Why does the catholic church allow so many annulments?

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Sublime_Prince

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I really admire the Catholic Church on one hand for taking such a strong stance on marriage, but on the other hand it seems hypocritical to me to grant so many annulments.

I really don’t like the idea of annulments at all and think the church would be a lot better without them. Annulments are granted to anyone who wants them. Even people who have been married for over 25 years. How can the church say a marriage never existed when a couple was married for over 25 years ? To me this seems so ridiculous. I am not talking about abusive relationships here. I am talking about great marriages with kids, nice house, great family, many happy memories for 25 some years.

I have met all kinds of catholics who have been granted annulments and all of them seem to have had valid marriages in my eyes.

From my understand the most annulments are granted in the United States. I am not sure why this ever started, but my hunch is the Catholic Church did not want to loose popularity in the United States. If the church remained strict with annulments the amount of catholics in the US would be very small. Over 50% of us that are married end up getting a divorce. That would be a lot of unhappy Catholics if they were not allowed to remarry.
 
Sublime_Prince said:
I really admire the Catholic Church on one hand for taking such a strong stance on marriage, but on the other hand it seems hypocritical to me to grant so many annulments.

I really don’t like the idea of annulments at all and think the church would be a lot better without them. Annulments are granted to anyone who wants them. Even people who have been married for over 25 years. How can the church say a marriage never existed when a couple was married for over 25 years ? To me this seems so ridiculous. I am not talking about abusive relationships here. I am talking about great marriages with kids, nice house, great family, many happy memories for 25 some years.

I have met all kinds of catholics who have been granted annulments and all of them seem to have had valid marriages in my eyes.

From my understand the most annulments are granted in the United States. I am not sure why this ever started, but my hunch is the Catholic Church did not want to loose popularity in the United States. If the church remained strict with annulments the amount of catholics in the US would be very small. Over 50% of us that are married end up getting a divorce. That would be a lot of unhappy Catholics if they were not allowed to remarry.
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Your concerns are valid. It is disturbing.
 
Sublime_Prince said:
I have met all kinds of catholics who have been granted annulments and all of them seem to have had valid marriages in my eyes.
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But not in the eyes of the Tribunals who had access to all the details.

It seems to me that the problem is not that so many annulments are granted, but that so many marriages fail. How can the Church better prepare couples for marriage? How can the Church as an institution and we as individuals better support couples in their vocation of marriage?
 
You have a lot of opinions on a topic you seem to know very little about.

I suggest you get a copy of the book Annulment: The Wedding That Was by Michael Smith Foster and read it. You will then better understand what a decree of nullity is and isn’t.

And, starting this thread on the non-Catholic forum seems odd.
 
1ke said:
You have a lot of opinions on a topic you seem to know very little about.

I suggest you get a copy of the book Annulment: The Wedding That Was by Michael Smith Foster and read it. You will then better understand what a decree of nullity is and isn’t.

And, starting this thread on the non-Catholic forum seems odd.
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Well I do know one couple that had a happy marriage, had a kid, a great home, a great life for 25 years. Had many happy memories together. They took many vacations I never forgot. The husband was great to her. Never abused her or anything. Yet the church granted an annulment and that is just wrong. I know more about what happened in that marriage because I was the son. To say that after 25 years of marriage this marriage never existed is a crime.
 
Sublime_Prince said:
I really admire the Catholic Church on one hand for taking such a strong stance on marriage, but on the other hand it seems hypocritical to me to grant so many annulments.

I really don’t like the idea of annulments at all and think the church would be a lot better without them. Annulments are granted to anyone who wants them. .
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this is simply not true. unless you have actual statistics from your diocese I would be very careful about making such claims.

the number of decrees of nullity granted (there is no such thing as an annulment) correlates directly with the number of marriages contracted invalidly. If you want to criticize the Church in this regard you would do well to look at how well we are educating young people on the real nature of marriage, sexuality and family and how the actions of many in the Church, most often the families of the couples themselves, work to downgrade and destroy that teaching in their children.

the length of the marriage, the number of children, and the outward appearance the couple presents to those who know them has no relationship to the actual circumstances that existed at the time of the marriage–their intent, knowledge and ability to give valid consent.

you know NOTHING about the circumstances of a couple you may know of who has had their marriage declared null, unless you were present at the time of the marriage and served as a witness to those circumstances during the annulment proceeding. even then you are party only to what you witnessed, not to all the facts of the situation.
 
Sublime_Prince said:
Well I do know one couple that had a happy marriage, had a kid, a great home, a great life for 25 years. Had many happy memories together. They took many vacations I never forgot. The husband was great to her. Never abused her or anything. Yet the church granted an annulment and that is just wrong. I know more about what happened in that marriage because I was the son. To say that after 25 years of marriage this marriage never existed is a crime.
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It happens quite a bit in America. It is very sad. A book should be written titled, “Decree of Nullity, The Happy Marriage That Never Was”.
😦
 
Sublime_Prince said:
Well I do know one couple that had a happy marriage, had a kid, a great home, a great life for 25 years. Had many happy memories together. They took many vacations I never forgot. The husband was great to her. Never abused her or anything. Yet the church granted an annulment and that is just wrong. I know more about what happened in that marriage because I was the son. To say that after 25 years of marriage this marriage never existed is a crime.
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Your pain is certainly understandable. But what you don’t seem to understand is that what the Tribunal looks at when determining the sacramental validity of a marriage is the situation as it existed at the time the marriage took place, not how the marriage was lived out, which may have been (or appeared) happy due to some very heroic effort on the part of your mother and/or father. Perhaps there are many things in your parents’ past of which you are unaware which made the marriage sacramentally invalid – not that it “never existed,” just that it was never sacramental in the eyes of the church.
 
I completely agree. I had a huge thread about annulments and marriage that got deleted. Its a major problem in the Philippines. The Philippines is the only catholic church in the world where 90% of the people are catholic and the catholics are the ones that create the laws of the land. That is why they are the only country in the world that doesn’t allow divorce.
 
Sublime_Prince said:
Well I do know one couple that had a happy marriage, had a kid, a great home, a great life for 25 years. Had many happy memories together. They took many vacations I never forgot. The husband was great to her. Never abused her or anything. Yet the church granted an annulment and that is just wrong. I know more about what happened in that marriage because I was the son. To say that after 25 years of marriage this marriage never existed is a crime.
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The couple has to divorce civilly before they can apply to the Tribunal. So you must have missed something, because happily married couples don’t divorce.

I’m sure your parents’ divorce must have come as a shock to you. But as their child I’m sure there was a lot they concealed from you to protect you. I think you have to trust that things were judged properly even if you don’t agree with it.
 
Sublime_Prince said:
Well I do know one couple that had a happy marriage, had a kid, a great home, a great life for 25 years. Had many happy memories together. They took many vacations I never forgot. The husband was great to her. Never abused her or anything. Yet the church granted an annulment and that is just wrong. I know more about what happened in that marriage because I was the son. To say that after 25 years of marriage this marriage never existed is a crime.
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Again, you lack understanding of what a decree of nullity is if you believe that it has *anything *to do with the length of time the marriage lasted, the number of kids, the types of vacations, and whether or not physical abuse was involved.

It simply does not.

I think this is less about decrees of nullity in general and more about the fac that **your **parents’ marriage was declared null. Get some counseling with a priest if you are bitter over this. Their marriage being declared null has absolutely no bearing on you as a Catholic, so I really don’t understand what your issue is.
 
Usually what happens is people want a divorce but can’t get one. The only way to legally seperate is to file an annulment. This happens to cost anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 pesos. This is usually 1 year to 4 year’s salary for the average person. Impossible for any poor person to file an annulment. Then if they do file for an annulment, most of the cases get rejected. This is because the only law they have on their side is they have to prove that they were insane at the time they got married. Many family members have to lie on the stand and make things up just to get an annulment approved. If that doesn’t work, they usually just bribe the officials to grant an annulment anyways. Its a near impossible situation that millions of them want to get out of.

And your right, to go through that entire process and then in the end say that the entire marriage with kids and all never happened at all, it makes absolutely no sense.
 
Mickey said:
Yeah right. The sacrament that never happened. :rolleyes:
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Absolutely.

You seem to not understand the requirements of intent, consent, and the impediments that prevent a person from contracting a valid marriage.
 
falisrm said:
Usually what happens is people want a divorce but can’t get one. The only way to legally seperate is to file an annulment. This happens to cost anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 pesos. This is usually 1 year to 4 year’s salary for the average person. Impossible for any poor person to file an annulment. Then if they do file for an annulment, most of the cases get rejected. This is because the only law they have on their side is they have to prove that they were insane at the time they got married. Many family members have to lie on the stand and make things up just to get an annulment approved. If that doesn’t work, they usually just bribe the officials to grant an annulment anyways. Its a near impossible situation that millions of them want to get out of.
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**Again **you are mixing up **civil **annulment and a decree of nullity in the Catholic Church.

Please do **NOT **derail this thread with your baseless accusations regarding nullity in the Catholic Church. The information you have posted has NOTHING to do with a Catholic decree of nullity.
 
1ke said:
Absolutely.

You seem to not understand the requirements of intent, consent, and the impediments that prevent a person from contracting a valid marriage.
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Oh I understand it alright. But such legalism only acts as a justification to “claim that a sacrament never ocurred”. It is a strange system. :whacky:
 
Mickey said:
Oh I understand it alright. But such legalism only acts as a justification to “claim that a sacrament never ocurred”. It is a strange system. :whacky:
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It is no more “legalism” than the requirement of water and the correct Trinitarian formula for a valid baptism to occur. It simply is.
 
If the process was any easier through the Catholic church, i would have referred people to them. I myself knew over 100 cases where the couple wanted to legally seperate. The catholic church has some wierd idea that there is no such thing as divorce. Instead of making it a religious law, they created it as the laws of the land, preventing anyone to civilly divorce, even if your not Catholic. Annulment has to be one of the worst things i have ever seen in my life and i feel bad for those filipino’s who have no money or choice to do anything about it. Talk about hell on earth.
 
falisrm said:
Ya, can you believe it? a whopping 111 cases in 2007 were filed with the Catholic church. 80 million catholics…

This just proves my point.

newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080106-110643/Marriage_annulments_down_last_year–Catholic_Church
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Without even looking at it that statistic is ludicrous on its face. We know that the divorce rate among Catholics is very similar to the divorce rate among the entire nation. Are you seriously contending that almost half of the Catholics in this country are formally excommunicated because they haven’t filed for an annulment?

Yours in Christ
Joe
 
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