M
MynameisD
Guest
Oh thanks for that.
- Status
M
MynameisD
Guest
Oh thanks for the merciful words that comfort the untested heart. May all of you be blessed.
A
AlNg
Guest
Pure and simple? There are those who believe that in a number of cases (not all) the difference between a Catholic marriage annulment and a church (Protestant or Orthodox) approved divorce is purely semantic. For example, Cardinal Kasper said: “take the case of a couple who are ten years married and have children, in the first years they had a happy marriage, but for different reasons the marriage fell apart. This marriage was a reality, and to say it was canonically null and void does not make sense to me. This is an abstract canonical construction. It’s divorce in a Catholic way, in a dishonest way.”
Under normal circumstances, couples who are healthy, and of sound mind and body, find one another sexually attractive, and wish to consummate their relationship. If it were a case of both putative spouses being impotent, or too sick or old even to consider sexual arousal or activity, or even absolutely asexual (desirous of physical relations with no one), then that could be another matter entirely. But the norm is that spouses who share a bedroom, who see one another in various states of dishabille, and so on, are going to have entirely normal attractions and urges. And unless they are babies or toddlers, brothers and sisters typically don’t sleep in the same bed.
If I should ever receive a declaration of nullity, and were to “remarry” (actually, in that case, it would be “marrying for the first time”), I would let people know of my status in the Church, to avoid scandal and to let people know that my wife and I had not, in fact, chosen to live in sin. I know people differ on “what is other people’s business and what is not”, but especially if people have known both my separated wife (who has chosen to “remarry” invalidly) and me, yes, I’d let these people know. I think people would be edified to know that I have “followed the rules” and acted in one mind with the Church. True, non-Catholics don’t care, but it could also be a “teachable moment” for them — “faithful Catholics don’t just up and remarry, their prior union has to be declared invalid by the Church first, because we regard valid marriage as being for life”.
I don’t know what my wife tells people. We don’t discuss her invalid union.
It’d be pretty bad. There’s nothing worse.
But isn’t that just two sides of the same coin? You are either saved or you’re damned. The excluded middle, so to speak.
You know, this is going to sound kind of cheeky or disrespectful, but I really don’t care what makes sense to the good Cardinal, and what doesn’t. You are either validly married, or you are not. That, too, adheres to the principle of the “excluded middle”.
I once had a priest try to tell me “you know, over time, marriages kind of validate themselves”. Sorry, Father, I’m not buying it. The Church doesn’t teach that. If that were true, then every annulment in the Church would have to be re-done —“we established that your marriage was invalid on the wedding day, but alas, did it ‘become valid’ sometime between the wedding and your estrangement?”. Talk about separating sauce and spaghetti!
A
AlNg
Guest
I agree with the priest who said that. I also read something from an Orthodox priest who said similar, that after a certain period of time, the Holy Spirit would repair any slight defects in form that had been present at the beginning. From personal experience, I am suspicious of some of these annulments. And further from reading a few books such as " Shattered Faith: A Woman’s Struggle to Stop the Catholic Church from Annulling Her Marriage".
C
CaptainPrudeman
Guest
Here’s an excerpt from that book:
“My husband and I had known each other for nine years before we married in a Catholic ceremony. We had been married for twelve years before we divorced, and we had two wonderful children. I could not understand how anyone could claim that our marriage had never been valid.”
Such statements betray a very severe lack of understanding of what validity of marriage and annulment actually means. I doubt you understand the concept here if you found the novel to be challenging to the Church, if such understanding remains constant in the book.
“My husband and I had known each other for nine years before we married in a Catholic ceremony. We had been married for twelve years before we divorced, and we had two wonderful children. I could not understand how anyone could claim that our marriage had never been valid.”
Such statements betray a very severe lack of understanding of what validity of marriage and annulment actually means. I doubt you understand the concept here if you found the novel to be challenging to the Church, if such understanding remains constant in the book.
A
AlNg
Guest
I don’t think so.
I think it was the Catholic marriage tribunal that " betray a very severe lack of understanding of what validity of marriage and annulment actually means." The reason I think so is because the Vatican implied that the Catholic marriage tribunal was wrong and overturned the declaration of nullity.
Last edited:
A
Anesti33
Guest
For starters, the Church never uses the term “annulment” partly because that encourages a profound misunderstanding of the process. The Church and canonists use the accurate term “declaration of nullity”.
C
CaptainPrudeman
Guest
You think she described things well in the excerpt?
A
AlNg
Guest
I think that in the end the Roman Rota agreed with her contention that the Catholic marriage tribunal was in error when it annulled her marriage.
C
CaptainPrudeman
Guest
You can say the wrong thing and be right about something else. Doesn’t mean you were right about what you said.
A
AlNg
Guest
The Roman Rota said she was right and the Catholic marriage tribunal was wrong. To get the context of her reasoning, it is unfair to pick out one single sentence and say “aha… that shows she doesn’t understand marriage annulments.” You have to read what she wrote in the context of the whole book.
C
CaptainPrudeman
Guest
But was she wrong in that statement? Can you answer that, please?
A
AlNg
Guest
No, it is you who are wrong to take one statement out of context.
Let me tell you a story. There was a man (a father) who had a son 13 years old who was taking a shower. The man’s wife asked him to tell the son to buy a quart of milk. The father asked the son while he was in the shower if he could go to the store and buy a quart of milk for dinner. After about 30 minutes, there was a ring at the door and there was a policeman with the boy. The boy had only a small cloth around him. The policeman said that the boy had gone naked to the store and tried to buy a bottle of milk. He was being arrested for indecent exposure. The father then asked the son why did you do so? The son said, But you told me to go and buy the bottle of milk and i did not want to disobey you so I went right away! The father then said, yes, i did tell you to get the milk but you should remember all the other things that I told you about being properly dressed and decent behavior in public. The boy said, OK, but i was focused only on what you said about getting the milk ASAP.
Last edited:
S
stpurl
Guest
No where in your story did you say the man told the boy to go ‘ASAP’.
Bad example.
And with only the cloth around where was he carrying the money?
I’m the first to admit I like making little stories to prove my point but I’m sorry, your story is quite simply awful. Of course it is getting late so maybe you aren’t thinking as clearly as you could be.
Bad example.
And with only the cloth around where was he carrying the money?
I’m the first to admit I like making little stories to prove my point but I’m sorry, your story is quite simply awful. Of course it is getting late so maybe you aren’t thinking as clearly as you could be.
Y
yankeesouth
Guest
Jesus gave us the Spiritual Works of Mercy for a reason. To perform them. We don’t consign someone to hell but we can surmise that the path they are on is not a good one.
Last edited:
I’d be interested to know what “slight defects in form” this Orthodox priest had in mind. Declarations of nullity go a little deeper than “slight defects in form”. There has to have been something at the time of the marriage that was pretty grave, kind of a “sacramental train wreck” that either no one detected, no one acknowledged, or no one was willing to acknowledge, something grave enough to render the marriage invalid ab initio.HomeschoolDad:
I agree with the priest who said that. I also read something from an Orthodox priest who said similar, that after a certain period of time, the Holy Spirit would repair any slight defects in form that had been present at the beginning. From personal experience, I am suspicious of some of these annulments. And further from reading a few books such as " Shattered Faith: A Woman’s Struggle to Stop the Catholic Church from Annulling Her Marriage".
I’m familiar with the book you cite — I have it. All in all, it strikes me as kind of whiny — “how do you annul a marriage that had so much good in it, after we had children, after so many years?”. (I may be oversimplifying, if so, my apologies to the author.) I’ve heard the lament before, to the effect of “after a certain period of time, a ‘burn-in period’ of sorts, how can you say there is no marriage?”, almost like there is a sacramental and matrimonial version of the legal doctrine of laches (pronounced “latches”, like what doors have). The thinking there seems to be “you had a long time to object to your marriage, yet only now have you gotten divorced, and here you are, petitioning the Church for nullity, what changed your mind?”. It’s a legitimate objection from a purely human standpoint, I suppose, but you are either validly married or you are not, and unless you subscribe to the notion of “marriages, in time, validate themselves” — and I don’t — then it all goes back to the moment at which the sacrament was confected. Any sacrament is confected at a particular moment in time (or within a certain ritual, such as the various Eastern Divine Liturgy consecrations, most of all the Anaphora of Addai and Mari among Assyrian Christians). Sacraments don’t gradually unfold in slow motion like a flower blooming over a period of time. It doesn’t work like that.
And nobody is suggesting that there wasn’t love there, that the relationship was worthless, that it was all just a big joke or a big sham all those years. People are more complicated than that, feelings and emotions are more complicated than that. It’s very narrowly focused — “was there a valid marriage from the beginning, or was there not?”. The question is simply not that difficult.
Last edited:
mdgspencer:
J
JMMJ
Guest
I would have to disagree. The problem about fraternal correction is that most of the time the two people involved don’t share the same worldview. Nobody wants to hear another person’s nonsense, especially when it involves judgement and statements about going to hell. No good usually comes from it, and a lot of bad, can.
- Status