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Brad
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What?
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Brad
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We have no starting point if you cannot agree to the obvious.
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Brad
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Coincidentally (or I say not), the breakdown in the culture had correlated with the breakdown in catechesis. When was the last time you heard a pastor talk about R-rated movies or saw him stand in an abortion protest or preach against martial infedility, pornography, fornication, or same-sex marriage?
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fix
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Two sides of the same coin. The clergy fail to talk about sin and obligations for fear of making some one ill at ease and the other side is the laity fail to form their consciences with the truth. The answer to many is to lax the “rules” and claim it is no one’s fault or that it is the same as it always has been. Perplexing? Nope, just a failure to read the signs of the times.
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SusanL
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Well, I have to say, my priest spoke out against living together before marriage recently. I wanted to cheer!! I’d love to hear him say more.
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fix
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Wow, good for him. I hope he gets plenty of prayers and encouraging words from his people there.
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Brad
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This IS good. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and the more encouragement they get, the more you may hear. Make sure you tell him!
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otm
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Be careful as to how you appraoch this. I would not use the word “soft” as it implies that things are “easier”.
You are confusing two issues; that is, the difference between doctrine and discipline. The doctrinal issues of marriage have not changed; it is still a covenant relation (that is, something much deeper than a contractual relation); it is still for life; it still requires the consent of both parties.
The psychological issues have expanded the grounds for annulment because they go specifically to the issue of consent. Psychology is not a “hard” science as much as, for example, physical medicine; however, neither is it a completely “soft” science, lacking any scientific examination. And before you condemn all psychology, you need to realize that the Church does not take any theory rolling down the pike as truthful. They apply a bit of what is often called common sense. The Church does not move quickly in this area (as she does not, in many areas).
Much of what we know in psychology today simply was unkown in the 1930s. Comparing the two is a little bit like comparing the knowledge about computers in the 1930s to today.
The issue is not that the Church has changed the grounds for annulments half so much as it has a better understanding of what impacts the grounds. And that has to go directly to the issue of intent and knowledge.
Intent most definitely can be impacted by psychological abberations; one need not be crazy to be found unable to make the knowing choice of a permanent relationship.
You also need to keep in mind the fact that doctrinal teaching, or catechesis, pretty well got flushed in the early 70’s, giving us one, if not two generations of people who have little or no real sacramental preparation for marriage; they simply weren’t taught what the Church professes as to the sacramental union. And that most definitely goes to intent. Coupled with that is the societal attitude, expressed in the horrendous divorce rate in society, that obviously sees no permanence in marriage unless the parties decide they want that; in other words, we have taken marriage from a sacramental union created by God to a contractual realtionship created by two people. And Catholics are not immune to societal pressures and attitudes.
As I tried to indicate in a prior post, you are taking that statistic in a vacuum unless you see how it relates to the general population, and see what else came into play along the way. And behind that you are also making the assumption that all marriages were good, solid marriages prior to the changes, and that these marriages that are being annuled are really sacramental marriages but the Church is coping out. What I am trying to say is you simply don’t have enough information, based on those two numbers alone, to make that decision.
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Friar_David_O.Carm
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True, when you make baseless assumptions on anecdotal information then of course you have no proof to supply.
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stanley123
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When the figure of 9 annulments per year is compared with those of 61,400 per year and to say that nothing has changed in the Catholic religion, that there has been no easing up in the requirements for getting a Catholic annulment, then I would say that this is preposterous.
Once again, you might want to go over some of the cases as described in the book by Father Wrenn, and see if you agree with what was written in the Catholic publication, **Homiletic and Pastoral Review. January 2005. According to Sheryl Temaat: " Any marriage that runs into difficulties, and most do at one time or another, can be laid to rest at the tribunal cemetery --declared null because of lack of due competence."
" a careful study of his books shows that anything beyond burned toast is evidence for nullity."
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Brad
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Are you serious? You mean to tell me that you do not believe annulments have not increase dramatically from1930 to 2005? How about divorces?
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buffalo
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So, did the heart of the Church change or that of the people?
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fix
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Catholic World News - News Brief - 10/19/1998
**Pope, In Address To US Bishops,
Blasts Number Of Annulments
**VATICAN CITY - OCTOBER 19, 1998 (CWNews.com) - Pope John Paul II, meeting with a delegation of US bishops on Saturday, expressed his dissatisfaction with the number of annulments being granted to Catholics. US Catholics receives a disproportionately greater number of annulments each year.
In audience with bishops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, the Holy Father said that annulments should be a last resort. **“The indissolubility of marriage is a teaching that comes from Christ himself,” he said, “and the first duty of pastors and pastoral workers is therefore to help couples overcome whatever difficulties arise. **The referral of matrimonial cases to the tribunal should be a last resort.”
The Pontiff also warned that easy availability of annulments could cause the faithful to misunderstand a declaration of nullity as “divorce under a different name.” He also affirmed that the tribunal judge must be convinced of the “moral certainty” of the existence of the nullity, and not just the probability that it exists.
He also said that, when determining if a psychological problem rendered a person incapable of contracting a valid marriage, the tribunal must make use of a psychiatrist or psychologist “who shares a Christian anthropology in accordance with the Church’s understanding of the human person.”
**Pope, In Address To US Bishops,
Blasts Number Of Annulments
**VATICAN CITY - OCTOBER 19, 1998 (CWNews.com) - Pope John Paul II, meeting with a delegation of US bishops on Saturday, expressed his dissatisfaction with the number of annulments being granted to Catholics. US Catholics receives a disproportionately greater number of annulments each year.
In audience with bishops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, the Holy Father said that annulments should be a last resort. **“The indissolubility of marriage is a teaching that comes from Christ himself,” he said, “and the first duty of pastors and pastoral workers is therefore to help couples overcome whatever difficulties arise. **The referral of matrimonial cases to the tribunal should be a last resort.”
The Pontiff also warned that easy availability of annulments could cause the faithful to misunderstand a declaration of nullity as “divorce under a different name.” He also affirmed that the tribunal judge must be convinced of the “moral certainty” of the existence of the nullity, and not just the probability that it exists.
He also said that, when determining if a psychological problem rendered a person incapable of contracting a valid marriage, the tribunal must make use of a psychiatrist or psychologist “who shares a Christian anthropology in accordance with the Church’s understanding of the human person.”
[defendingholymatrimony.org/html/blasts_annulments.html](http://www.defendingholymatrimony.org/html/blasts_annulments.html)
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Brad
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Brad
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The heart of the people and the heart of the people in places of Church authority.
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stanley123
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I agree 100% with the Pope on this.
My argument is with those who do not recognise the huge increase in annulments which has taken place since Vatican II.
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otm
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There is an old phrase in law: “Hard cases make bad law”. As neither of us knows the circumstances of the marriage, nor the evidence that was put forth, it is easy to come to the conclusion from what was stated that a miscarriage of justice and morality occured.
I find that most people operate “ond a daily basis”, that is, they pretty much takes what comnes at them and try to deal with it. They are not particularly introspective, nor are they particularly educated in a lot of matters or sophisticated. They are not bad, and do not mean to sound judgemental; they just have a rather simple view of most things. And most things are more complex, often much more complex, than people really realize. The want simple answers to what appear to them to be simple questions. They have a fairly simple view of life.
I am not suggesting that the tribunals can do no wrong. But I am suggesting that when it comes to law - whether it is civil, criminal, or eccelsiastical, most people really have no clue as to the whats and whys of what happens. And when one tries to explain the complexity, they come back with disbelief, a feeling that the BS meter has pegged, and do a gut check, which comes out that “its too liberal”.
Christ dealt with sinners on a daily basis. Too often, we have a strong tendency to do what he condemned; to be a Pharisee; one who is overly emphatic on the rigid application of the law, with little understanding of the why of the law, and the concept and action of mercy.
Having said that, we have lost a sense of what sacrifice really means, what the Gospels call us to, what loyalty really means, what love really means, and the difference between happiness and joy.
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fix
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stanley123
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Not really. The annulment rate in the USA has gone from 9 in 1930 to more than 50,000 per year recently. Lets round things off and give the benefit of the doubt:
from 10 to more than 40,000 per year. This is an increase of more than 4000 times or more than 400,000 percent over a 75 year period.
I don;t think that you would find that the rate of divorces for any group anywhere (except for Catholics) has increased by more than 400,000 percent over a 75 year period.
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otm
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I am not sure where you get the statistic of 50% of marriages.
However, lets look at this from another direction.
I think you would agree with me that marriage is not only to be viewed as permanent, but also open to life. The Church has had plenty to say about contraception, and I won’t go into that, except to say that reasonable guesstimates put Catholic birth control users in the 85% range.
If they were using birth control ab initio, went into the marriage intending to use it and a) not have any children; b) decide later whether or not to have children or c) put off having them for a period of years, is it not possible that none of them formed the proper intent to be able to establish a sacramental marriage? In other words, is it possible that the statistics are well over 50%?
Coupled with that statistic is the openly acknowledged fact that a great percentage of individuals presenting themselves to the Church for a sacrametal marriage have been openly living together prior to marriage; and again, estimtates are around 80%+ have been having intercourse over some period of time. Could that also belie an attitude towards marriage that is antithetical to what the Church teaches - thus opening every one of them to a legitimate challenge?
If you want some reasoning as to why the raw numbers of annulments shot up , basically starting in the 1960’s and subsequent, I would suggest that it has little or nothing to do with the changes in annulment grounds and admissable evidence, but has a lot to do with the changing moral attitudes coupled with a rejection of what the Church teaches about marriage, and thus, about the sacramentality of it.
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