Surprising annulment statistics!

[Eddie18]

Here’s where I got the statistic I mentioned earlier. It came from Pat Buchanan’s book, “Suicide of a Superpower” where he summarizes the decline in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. It is here he makes mention of 338 Catholic annulments in 1968, and 50,000 in 2002. A link to the e-book:

Pat Buchanan’s book

 

[runningdude]

These appear to be annulment cases appealed to the Vatican, not total annulments granted worldwide.

 

[Xantippe]

Edited to add, bigamy was more common too, as it was much harder to check up on whether somebody had a wife and kids three states away than it is now. My husband’s great-grandfather was actually a step-parent because the great-grandmother had unwittingly married a man who was later arrested for bigamy and got left in the lurch with several kids.

I have some relatives who do amateur historical research. They inadvertently discovered that a certain iconic Gold Rush business lady had left her husband and children down south and was representing herself as a widow in Alaska, probably after having embezzled a substantial sum of money in her old location.

But because her reputation in Alaska was quite separate from the history of her marriage and business dealings in WA, nobody knew the full story until they started their research on WA.

 

[Xantippe]

Does that mean that back in the day the tribunal of first instance was the Rota and the Holy Father was the final judge? How daunting that would be for anyone who wanted to have their marriage looked at!

Right–which is why in those days, annulments were primarily for the well-connected.

Think how many of us would be eager to go through a legal process in a foreign country, not knowing the language? And yet we are much more capable of doing so, thanks to inexpensive communication technology.

 

[Xantippe]

What you say is false. There were 9 marriage annulments granted in the USA in 1929. This compares to 60,000 in recent years. At the same time, the USA divorce rate per 1000 population is about the same. These are facts that can be easily checked and are not from the chart posted by the OP.

Even if we just count people who inadvertently married homosexuals, 9 is not a reasonable annual number over the course of a year. It’s way too low.

Consider, also, how many people might accidentally marry a felon without realizing it. There’s a story here about a woman who married a man who turned out to be pretty much a completely different person than he claimed to be.

Dirty John - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Xantippe]

The divorce rate according to the CDC for the US in 1920 was actually 8.0 per 1,000 (for married women over the age of 15).

That was probably a post-war blip. We also had a HUGE spike in divorce right after WWII.

The US divorce rate is highly variable, so it is misleading to say that we have the same divorce rate as the 1920s, when we’ve been much higher in previous decades.

 

[Xantippe]

In the past, Pre-Vatican II, most people went to the parish priest in order to apply for an annulment. Many if not most, were turned down by the parish priest and never got their application sent into the diocesan tribunal.

Here’s another issue–modern people are much more comfortable both with paperwork and with sharing their personal business.

 

[Pup7]

The document you attached by the CDC contains statistics from all religions, not just Catholicism. We are only referring to Catholic annulments in this thread.

LOL, clearly you didn’t read where I said “I can’t believe only 12 of those were Catholics”.

Holy smokes.

 

[acanonlawyer]

These are decisions of the Rota. I guess things were different then because today the Rota is the final judge yet here it says that 20% of these decisions were later reversed. Does that mean that back in the day the tribunal of first instance was the Rota and the Holy Father was the final judge? How daunting that would be for anyone who wanted to have their marriage looked at!

Anyone could have their case heard by the Rota “at first instance” (still true today). That decision, in those days, would have been automatically “appealed” to a second panel of Judges at the Rota and those Judges would come to their own conclusion. That’s the way it still works, if there is an appeal of a case decided by the Rota.

Whether or not the Rota heard many (relatively speaking) cases “at first instance” back then, I don’t know. Individual dioceses in “developed” countries would have had access to a more local tribunal, certainly.

Dan

 

[acanonlawyer]

Another point is that those who were excommunicated could not apply for a declaration of nullity. In the old days, those Catholics who were married, divorced, and attempted a subsequent marriage were excommunicated. So, for those (few) Catholics who did such a thing, they could not submit a petition for a declaration of nullity.

I understand the reasons for the old restrictions (and there is some value in them) but, in general, I’m in favor of the “opening up the process” that took place in the 70s-80s.

Dan

 

[Lifeisbeautiful3]

Having recently submitted a request for a decree of nullity to the diocesan tribunal, I can share a bit about my experience. There are a whole host of reasons that a marriage can retroactively be declared ‘null’. Many items could have been learned well after the marriage ceremony but apply to the time of the marriage itself.

In my case, 12 years after we were married (both virgins), my wife shared things about wanting to be a homosexual prior to our marriage and that she had been married before(!). Now, mind you, my wife is not mentally well and it turns out that her ‘prior marriage’ was to God. She said God had sex with her when she was 16.

The priest and deacon assisting me said that these statements even thought uttered in an obvious state of psychosis are important details to capture and communicate to the tribunal.

Point is, that this chatter years after our marriage references a time prior to the marriage and will be evaluated by the tribunal. If this psychotic nonsense can be used to get a decree of nullity (and the parish said they’re confident it will), then the litmus test for a decree of nullity is razor thin.

 

[PureKathleen46]

I do not know about the 1st 2 marriages. The 3rd marriage was to a woman who had never been married. Is she commiting adultery?

 

[Pup7]

In the eyes of the Church I’d say yes, since the Church teaches that the divorced man without an annulment is still married to his ex-wife.

 

[PureKathleen46]

Thank you so much!

 

[JimG]

From a 2011 CWR article, Annulment Nation:

“Partly for these reasons, the number of annulments granted annually in the United States soared from 338 in 1968, to 28,918 in 1974, to a peak of 63,933 in 1991. By 2004 the number had fallen to 46,330, and it fell even further, to 35,009, in 2007—a remarkable decline of 24 percent in three years.”

These are decrees of nullity granted by Catholic tribunals. Now if we could just get back to the 338 number in 1968. (I couldn’t find the number for 1929, but may indeed have been in the single digits.)

One wonders how many people no longer actually believe the words that Jesus said about marriage and divorce.

 

[Eddie18]

That was a great find. I’m sure annulments are starting to fall now because the trend in recent years has shown many people aren’t bothering to marry anymore.

 

[Phemie]

That was a great find. I’m sure annulments are starting to fall now because the trend in recent years has shown many people aren’t bothering to marry anymore.

There are a good many Catholics who will not petition for a decree of nullity, they will simply remarry civilly. I see it in my parish. Some may not care, some may not be familiar with annulments, and still some may be well aware exactly what it requires of them and don’t feel ready to face that “just yet”.

 

[JimG]

That was a great find. I’m sure annulments are starting to fall now because the trend in recent years has shown many people aren’t bothering to marry anymore.

That’s a good point. Cohabitation does not require a decree of nullity, at least not from a Catholic tribunal.

But I recall once discussing with a mortgage applicant the subject of common law marriage. In some states, a state of marriage is recognized as existing between parties who never formally married but who live together and hold themselves out as married. There is common law marriage but there is no common law divorce. So sometimes the divorce court might have to be involved.

 

[commenter]

Eddie18:

That was a great find. I’m sure annulments are starting to fall now because the trend in recent years has shown many people aren’t bothering to marry anymore.

That’s a good point. Cohabitation does not require a decree of nullity, at least not from a Catholic tribunal.

But I recall once discussing with a mortgage applicant the subject of common law marriage. In some states, a state of marriage is recognized as existing between parties who never formally married but who live together and hold themselves out as married. There is common law marriage but there is no common law divorce. So sometimes the divorce court might have to be involved.

Sad to say, nowadays it is REALLY common, common-law marriage. I have many Catholic nieces and relatives, all of whose parents were married in the Church, and half of them either common-law it, or get a civil wedding. ( BTW. many of those who have a Catholic wedding don’t have a Mass). This is why the decline of annulments might not mean much, many people are simply outside our statistics.

 

[Mtdobbs]

I sometimes think people aren’t getting married in the Church because of how expensive and lengthy the process of going through a marriage, divorce and annulment can be. I know people who have been waiting to go to divorce court for years, not to mention if court/custody is a recurring issue. There is a very real stigma on people who have divorced and remarried without an annulment. I think people would try to avoid that by not getting married entirely. Just my opinion.