Anyone else uneasy about annulments?

[KostyaJMJ]

I think a couple’s maturity level is irrelevant if nobody has ever taken the time to sit them down and say, “This is what the Church views as a valid marriage, and this is what the Church expects of you in a valid marriage.” The point of marriage isn’t to show you’re friends how much you love one another, or to have a built in travel-mate or designated driver when you’re out getting wasted. The point isn’t to acquire a second income so you can buy that awesome fixer-upper, then have separate beds, separate lives and only see each other in passing on Monday mornings. The Church doesn’t expect you to spend 10-15 years on the pill then blow your life savings on fertility treatments because everybody else is having a trophy baby and you want to be part of the crowd. Without proper guidance and instruction at the beginning, people won’t know what’s truly expected of them and will enter into unions that, by the letter of the law, aren’t considered valid by the Church. Better, more thorough marriage preparation might cut back on some of these invalid marriages, and reduce the need for so many annulments.

I imagine something like a “scared straight” program for engaged couples. You could have married couples volunteer to come and yell, “You think you want this? you don’t want no part of this” at prospective recruits.

I’ll volunteer to go and give testimony. I’ll wear a nice suit and have my wife in a ugly home-made dress/draperies looking like she just got run over by a bus. I’ll borrow my neighbors’ children and show up in an old cargo van.

The primary purpose of marriage isn’t romance, or wuv, or any of that other nonsense. The primary purpose of marriage is the begetting and raising of children. Lots of children and beginning as soon as possible. So many children you could field both sides of a baseball team. So many you might misplace 1 or 2 and not notice for a week. If you haven’t already you might want to study up on communicable diseases because the bouts of influenza in your house will be legendary.

You might as well forget about a love life too. The only communication you and your spouse will do will be furtively pouring over NFP charts desperately trying to explain the latest pregnancy.

But in all seriousness I do think meeting some of the traditional catholic families in the parish would cut down on annulments. It would cut down on weddings period. Might even help with vocations to the priesthood; you could really work the, you’ll be thankful to be celibate angle.

 

[ValPal]

It seems that a lot of people on CAF

• Have had their previous marriage annulled
• Expect to get an annullment if they apply
• hardly knows anyone who ever received a ‘no’
• thinks its okay to apply at other tribunals if the first one says no.

Annulments are an issue that is not going to be made a big deal of until it is necessary. Catholics normally aren’t educated about this issue. When they need to be educated about this issue, they often will come to sites like this to get insight.

I had a canon law class at the university some years ago. Taught by a priest and canon lawyer. I was quite surprised when he, a faithful man of the Church, openly admitted that the anullment procedure is very much abused today in America and Europe. Basically a lot of people get annulments from “nice guys” while their past marriage is really valid.

I honestly don’t know if it is abused. It is very obvious though in the U.S. and Europe many people’s concept of marriage and the Church’s concept of marriage aren’t one in the same. This can be shown simply by the expectation of an annulment when the marriage fails. That expectation indicates that the lack of belief in the permanence of marriage.

 

[joanofarc2008]

I imagine something like a “scared straight” program for engaged couples. You could have married couples volunteer to come and yell, “You think you want this? you don’t want no part of this” at prospective recruits.
.

No better yet - let those of us going through annulments do it - we will be so much better at it.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I imagine something like a “scared straight” program for engaged couples. You could have married couples volunteer to come and yell, “You think you want this? you don’t want no part of this” at prospective recruits.

I’ll volunteer to go and give testimony. I’ll wear a nice suit and have my wife in a ugly home-made dress/draperies looking like she just got run over by a bus. I’ll borrow my neighbors’ children and show up in an old cargo van.

The primary purpose of marriage isn’t romance, or wuv, or any of that other nonsense. The primary purpose of marriage is the begetting and raising of children. Lots of children and beginning as soon as possible. So many children you could field both sides of a baseball team. So many you might misplace 1 or 2 and not notice for a week. If you haven’t already you might want to study up on communicable diseases because the bouts of influenza in your house will be legendary.

You might as well forget about a love life too. The only communication you and your spouse will do will be furtively pouring over NFP charts desperately trying to explain the latest pregnancy.

But in all seriousness I do think meeting some of the traditional catholic families in the parish would cut down on annulments. It would cut down on weddings period. Might even help with vocations to the priesthood; you could really work the, you’ll be thankful to be celibate angle.

That’s hardly the point I was making. When we got married, we had one group of friends telling us one thing, and another group of family and friends telling us another. Marriage was either a horrible, dreary, sexless existence that at best would make both of us miserable and end in divorce; or, it was a wonderful chance to flaunt our love, be entangled in romance and have sex on the kitchen table three to five times a day (using proper protection, of course). Nobody gave us any realistic insight (my IL’s told my wife that married couples don’t fight and if I even disagreed with her it was the same thing as abuse), and we heard almost nothing from the Church’s perspective. We had priests telling us to use contraception, and the only time NFP was mentioned was when the priest pointed to it in our folder and told us we could look into it if we wanted. Nobody gave us a good idea of the Church’s expectations for a marriage are, or really told us anything contrary to what everyone else had been telling us. We know plenty of people who had similar experiences, which includes the people I described above. Hearing these things wouldn’t have stopped us from getting married, but they would have helped us avoid some of the mistakes and problems we made early on. Had we not both worked hard at solving these problems and staying together, I think we would have had a pretty solid argument in favor of annulment. I believe having better preparation would be beneficial for all couples, and while it may not cut down on the number of divorces, I think it would cut down on the number of annulments.

 

[KostyaJMJ]

No better yet - let those of us going through annulments do it - we will be so much better at it.

Yes, that would help a lot.

 

[KostyaJMJ]

I believe having better preparation would be beneficial for all couples, and while it may not cut down on the number of divorces, I think it would cut down on the number of annulments.

That seems cruel to me, to provide someone with enough knowledge to know what they need to achieve but not enough help to achieve it. Then when they do fail they will not have to possibility to try again.

We do need better preparation but all the help in the world will not do any good if people are not willing to use their own gift of discernment.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

We do need better preparation but all the help in the world will not do any good if people are not willing to use their own gift of discernment.

True, but better preparation ought to give people more of an opportunity to develop and use their own gift of discernment.

 

[EasterJoy]

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

Can. 1058 All persons who are not prohibited by law can contract marriage.

There is no right to ordination. Marriage, on the other hand, is a natural right open to all those without impediments. In other words, candidates for the priesthood must prove to their bishop they are capable, whereas an incapacity or other impediment must be demonstrated before the Church may deny marriage. A person must find a spouse willing to take them on. Provided that you choose from within the Body of Christ (to which you are bound by baptism), the person you marry is the one who is ultimately giving you the permission to marry them, not the Church.

 

[hurting]

Annulments are an issue that is not going to be made a big deal of until it is necessary. Catholics normally aren’t educated about this issue. When they need to be educated about this issue, they often will come to sites like this to get insight.

I honestly don’t know if it is abused. It is very obvious though in the U.S. and Europe many people’s concept of marriage and the Church’s concept of marriage aren’t one in the same. This can be shown simply by the expectation of an annulment when the marriage fails. That expectation indicates that the lack of belief in the permanence of marriage.

This is the crux of the issue as I see it. Unfortunately I don’t have a great deal of faith that the average parishioner really, truly sees a problem with the current state of affairs - largely because they see an annulment as exceedingly likely to be granted. This stems from the guidance they receive from their pastors and lay staff at the parsishes.

FWIW, there have been notices (1/4 page) in my parish bulletin for the last three consecutive weeks soliciting folks to attend information sessions on annulments with the wording specifically targeting people in irregular (read: adulterous) marital situations and alluding to an annulment as the solution to these individuals’ problems. Somebody (pastor, either personally or delegated to staff) had to approve these announcements. I find it difficult to believe that the approver would very publicly solicit people to undertake this path if it were not overwhelmingly likely that the petition would be approved? Where is the stern admonishment to the ‘irregulars’ that they are living in a state of grave sin and should cease living in a adulterous situation immediately? It seems like that is a message warranting repeating in the Sunday bulletin, and more importantly, from the pulpit per se.

 

[GraceDK]

Whatever happend to common sense?

People who get married do know that relationships have good and worse times, most people have been dating or cohabitating for a long time when the wedding takes place,

and that when they marry they say: for better and for worse till death do us part.

We live in the Western world where we are drowning in information and we know instinctively what marriage is about, most of us have seen one or many old couples who have stuck out for decades together and had children…
We also know where to get information.

I don’t think people are more stupid than at other times in history.
When 14 and 16 are Church approved age for marriage, then we can hardly claim that people have to be fully mature (in our ourstanding) in order to have valid marriages, or that they should be fully educated in theological and moral ethical issues before marriage.

Marriage is a binding institution in a fallen world. God knew what He was doing when he instituted it and confirmed it.
I am happy many of you guys trust there is no abuse with annullments going on… but I know I am not the only one among those people I know, who are sceptical and who feel that the marriage institution is threatened… because most people can probably find some way to get an annullment if they want one at some point.

Not to mention that most Protestants who know about the Catholic annullment numbers think we are nuts for saying our practices are more in line with Scripture than theirs.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

Whatever happend to common sense?

People who get married do know that relationships have good and worse times, most people have been dating or cohabitating for a long time when the wedding takes place,

and that when they marry they say: for better and for worse till death do us part.

The only problem with this is that this no longer is common sense/common knowledge. When my wife & I got married, the notion of “trial marriages” was coming into vogue. We know a few people who went into their first marriages viewing them as nothing more than a temporary, try-out marriage (I believe only one of the three has lasted). Not counting us, of all our Catholic family and close friends who got married around the same time as us or after (about a dozen couples), all but one couple cohabited, and all of them were sexually active. None of them had kids before they turned 30; only two other couples have more than one kid, and only one has more than two. We’ve been at parties where they were sitting around talking about their favorite/preferred forms of contraception, and at least two of them regularly go to pro-abortion rallies. We’re the only ones sending our kids to Catholic schools, and the only ones who go to Mass regularly (yes, I realize that going every Christmas & Easter is technically “regular” attendance, but you know what I mean).

These are all people who were brought up Catholic, spent 8-12 years in Catholic schools and went through pre-Cana. Not only should they have the same instinctive knowledge and access to information as anyone else in the Western world, but based on their background and upbringing, they should have been far better prepared for a proper, valid marriage than the average couple. Yet for all that, they don’t seem to have a handle on even the most basic aspects of the Catechism in regards to marriage. Something’s broken, and the fact that not even one of these other couples has a clue about how to follow the Church’s teachings on marriage tells me that it’s more than just cultural influences at play.

I believe the Church in the US, taken as a whole, has really dropped the ball the last few decades in regards to catechizing its youth and giving proper marriage preparation (which, honestly, should begin a whole lot sooner than 6 months before the ceremony). I’d like to think that we’re getting better, but that doesn’t do much to help those who never got a solid foundation to start from.

 

[Ridgerunner]

For whatever it’s worth:

I believe in marriage as a lifetime commitment.

I am sometimes troubled by annulments I see.

But as I recall, Jesus gave the Church the power to “bind” and “loose”, and it isn’t up to me to question it. He gave us a break with that, just as He gives us a “way out” in Confession. We could not possibly survive God’s justice had Jesus not given us all sorts of breaks.

Do we deserve any of those “breaks”? No, not one.

 

[mini_me640]

Marriage is a binding institution in a fallen world. God knew what He was doing when he instituted it and confirmed it.
I am happy many of you guys trust there is no abuse with annullments going on… but I know I am not the only one among those people I know, who are sceptical and who feel that the marriage institution is threatened…** because most people can probably find some way to get an annullment if they want one at some point.
**
Not to mention that most Protestants who know about the Catholic annullment numbers think we are nuts for saying our practices are more in line with Scripture than theirs.

Do you have any evidence for the claim in bold? I know people that were denied annulments. This is a completely unsupported claim. I only personally know 2 people who applied for annulment - one was granted and one wasn’t.

I still can’t help but wonder how we as laypeople who have no knowledge of the particulars of the cases and who have been given no authority in the matter can presume that we know better than those who have the private details of the cases and who have been given authority by the Church to make the decisions.

 

[Filii_Dei]

We live in the Western world where we are drowning in information and we know instinctively what marriage is about, most of us have seen one or many old couples who have stuck out for decades together and had children…
We also know where to get information.

That’s quite a leap to say that being from the “Western world” would necessarily imply any advantage in knowing “what marriage is about”. Drowning in information, yes, but “know instinctively what marriage is about”, no. In fact, I would say that many people who enter marriages these days have no idea of the commitment it entails, and most of the information that “we are drowning in” tells us that marriage is a spur-of-the-moment affair taken at the heights of passion with no regard given to the future.

I am happy many of you guys trust there is no abuse with annullments going on… but I know I am not the only one among those people I know, who are sceptical and who feel that the marriage institution is threatened… because most people can probably find some way to get an annullment if they want one at some point.

I’m afraid you haven’t established your presumption that “most people can probably find some way to get an annullment if they want one at some point”. That is pretty strong language, and you need to be able to back that up, unless you are implying that the Church’s marriage tribunals are not doing their job.

Nobody says that there is no abuse, but the process of annulment is necessary to get people out of so-called marriages they have been coerced or deceived into pledging themselves to. These are marriages that were never valid in the first place, so the Church is doing nobody any disfavours by annulling these marriages. Similarly, liturgical abuse does happen in the Mass. In fact, as long as there has been a Mass, there has been liturgical abuse. However, it does not mean that we get rid of the Mass to eliminate the abuse. The existence of abuse does not mean that the office being abused is at fault. Better enforcement might be needed, but we cannot use this to criticise the existence of an annulment process in the first place.

Not to mention that most Protestants who know about the Catholic annullment numbers think we are nuts for saying our practices are more in line with Scripture than theirs.

How do they know the annulment numbers? I don’t. Do you?

Annulment is a very strict process that involves very rigorous examination by the marriage tribunal. Many cases brought to the tribunal are thrown out, but the same cannot be said to the divorce courts. From this, it is already clear that there is no way that annulment numbers are anywhere close to that of divorces.

In summary, I just wish to say this: I share your concern about there being too many annulments. However, as long as people continue to be misled and to misunderstand the nature of marriage, there will always be some cases involving coercion or a lack of consent that will permit annulment. Preventing such cases from being annulled is just going to serve the purposes of improving the statistics without solving the root cause - that being the commodification and objectification of marriage by secular society. Are there too many annulments? YES! In fact, I believe that even one annulment is one too many! However, if we wish to do away with annulments, the solution is not to stop granting them but to reverse the moral decay that our society is slowly suffering.

 

[Joe_5859]

Whatever happend to common sense?

People who get married do know that relationships have good and worse times, most people have been dating or cohabitating for a long time when the wedding takes place,

and that when they marry they say: for better and for worse till death do us part.

We live in the Western world where we are drowning in information and we know instinctively what marriage is about, most of us have seen one or many old couples who have stuck out for decades together and had children…
We also know where to get information.

I don’t think people are more stupid than at other times in history.
When 14 and 16 are Church approved age for marriage, then we can hardly claim that people have to be fully mature (in our ourstanding) in order to have valid marriages, or that they should be fully educated in theological and moral ethical issues before marriage.

Marriage is a binding institution in a fallen world. God knew what He was doing when he instituted it and confirmed it.
I am happy many of you guys trust there is no abuse with annullments going on… but I know I am not the only one among those people I know, who are sceptical and who feel that the marriage institution is threatened… because most people can probably find some way to get an annullment if they want one at some point.

Not to mention that most Protestants who know about the Catholic annullment numbers think we are nuts for saying our practices are more in line with Scripture than theirs.

Did you read the Annulments in America article I linked to previously? I highly recommend it. I think it would go a long way towards addressing your concerns.

 

[dans0622]

A point of clarification/information. Many people have written here about “understanding” marriage or “knowing what marriage is.” The requirements of the Church in that regard are very minimal: "Can. 1096 §1. For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.

§2. This ignorance is not presumed after puberty." Given our degenerate, American/Western culture, this presumption might give way to contrary proof in some cases.

Anyway, whether or not a given person *intends *to have a “marriage” *contrary *to these requirements is another matter (a question of simulation (c. 1101), as is the ability of a given person to properly *evaluate *the decision to marry a particular person at a particular time and to act with sufficient, internal *freedom *(two aspects of discretion as in c. 1095.2).

Dan

 

[Darran]

I can’t get my head around annulments. What is the difference between an annulment and a divorce?

 

[joanofarc2008]

I can’t get my head around annulments. What is the difference between an annulment and a divorce?

A divorce is something that the government decides when two people no longer wish to be married to each other to dissolve the marriage.

A decree of nullity is something that the Church decides exists after the divorce when the Sacrament of Marriage was invalid from the start.

 

[Joe_5859]

I can’t get my head around annulments. What is the difference between an annulment and a divorce?

A divorce is a legal ending of the marriage contract that is obtained through the State, in many cases for any reason whatsoever.

An annulment (more accurately a “declaration of nullity”) is something the Church decrees after careful and close examination of the circumstances surrounding the exchange of vows when it is determined that no valid marriage was entered into from the start.

 

[joanofarc2008]

I just realized that GraceDK is posting from Europe. Grace might it be possible that you are not keeping an open-mind to the fact that you are trying to understand a culture that you are not currently immersed in and making some pretty harsh judgements on it?