So many annulments, what does this say about marriage?

[JRKH]

May I add my two cents?

I too, have gone through the annulment process, and was granted one. It was a gift, really and truly, from God Himself.

It pains me greatly that so many Catholics (and non-Catholics, but especially the Catholics…) feel that annulments are shams and legalistic wrangling. I have several members of my family who feel that, and have divorced and “moved on” to new relationships and marriages.

For those who approach the Tribunal openly, honestly and prayerfully, it is truly a life-altering experience. For me, it was part of my journey back to home to Rome (as I was not yet a practicing Catholic again when I requested the annulment, but felt compelled to request one anyway). By the end, I understood what had happened “the first time around”, and was willing to accept whatever decision the Tribunal handed down.

Someone quoted that the divorce rate among second marriages is around 80%, and I can see that being very true for someone who hasn’t undertaken the rigorous, emotional and humbling experience of an Annulment.

I have since remarried, to a wonderful man whom I met only two months into my annulment process, and who waited patiently and prayerfully with me for almost two years to see if it was granted. We have a wonderful life together. And no matter what happens, we know that we are truly married.

(And no, it’s really not expensive, and the fee is waived if you do not have the means to pay.)

A beautiful testimony.
I highlighted the one sentence because I feel this is a truly great point.
The questionaire that I completed consisted of 44 questions. These questions were of “essay” type and required much thought and soul searching in order to answer honestly. You must remember that much of what is asked about happened many years before ( in my case almost 30 years). This was definitely NOT an easy process and it DID force me to look at my previous marriage carefully and objectively.

It truly is a life changing experience.

Peace
James

 

[shannyk]

I don’t understand where people are getting the idea that somehow an annulment avoids divorce or is “Catholic divorce”, since in most (if not all?) cases you have to have a civil divorce before beginning the annulment process, if I’ve read correctly.

I’ll also add that I personally think it’s a good thing that people are seeking annulments, it means they have at least SOME desire to be right with God and the Church and that perhaps they are seeing marriage in a better light, as the sacrament it is meant to be.

I’m sure there has been a great increase in the number of annulments ‘granted’ but look at who is seeking them. They’re people my age, in their 30’s and 40’s, who grew up poorly catechized if at all, and likely got married with no real though of the sacramental nature of it. To me the fact that they are now turning back to the Church is reason for great hope.

I don’t see how the Church should change anything with regards to annulments. When people seek them the Church isn’t in a position to turn them away and keep them from the sacraments. On the contrary, the Church is to make the sacraments available whenever appropriate and possible.

ETA: I think people are way off base in saying getting an annulment has anything to do with having money. Of course there is a charge for all of the time and work that goes into it, but anyone in dire financial situation (which many people are after a divorce) is worked with to find a way to pay, whether it be at a reduced rate or pay over time. Tribunals don’t send people away because they can’t pay.

 

[Bluegoat]

I don’t understand where people are getting the idea that somehow an annulment avoids divorce or is “Catholic divorce”, since in most (if not all?) cases you have to have a civil divorce before beginning the annulment process, if I’ve read correctly.

I’ll also add that I personally think it’s a good thing that people are seeking annulments, it means they have at least SOME desire to be right with God and the Church and that perhaps they are seeing marriage in a better light, as the sacrament it is meant to be.

I’m sure there has been a great increase in the number of annulments ‘granted’ but look at who is seeking them. They’re people my age, in their 30’s and 40’s, who grew up poorly catechized if at all, and likely got married with no real though of the sacramental nature of it. To me the fact that they are now turning back to the Church is reason for great hope.

I don’t see how the Church should change anything with regards to annulments. When people seek them the Church isn’t in a position to turn them away and keep them from the sacraments. On the contrary, the Church is to make the sacraments available whenever appropriate and possible.

If they are still married though, the Church can’t tell them they aren’t. The Church is making a ruling on whether there was a mistake in the way the marriage happened that means it wasn’t. You can’t tell people that they can have an annulment just because you want to give them access to the sacraments, any more than you can tell a person living in an ongoing state of sin that it is ok so he can receive the Eucharist.

I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for the argument that people were poorly taught and so weren’t responsible. In a few cases this might be really true. But they are making vows, even in most civil ceremonies, that promise to stay together for life no matter how difficult the circumstances. If they claim not to have known they were really supposed to mean it, I am skeptical.

This has been a somewhat useful discussion for me though, in that I’ve finally been able to put my finger on what bothers me about the whole theory as understood by the Church. I’ll have to go and think about it a bit more now!

 

[centurionguard]

So many annulments, what does this say about marriage?

Just my two cents.
This post Title would have been far more interesting if it read like this:

So Many Annulments, What Does This Say About The Catholic Church Who So Liberally Grants Them ?

Check the statistics of Pre-Vatican 2 Annulments and the history of Annulments in the last 45 years in the Catholic Church. Hardly Orthodox if you seriously consider Jesus’s
teaching on Marriage along with the Church Fathers and the Saints.

 

[Bluegoat]

Just my two cents.
This post Title would have been far more interesting if it read like this:

Tsk tsk, that would have been inflammatory!:tsktsk: I get enough flack for being an Anglican, I don’t need to encourage more!

 

[centurionguard]

Tsk tsk, that would have been inflammatory!:tsktsk: I get enough flack for being an Anglican, I don’t need to encourage more!

Well I not saying that (“some”) Annulments are deserving considering outrageous circumstances and scrutiny

 

[Lost_Lamb]

From what I’ve been reading, the question is more about the Catholics that abuse the process. There are many of us who have an annulment based on what really happened, not on how we could manipulate the situation. Those people not only hurt themselves, but others of us that have had annulments to correct way. It really hurts me (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) when I get lumped into the same category.

I had a dream the other day that really helps me explain what the annulment did for me. I’ll explain this without getting into the dream. My ex, as well as our divorce, basically would not leave me alone (more figuratively, not as much physically). I had some type of issue that it interfered with everywhere I went. Getting my annulment was God’s way of saying “I won’t let him hurt you anymore.” I needed that.

 

[Alindawyl]

Check the statistics of Pre-Vatican 2 Annulments and the history of Annulments in the last 45 years in the Catholic Church. Hardly Orthodox if you seriously consider Jesus’s teaching on Marriage along with the Church Fathers and the Saints.

Correlation does not imply causation. Pre-Vatican 2 there were also far fewer civil divorces among non-Catholics than in the past 45 years. Do we blame Vatican 2 for that increase? Or would it make more sense to state that we’re looking at a widespread societal/cultural problem with morality in general?

 

[WillieWonka]

Correlation does not imply causation. Pre-Vatican 2 there were also far fewer civil divorces among non-Catholics than in the past 45 years. Do we blame Vatican 2 for that increase? Or would it make more sense to state that we’re looking at a widespread societal/cultural problem with morality in general?

What’s the problem? If a marriage isn’t working for the spouses, why stay together?

 

[manualman]

I’ve run the gamut of opinions on this matter over time and concluded that the church IS handling this badly, but NOT for the reason most people think. I suspect that the vast majority of nullity decrees are legitimate and warranted (though not infallibly so).

Where we as a church are falling down BADLY is handing out too many MARRIAGES. If we applied the same level of scrutiny for impediments before allowing the nice, big, pretty church wedding mass, we’d see hardly any annullments at all (and precious few mariages as a sad side effect).

But that’s a rather hard sell in today’s ‘pastoral’ church.

 

[centurionguard]

Correlation does not imply causation. Pre-Vatican 2 there were also far fewer civil divorces among non-Catholics than in the past 45 years. Do we blame Vatican 2 for that increase? Or would it make more sense to state that we’re looking at a widespread societal/cultural problem with morality in general?

Interesting questions. My answer would be both are responsible for the demise of marriage considering the weak backbone of the clergy in many instances when granting annulments and the social/cultural breakdown in morality that effects all people including the clergy.

Pre-Vatican 2 there were also far fewer civil divorces among non-Catholics than in the past 45 years.

And just why do you think that is ?

I would most definitively say that the growing influence of secular modernism has played a huge role in the casualty and degradation of the family cornerstone in society as well as Church Morality under (“Sexual Ethics”) and how God Himself intended to bring resemblance of Marriage into introspection; as an examination of one’s interior life in relation to Spiritual Union with the Love of God. In marriage two human souls joined together are no longer separate entities but become one in spirit and one with Christ.

Too many people today leap into marriage failing to understand the Spiritual meaning of Marriage.

 

[JimG]

One factor that changed both secular and religious marriage is this: widespread acceptance of contraception broke the link between marriage and children, thereby also breaking the link between marriage and permanence and fidelity.

 

[WillieWonka]

One factor that changed both secular and religious marriage is this: widespread acceptance of contraception broke the link between marriage and children, thereby also breaking the link between marriage and permanence and fidelity.

Agree. Permanance no longer served a social need in many marriages.

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

I’ve run the gamut of opinions on this matter over time and concluded that the church IS handling this badly, but NOT for the reason most people think. I suspect that the vast majority of nullity decrees are legitimate and warranted (though not infallibly so).

Where we as a church are falling down BADLY is handing out too many MARRIAGES. If we applied the same level of scrutiny for impediments before allowing the nice, big, pretty church wedding mass, we’d see hardly any annulments at all (and precious few marriages as a sad side effect).

But that’s a rather hard sell in today’s ‘pastoral’ church.

Amen to that. I personally think there needs to be a screening process within the Church so that, if a couple is not fit to marry for whatever reason – ie. they don’t get that marriage means “forsaking all others” and thus, no cheating on one’s spouse; they don’t have the maturity level to understand that married life isn’t always going to be like the courtship phase of the relationship – they can find out before the knot is tied, so they don’t have to untangle the threads later, when it turns out the rope was really frayed…

 

[Bluegoat]

Amen to that. I personally think there needs to be a screening process within the Church so that, if a couple is not fit to marry for whatever reason – ie. they don’t get that marriage means “forsaking all others” and thus, no cheating on one’s spouse; they don’t have the maturity level to understand that married life isn’t always going to be like the courtship phase of the relationship – they can find out before the knot is tied, so they don’t have to untangle the threads later, when it turns out the rope was really frayed…

An interesting idea, though I think perhaps hard to implement. Would one apply to some kind of board to get married? Would they write a test to see if they really understood? Or would an individual priest get to decide? Both of those things can have major pitfalls, as we can see by the way things are handled now.

I am actually inclined to think that what they have now is probably sufficient. They are supposed to go to the priest, who has to make some kind of a judgement about things like mental fitness - he can refuse to marry them. They have to be legally entitled to marry. They usually have to go to a preparation program. And they have to have a ceremony, with witnesses, which explains the purpose of marriage and where they promise to love each other and be bound for life, no matter what happens.

It seems to me that if that isn’t enough there isn’t much to be done - you can’t force people to listen or be sincere. You could maybe ask priests to refuse more people.

As far as people who got married in other denominations and convert, most of the time they still need to make the same public vows. Which leaves Roman Catholics who marry outside the Church. I guess that is pretty much automatically a defect, although I tend to feel that if they made a vow, and understood it, then they are bound by it. But that is not really what the Church teaches in that instance so I wouldn’t expect them to implement that.

 

[JimG]

Agree. Permanance no longer served a social need in many marriages.

Permanence still serves a need for children as well as for society. But children have gotten the raw end of the deal in he current ‘it’s all about me’ marriage milieu.

The family glue that once held society together is becoming unstuck. Another generation or two will serve to dissolve it entirely.

 

[WillieWonka]

Permanence still serves a need for children as well as for society. But children have gotten the raw end of the deal in he current ‘it’s all about me’ marriage milieu.

The family glue that once held society together is becoming unstuck. Another generation or two will serve to dissolve it entirely.

It might. But we should remember the nuclear family wasn’t the traditional social glue. It was the extended family, with several generations often under the same roof. And the type of geographic mobility we have today never existed.

It also certainly isn’t the only glue around. The doom sayers always seem very sure of the next generation, and forget what they had mistakenly predicted about this one when it didn’t come true.

I’m not sure the kids are getting shafted here. People tend to contrast a divorced-with-kids situation with the ideal family. But that divorced-with-kids family probably wasn’t the ideal. So, is the kid better off with the toxic intact family or the divorced situation? I doubt any of us know.

 

[C_Romero71]

I think the problem is faith education. When i was growing up my mother was the Catholic that only goes to church for midnight mass. My father was not around and only catholic by name only. I was never shown how beautiful marriage is and how it is the trinity on earth. I think if children were educated better, it would improve divorce rates. Now that my kids are being educated on faith. I see alot of improvement but we still could go a long way.

Vivat Jesus :knight1:

 

[Alindawyl]

What’s the problem? If a marriage isn’t working for the spouses, why stay together?

The question if you’re a Catholic is not if a marriage isn’t working today, but if the marriage was sincere at the beginning. If it was, then an annulment should not be granted. It’s only the marriage that wasn’t sacramental from the start which should be annuled. We’ve got so many marraige ending with just cause because of the large number of people entering marriage without a sincere commitment.

As Manualman said, the ball has been dropped not after the fact but at the beginning. The Church has been taking steps to correct that with the better marriage preparation we have now. The biggest resistance in that area is not from the laity but from clergy who are are at odds with Church teaching. It’s not over half of the clergy, but it’s enough to be a huge problem.

 

[WillieWonka]

The question if you’re a Catholic is not if a marriage isn’t working today, but if the marriage was sincere at the beginning. If it was, then an annulment should not be granted. It’s only the marriage that wasn’t sacramental from the start which should be annuled. We’ve got so many marraige ending with just cause because of the large number of people entering marriage without a sincere commitment.

As Manualman said, the ball has been dropped not after the fact but at the beginning. The Church has been taking steps to correct that with the better marriage preparation we have now. The biggest resistance in that area is not from the laity but from clergy who are are at odds with Church teaching. It’s not over half of the clergy, but it’s enough to be a huge problem.

Well, I think we can see things can go bad at all stages in a marriage. So, if one reaches a stage where it has gone off the rails, and efforts to get it back on track have all failed, why not just end it?

In fact, didn’t Jesus say pornaea was grounds for divorce? Has the Church reversed him on that?