutiny on the front side, preferring to allow itself the option of the easier ‘pastoral’ solution of low-hurdle annulments.

Ok. This would require every couple to be screened by psychologists. Are you proposing the Church makes that a part of marriage preparation for every couple? You can’t really say only required given certain criteria as many mental illnesses or impediments aren’t readily apparent. Or ebb and flow given stress and other life factors. I can certainly see the benefit, but would you advocate that certain mental conditions would be permanent barriers to marriage or simply require additional preparations or conditions prior to marriage?

 

[joanofarc2008]

Ok. This would require every couple to be screened by psychologists. Are you proposing the Church makes that a part of marriage preparation for every couple? You can’t really say only required given certain criteria as many mental illnesses, impediments aren’t readily apparent. Or ebb and flow given stress and other life factors. I can certainly see the benefit, but would you advocate that certain mental conditions would be permanent barriers to marriage or simply require additional perparations or conditions prior to marriage?

They do this for the priesthood - you know the “other vocational sacrament”