Please could someone explain to me what an Internal Forum is and how it works. This is in relation to annulment - when can people choose to use this and avoid an annulment? Thank you very much.
The “internal forum solution” was a theory that because a marriage could be invalid but there’s not enough external proof to satisfy a tribunal a couple could in the privacy of their own conscience and in consultation with a priest consider a previous marriage invalid.
However because marriage is not merely a private commitment but a social institution the Church has rejected the “internal forum solution.”
The mistaken conviction of a divorced and remarried person that he may receive Holy Communion normally presupposes that personal conscience is considered in the final analysis to be able, on the basis of one’s own convictions, to come to a decision about the existence or absence of a previous marriage and the value of the new union. However, such a position is inadmissable. Marriage, in fact, because it is both the image of the spousal relationship between Christ and his Church as well as the fundamental core and an important factor in the life of civil society, is essentially a public reality.
There is no short cut to “avoid an annulment.” The Church is always looking at ways to make the annulment process more efficient and better able to arrive at the truth but She does not permit individuals to personally declare a public act of marriage invalid.
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