Surprising annulment statistics!

[AlNg]

People also didn’t divorce and re-marry as a rule back then either.
…
The whole cultural landscape has changed - you’re talking about over ninety years ago at this point.

It is true that the divorce rate was somewhat lower in the USA in 1920 as it was 3.0 divorces per 1000 population back then as compared to 3.2 today. But that is nothing like the huge increase in marriage annulments in the USA with 9 marriage annulments in 1929 versus anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 in recent years in the USA. Some people believe that there has been an essential change in Catholic teaching on the grounds for granting an annulment,. Cardinal Kasper has 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.”

 

[anikins]

Hahaha at “mistaken gender”. Gee louie.

Most of these are “force and fear”, so sad.

 

[Pup7]

Pup7:

People also didn’t divorce and re-marry as a rule back then either.
…
The whole cultural landscape has changed - you’re talking about over ninety years ago at this point.

It is true that the divorce rate was somewhat lower in the USA in 1920 as it was 3.0 divorces per 1000 population back then as compared to 3.2 today. But that is nothing like the huge increase in marriage annulments in the USA with 9 marriage annulments in 1929 versus anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 in recent years in the USA.

Since the chart isn’t representative of the US annulment rate at that time, that doesn’t really matter much.

This is the number that went to Rome. Not the national number in the United States during the same time period.

 

[Belina]

I think it’s both a good and bad thing if the number of annulments have been increasing. It’s good because somebody applying for an annulment in the Catholic Church is usually an indicator that they are converting or reverting to Catholicism, or at the very least, they care enough about the Church’s teaching to actually marry according to the Church’s laws.

It’s also bad because it means an increasing number of invalid marriages are taking place, both amongst Catholics and non-Catholics. This wouldn’t be as common if more people had a better understanding of the meaning of marriage and its corresponding responsibilities, so this could be a sign that we Catholics aren’t doing a good enough job catechizing or evangelizing others about Jesus’ teachings on marriage.

I once read somewhere that Catholics in the USA make up only 6% of the global Catholic population, yet account for around 41% of the Catholic annulments granted in the world. A Catholic priest and a Catholic canon lawyer have made a couple of interesting observations in response to this. The priest pointed out that the USA is a developed country with advanced infrastructure, modern technology, high rates of education and literacy, reliable transportation, etc. In comparison, many of the poorest of the poor in impoverished nations either might not have the opportunity to apply for an annulment (some who live in very remote regions may not even have access to a priest for weeks) or take years to complete the paperwork and other parts of the process. In the USA, it usually takes around a year, more or less, to complete the process.

Additionally, the canon lawyer mentioned that Catholics are a minority in the USA. It is understandable there would be more annulments granted in the USA than many countries with pre-dominant Catholic populations because there are more conversions to Catholicism (there are fewer people to convert if nearly everyone is already Catholic in a predominant Catholic country) and more opportunities for Catholics to marry non-Catholics outside the Church (decrees of nullity due to lack of canonical form).

In other words, things can be more complicated than they seem.

 

[anikins]

I also can attest to this, or family members of mine can at least. Money = power.

 

[AlNg]

Not the national number in the United States during the same time period.

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.

 

[Irishmom2]

I am glad you pointed that out about the Rota aspect of this. It is easy to look at the statistics on a chart and skip the big picture.

 

[phil19034]

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.

Simple. Because they are Catholic in name only or poorly catechized. How many Catholics (or Protestants / Orthodox for that matter) do you know who know pretty much nothing about the Scriptures?

How many Christians do you know who don’t think sex before marriage is a mortal sin? How many Catholic do you know who don’t think Birth Control is a mortal sin? How many Catholics do you know who don’t think it’s a mortal sin to miss Sunday Mass? How many Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence? How many Catholics never go to Confession, even after fornicating?

If you have Catholics who don’t believe in what I’ve stated above, it’s not too hard to imaging Catholics who don’t agree with the Church regarding what Marriage is.

When you are catechized by Hollywood and not the Church, you are bound to believe all sorts of lies.

 

[phil19034]

decrees of nullity due to lack of canonical form

Yeah… of all the annulments in the United States, how many are due to lack of canonical form? I would GUESS it’s pretty high.

 

[acanonlawyer]

Yes I knew poor people who applied and were refused.

After Vatican II, they reapplied and were given annulments.

In that case, what did Vatican II have to do with it?

I guess I’ll just cut to the chase and get to my point. Basically, in theory, one can accept that there is going to be the occasional, corrupt judge. Nevertheless, accusing judges of corruption is not something we should casually do.

Also, the law of the Church has said, from long before Vatican II, that those who cannot pay for a judicial process are not to be refused on that account.

Dan

 

[SnowRose]

Makes you think it’s clever to get a bad canonical form marriage, bc then you have a built in escape clause

 

[phil19034]

Makes you think it’s clever to get a bad canonical form marriage, bc then you have a built in escape clause

Honestly… I’ve heard people say that when they married outside the Church. “At least that way if we get divorced, I can still get marry a Catholic in the Church”

 

[AlNg]

In that case, what did Vatican II have to do with it?

With the increase in annulment rate? IMHO, everything.

 

[Belina]

I think I read somewhere that lack of canonical form is actually a less common reason for annulments in the USA than for other reasons. There are still thousands granted for lack of form, but if I remember correctly, most of the people applying for annulments are non-Catholics who either want to marry a Catholic or to join the Catholic Church. The most common reasons also generally had something to do with defective consent rather than lack of form or defects in capacity to fulfil marital responsibilities.

 

[Belina]

If a Catholic truly cared about their faith, they most likely wouldn’t deliberately and knowingly disobey the Church’s canon laws regarding marriage. They’d be committing a potentially mortal sin if they did.

 

[phil19034]

I think I read somewhere that lack of canonical form is actually a less common reason for annulments in the USA than for other reasons. There are still thousands granted for lack of form, but if I remember correctly, most of the people applying for annulments are non-Catholics who either want to marry a Catholic or to join the Catholic Church. The most common reasons also had generally had something to do with defective consent rather than lack of form or defects in capacity to fulfil marital responsibilities.

That makes a lot of sense.

 

[joeybaggz]

Pup7:

Not the national number in the United States during the same time period.

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.

You are saying the divorce rate in 1929 was 53%? What color is the sky in the world you are living in?

 

[Pup7]

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.

What I said was accurate.

The numbers in the table are the numbers of annulments that were essentially sent for review to Rome. That is not the actual number of annulments that occurred across the entire US in that period.

Please, reread the thread.

 

[AlNg]

AlNg:

Pup7:

Not the national number in the United States during the same time period.

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.

You are saying the divorce rate in 1929 was 53%? What color is the sky in the world you are living in?

The sky is blue here, except that today it is somewhat gray in parts.
To repeat what I noted above, the divorce rate I am referring to is the number of divorces per year per 1000 population. In 2004, according to the George Bama Research group, Massachusetts, had the lowest divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while rosy red Texas came in a 4.1 per 1,000 population. Moreover, nine very red Southern states - Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, George, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina – had divorce rates half again as high as the national average, 4.2 per 1,000 population. In 1920, this rate was roughly 3.0 in the USA.

 

[Pup7]

@AlNg, this is what I’m saying. This isn’t the actual number of US annulments. Just the ones that were appealed to Rome.