Annullment

[Guest tiny bubbles]

So I was having a discussion with a friend.
They said if you receive an annullment from the Catholic Church you dont have to file for a legal divorce because an annullment is the same thing.
I argued that you couldnt REMARRY in the Catholic Church without an annullment. BUT that you would still require a legal divorce in the legal court, otherwise you are still married in the eyes of the law.
Thier response was, "whats the sense then, you can marry anywhere. The point of an annullment is so that you dont have to go through a regular divorce and have to get a lawyer."


Ah,... any comments?

[Adeodatus]

There is a separation of Church and State. The State does not care about Church annulments, nor does the Church care about State divorces.

An annulment is not the dissolution of a marriage, nor is it 'Catholic divorce'. An annulment is the statement of a truth, that this thing which everyone supposed was a marriage, was not actually a marriage at all. It is the statement that there is zero ([b]null[/b]) to be counted as marriage here, hence 'an-[b]null[/b]-ment'.

Usually when the Church recongises a marriage is null, i.e. annuls it, you have to have a State divorce too. The State has to do its own process.

So you are correct, and your friends are wrong. But you're not correct to say "you can't REMARRY...." If you're first putative marriage is annulled, then when you do get married after that, it is not a "re-" marriage. It is your [b]first ever[/b] marriage. The preceding one was declared null. There was 'zero' marriage to speak of, only one that looked like a marriage and was assumed by people to be a marriage.

The point of annulment is not like a Church alternative to an expensive State divorce! God forbid! The whole point is that marriage is a couple representing forth the faithfulness and commitment of Christ to His Bride the Church. And it is a sacramental sharing in the same bond between Christ and the Church. An annulment is facing up to the truth that certain putative marriages did not have all the essential ingredients of a marriage to begin with, and so should never have been counted as a marriage in the first place. It is because of this that people who've had annulments are free to marry. NOT because it's a quickie, Church divorce.