Questions on Annulments

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degrees of Sanguinity, incest, or other laws which were changed after the time of Adam.
Incest has always been a grave sin. This is going off on a tangent that is not relative to the original poster, so, maybe open a new thread if you wish to talk about your theory of sinless incest?
 
Nonsense!!! I respect that you reasoned to a conclusion, but your argument is flawed and cherry picking parts of what I said.

I can only hope you’ll spend some time thinking about the relationship between law and sin.
You yourself say the sin is grave. I cited Incest laws to show a clear example of the Church’s authority in dissolving marriages. You’re also ignoring that the Catholic church (even today) teaches little kids that without sin entering the world, there would have been no birth defects, no child bearing pain, no disease; No incest. Who knows, the OP might have married a close cousin. He also asked me to elucidate on sin, so I think I’m on topic.

Consider a legal case about marriage and validity (who knows the wife of the OP could be a half sister): Abraham married his biological half sister. But if Adam hadn’t sinned, there would be no incest law at any time in history. So why does it matter if Abraham commits incest or not? Legally speaking, our salvation depends on the messiah’s lineage; and God refused to acknowledge Hagar’s rights because the promise God was to Abram before Hagar but after Abraham had intercourse with Sara his half sister. I’m not spouting a theory, but paraphrasing the very words of the old testament. If incest law was ALWAYS in effect as absolute divine law, then God would not have acknowledged Sara as Abram’s wife.

Sin and the effects of sin are the reason for legal definitions of validity, tracing of lineages, marital rights, etc.

Roman’s 5:12. Therefore, just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned*— for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world, though sin is not accounted when there is no law.

I am a citizen of two kingdoms, a natural one called the United States of America; and the supernatural body of Christ.

If I were ignorant of church law, and married outside the Catholic church I am equivalent to a man on a temporary journey in a foreign kingdom. I decide to “do in Rome as the Roman’s do” Under that law I contract a marriage and live in a country under their VALID jurisdiction. I am no different than a Gentile (and I really am no different!)

Romans 2:14 “For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people’s hidden works through Christ Jesus.l”

This has happened many times in history; Judges 21:25 “In those days, there was no king resident in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own sight.”
 
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BUT: I believe that Jesus is not going to bother to say to an ignorant person “You had no marriage” or “Your civil marriage was invalid.” He’s going to say, your marriage no longer exists in heaven. Oddly enough, Jesus is going to say the exact same thing to every Catholic who married INSIDE the catholic church under a priest. On the day of judgment in heaven, there will only be one groom – Jesus, and only one bride; his body. All other marriages will be dissolved and divorce will be demanded.

Jesus himself says, “If I had not come, they would bear no guilt; but now I have come, and there is no excuse.” Or again, on the cross “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Sin is different from culpability and rulings of invalidity. Your own logic is an appeal trying to say invalidity can exist without sin, therefore my argument is flawed; but the oppoisite is even truer; for a judge and jurisdiction is required for a legal category of valid or invalid to have any meaning, and the very purpose of the tribunal is to stem sin. The foundation of the defect is sin itself. I mean to say that culpability and invalidity are correlated issues but not causes. I think you are (innocently) exchanging the effect for the cause.

The whole of the law is a deliniation of good and evil, grace and sin; There are a hierarcy of laws and a hierarchy of truth. When there is no judge, objective sin or evil in a given state of life, then the whole issue of validity easily becomes moot. Sin and Promise are more important to focus on when discussing the reality of the causes of the power of a sacrament. For the sacrament may act as curse or blessing.
http://www.usccb.org/bible/matthew/23:18
You blind ones, which is greater, the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20i One who swears by the altar swears by it and all that is upon it; 21one who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it; 22one who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who is seated on it.

23j “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes* of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. [But] these you should have done, without neglecting the others.
 
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New Advent isn’t an official source of church teaching. Nor is St. Thomas’s theories in whole, official church teaching.

I was courteous to you and cited a church council proving that the church has the authority to legislate new laws that invalidate previous marriages even after they are contracted. You can at least do the same and take the time to cite official church teaching where you think I am in error.

I do have different ideas about natural law than some philosophers teach, but not different from the official teachings of the church. Everything I say, as far as I know, is compatible with official church teaching.
 
There is a certain human dishonesty that finds its way into beaurocratic church institutions; especially when blame can be shifted to another party or government. The church has a responsibility (as do priests) for their actions and failures to act, and complicity in destroying marriages through prejudice, failure to follow the Vatican’s rules, allowing gossip to circulate in parishes uncheched; etc.

The present course of the Church in the United States is to first tell people that they must get a civil divorce before the church will help them resolve any issues with the children. However, officially in Canon Law, it says that a person must go to the church to be counseled by a priest before separation.

It’s legal hypocrisy. So, the person … such as the OP, is essentially helpless and the archdiocese is likely to set him up to take the fall for things which are the church’s responsibility. Priests often do verbal dirt and cause worse fights between spouses in order to “help” them break up and set up one or the other spouse to take blame; phoning one parent behind another back about whether or not they have the right to take their child to communion. And all the tribunal will do, or the canon lawyers, is “tut tut, I’m shocked that priest would do that.”

As one priest in my archdiocese put it,“I am not going to get involved between two warring adults that are in a legal situation.” But the fact is, our country is one of the few which has a constitutional guarantee of the separation of Church and State. The priests really have no excuse for avoiding their consecrated duties except cowardice.

This cowardice has even seeped into the Catechism, where the annulment logic says that “no human power on earth can dissolve marriages.”; Rhetorical question: Is the Catholic church a divine insitution or NOT ??

These issues often place a person (like the OP) in a hard spot, for he has a sacred duty to his wife for as long as she lives. But he has been stripped of any tools, teeth, or backing of the church to enforce his rights and allow him to carry out his duties toward her and any children. eg: At the same time, these same priests refuse to lift a finger to help people like the OP.

Father’s are stripped of the primacy of teaching religion that is officially theirs according to “Castii Connubi” the papal encyclical; But a canon lawyer will often deny the father’s right by saying “everything that is legal has been codified into canon law” (Meaning papal encyclicals are powerless fluff…) The children suffer gross injustices both in being taught the Catholic Faith, and in psychological damage. Mine for example were sent to a 7th day Adventist school, and more.

If the church is a divine institution, it needs to stop delegating religious duties to civil courts and then blaming parents for failing to teach their children. The hypocrisy needs to stop. That’s what I’d like to see. From St. Paul onward, the church has been in open shame in legal disputes. “Is there no-one in the church who can judge between you, that you have to go to civil courts!”

1Corinthians 6.
 
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The present course of the Church in the United States is to first tell people that they must get a civil divorce before the church will help them resolve any issues with the children. However, officially in Canon Law, it says that a person must go to the church to be counseled by a priest before separation.
If the parents are pursuing civil divorce then child custody, child support and the like are going to be dealt with specifically and quantitatively by the court. There is no role for the church to deal with these matters. Annulment proceedings can only be initiated after divorce. If parents wish counseling from their priest or other church specialist before set on the divorce track, of course it will be offered.

I found your post to be somewhat of a rant with mud-slinging and a hatchet job thrown in. And with no clear answer to my simple question.
This cowardice has even seeped into the Catechism, where the annulment logic says that “no human power on earth can dissolve marriages.”
Do you believe otherwise? In your view, is their divine law on the permanence of marriage? Is the church at liberty to act contrary to divine law?
But he has been stripped of any tools, teeth, or backing of the church to enforce his rights and allow him to carry out his duties toward her and any children.
What would you like to see happen to allow one party (be it man or woman) to enforce their “rights” and/or perform their duty towards the other party and/or children?
Father’s are stripped of the primacy of teaching religion that is officially theirs according to “Castii Connubi” the papal encyclical;
Given the reality on the ground if a marriage is in terminal breakdown, and custody arrangements have been determined, what would you propose?
The children suffer gross injustices both in being taught the Catholic Faith, and in psychological damage. Mine for example were sent to a 7th day Adventist school, and more.
So what authority should step in and compel the outcome you wanted?
If the church is a divine institution, it needs to stop delegating religious duties to civil courts and then blaming parents for failing to teach their children. The hypocrisy needs to stop.
The civil courts have primacy by virtue of the civil law, not some abandonment by the church of its proper role. When parents determine they must separate, the legal processes eg. Division of assets are unavoidable. This is not a viable process for the church to manage. The matters of concern to you - such as religious education of children - are inherently reliant on the goodwill of the parents. And if they disagree or lack goodwill, there is limited scope to enforce another outcome. That’s largely true for married couples too.
 
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To clarify the comments made regarding dissolving valid marriages vis-à-vis Trent, lest anyone be confused by the term “dissolve” in this context:

The word used in Trent is “dirimere” which is still used in canon law today, in regard to “diriment impediments” to marriage. It simply means that there are some facts which impede a person from marriage, either in general or in particular circumstances, and these impediments, if they are ignored, make the (attempted) marriage invalid. So, that marriage can be separated or “dissolved” only because it was never valid in the first place. These are “diriment impediments.” (The law used to have “impedient impediments” which, if ignored, would not result in an invalid marriage but only an illicit one.)

In no way would the Church ever come along and say that a newly instituted impediment would make already celebrated marriages retroactively invalid and dissolve them. This is a strange idea and would be a grave injustice.
 
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Sin is different from culpability and rulings of invalidity.
I believe your disagreement is over the Latin meaning of “sin”.
It is an umbrella that catches many meanings from a physical malady, to an arbitrary legal state, to a disordered action or state to finally the true meaning…a grave personal offence against charity and hence God.

Until you two avoid use of the ambiguous word “sin” and use a more specialised expression in the context of what you really mean…you both will be at cross purposes forever in this interesting converse.

BTW I agree with you that some prohibited things now were not prohibited in Eden.
Yet the Church does have authority to define the conditions for a valid marriage by a Catholic…whether he is aware of that or not.

Going against that may of course not be a personal mortal sin.
But it still isnt a valid marriage and it is objectively disordered to some degree unless convalidated.

Wasnt aware tribunals could ban persons from ever marrying again after vranting an annulment. What was that about?
 
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