Surprising annulment statistics!

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Eddie18

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Some interesting statistics pulled from “Canon Law Digest” (1943) which shows how strict the Church has always been in granting annulments. In the 1920s you were as likely to hit the lottery than to obtain a marriage annulment. Compare that to now!

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I used to think the Church granted declarations of nullity too frequently. Now, I recognize that it’s difficult to make generalizations, simply because you now have a greater incidence of both divorce and mixed marriages. I suspect that most people requesting a declaration of nullity fall into a few different categories:
  1. Divorced non-Catholic wishing to marry a Catholic
  2. Divorced and remarried non-Catholic wishing to become Catholic
  3. Divorced Catholic wishing to remarry (often history of poor catechesis leading to marriage outside the Church and/or person is a revert)
This suggests at least the possibility that many of these cases the person may have had little or no preparation for marriage.
 
Eddie18 said:
Some interesting statistics pulled from “Canon Law Digest” (1943) which shows how strict the Church has always been in granting annulments. In the 1920s you were as likely to hit the lottery than to obtain a marriage annulment. Compare that to now!

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I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is a true reflection of this issue.

Back them, society had an EXPECTATION that marriage was for life. Divorce wasn’t an option, so people had the mind set that marriage was for life. Therefore, there were a little better prepared for the sacrament. People knew that marriage was for the creation of a family and to have lots of babies.

Today, society teaches that we HOPE marriage is for life, but it’s not an expectation. That divorce is ok if you realize its too much work, and society teaches that we need to use birth control because having too many kids is too expensive and not responsible.

Therefore, today, due to the toxic culture, we have far too many people (starting with the Baby Boomers) who entered into marriage WITHOUT a proper understanding of what marriage really is. Therefore, they potentially never entered into the sacrament because their vows were empty words.

Intent is always a big part of Catholic Sacraments, esp in regards to the Sacraments of Confession, Holy Orders, and Matrimony.

So, yes, it used to be far harder to get an annulment in the past. But I would argue that was because there were far more real sacramental marriages back then because the culture was doing a better job preparing people for marriage.

God bless
 
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Not to mention that most people who were seeking declarations of nullity were likely Catholics. In these cases, in a declaration of nullity the Church was admitting that they had dropped the ball and allowed an attempted marriage to proceed when it never should have happened. I think part of the reason this has changed is that I suspect many people seeking declarations of nullity were never married in the Church. (My husband wasn’t, for example. He and his ex married civilly - neither was Catholic at the time - and had no marriage preparation.) Consequently, the Church didn’t drop the ball because there was no ball to drop.
 
Back then spousal abuse was legal and there wasn’t - in the US - a prevalence of no-fault divorce (I’m not even sure states had it back then, but I can’t speak for all of them, of course).

People also didn’t divorce and re-marry as a rule back then either.

People were also less likely to marry outside the Catholic faith than they are today.

I’d also bet there weren’t a whole lot of converts back then either.

The whole cultural landscape has changed - you’re talking about over ninety years ago at this point.
 
phil19034 said:
Back them, society had an EXPECTATION that marriage was for life. Divorce wasn’t an option, so people had the mind set that marriage was for life. Therefore, there were a little better prepared for the sacrament. People knew that marriage was for the creation of a family and to have lots of babies.
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In the case of women, it often wasn’t so much “better prepared for the sacrament” as it was “no other options”.
A woman, and especially a woman with children, was usually dependent on the husband and father to support her and the children. Many of these women didn’t have parents or other family or friends who were willing or even able to take them and their children in if a marriage didn’t work out. Plus, there was generally a huge societal pressure from your parents, the priest etc. to stay married. A woman who got a divorce anyway would probably get a lot of judgment, even if she did not remarry.
 
Pup7 said:
People also didn’t divorce and re-marry as a rule back then either.
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In the 1920s, divorce was just starting to become more available to the average middle-class person, and there were quite a few divorcees. They tended to be looked upon as being rather “fast”. The women often did remarry. I read a lot of historical stuff from that time and divorce is pretty common. Unless you were Catholic, as it was well known that they could not just go get a divorce without leaving the Church.

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.
 
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What it doens’t tell us is how many people petitioned for a decree.

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!
 
Getting divorced back in those days was scandalous. Divorced Catholics were shunned within the Church, but also outside in social life. Money could get you an annulment, but the average Catholic was out of luck.

FYI, back then if you were getting married to a non-Catholic, you exchanged vows back of the church and there was no Mass.

Jim
 
I’m looking at 1924 and the 1 case of mistaken gender. A part of me is really wondering how that even happened.
Pup7 said:
People also didn’t divorce and re-marry as a rule back then either.
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I’m not sure if my great grandmother is mother is in those statistics, but I know I’ve also heard about how rare it was. (In her case I would say she did the right thing for her and her children.)
 
I feel bad for the person who got an annulment because the gender of one of the partners was mistaken. How does that happen?
 
semper_catholicus said:
I feel bad for the person who got an annulment because the gender of one of the partners was mistaken. How does that happen?
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Considering that people wore a lot more clothes then, and often were even modest around their spouses, it seems like it may well have happened pretty easily. There are also documented cases of women who pretended to be men in order to travel or fight in wars.
Not to mention that there were probably people with some degree of intersex characteristics and their gender might have been debatable in those days.
 
Eddie18 said:
Some interesting statistics pulled from “Canon Law Digest” (1943) which shows how strict the Church has always been in granting annulments. In the 1920s you were as likely to hit the lottery than to obtain a marriage annulment. Compare that to now!
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To, “compare that to now!” wouldn’t we need the statistics for more current decisions of the Rota?
 
Wealthy people I knew who got annulments when hardly any were being given.

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
Wealthy people I knew who got annulments when hardly any were being given.
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So, you also know of poor people who were refused based on financial means? And when did these people you know go through the process?

Dan
 
Yes I knew poor people who applied and were refused.

After Vatican II, they reapplied and were given annulments.

Jim
 
Why would any Catholic today believe that marriage wasn’t for life? It is very clearly worded in Scripture that divorce and remarriage are not permitted and that the marriage bond is for life. This is Divine Law which no human being can override. Some quotes from scripture below. Just because civil society today believes in divorce and remarriage should not give any Catholic the go-ahead to divorce and remarry. Clergy should be reminding people very clearly of this and they obviously are not.

“For the woman that hath an husband, whilst her husband liveth is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Therefore, whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress, if she be with another man: but if her husband be dead, she is delivered from the law of her husband; so that she is not an adulteress, if she be with another man.” Romans 7:2-3

“Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband, commmitteth adultery” Luke 16:18

“But to them that are married, not I but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife.” 1 Corinthians 7:10-11
 
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