Annulments

[MichaelFilo]

I was reading the thread on marriage and I needed to get some Catholic insight as annulments have been a sticky issue for me in my personal life (my cousin and aunt's now husband had theirs annulled.) Is annulment based on some objective reality, some real problem at the time of marriage, or is it subjective to the declaration of the tribunal.

Let me elaborate.

In confession, the priest has the actual power to work in persona Christi to forgive sins. There is no question whether your sins are forgiven or not. This is objectively true, it is really real.

When a rouge bishop ordains a woman to the priesthood we know it is objectively not true, because he does not have the power to do so. Subjectively, however, the woman went through the motions and could assume that she was ordained.

Now, when a tribunal makes a mistake, as it can like any judge might, is the validity of the annulment based on the objective reality of the marriage, that is, is the tribunal simply a function of the Church's legal arm which pronounces things that already are true to be true in the eyes of the Church? Or rather, is annulment bound to the conclusions of the tribunal which would have the power to change objective reality, ie to actually declare a marriage invalid. (This is outright a divorce tribunal, but there is an argument that because of the legal basis that must be met to grant the annulment it is a condition divorce.)

What do you make of it? What does it look like to an outsider?

[tinytherese]

I suggest talking to CatherineM on this. She used to work for the tribunal in her diocese. You can also check out some reading material like A Concise Guide to Canon Law or Surprised by Canon Law 1 and 2.

[CatherineM]

An annulment simply recognizes that a true sacramental marriage did not take place. Most of the ones I saw were granted because the parties weren't mature enough to know what they were really getting into. It had nothing to do with their ages. There are probably loads of people who could qualify for annulments, but they never divorce. At some point in their relationship, they figured it out, grew up, got better catechized, etc., and made their marriages into strong ones. The tribunal only looks at the moment of the marriage, not what comes later. If it is a good marriage at the start, but falls apart later, no annulment.

[MichaelFilo]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1287438168' post='2180507']
An annulment simply recognizes that a true sacramental marriage did not take place. Most of the ones I saw were granted because the parties weren't mature enough to know what they were really getting into. It had nothing to do with their ages. There are probably loads of people who could qualify for annulments, but they never divorce. At some point in their relationship, they figured it out, grew up, got better catechized, etc., and made their marriages into strong ones. The tribunal only looks at the moment of the marriage, not what comes later. If it is a good marriage at the start, but falls apart later, no annulment.
[/quote]


Certainly, in a perfect world with perfect tribunals. But what if the tribunal is wrong about the maturity of the parties, or any other aspect, or what if the tribunal is lied to. Does their declaring it annulled make it so?

Furthermore, if maturity is some sort of excuse for incapability to take a vow then I suppose the second stance would be more correct, that the tribunal has power to formally and objectively declare a marriage is annulled because maturity is a non-definable term, it can only mean that the annulment's validity is based on the tribunal's conclusion and so the tribunal has actual power, like a priest does, to declare marriages invalid. If so, there are serious implications.

[CatherineM]

Every annulment case that goes forward is reviewed first by the Defender of the Bond. That's who I used to work for. Their job is just that, to defend the bond of marriage. If it is a case where there is automatic grounds, such as when a Catholic isn't married before a priest, the DB will normally just sign the paperwork because the marriage didn't meet the basic requirements. Those are done with a Petition for a Lack of Canonical Form. If the grounds aren't automatic, there is a hearing scheduled, and the Defender of the Bond is basically like a prosecutor. People lie in the Tribunal as often as they lie in a regular court room. The most contested cases are those where one party wants to re-marry, or already has, and the other party hasn't moved on in any way. There are even forms for a case where the respondent is potentially violent.

If the annulment is turned down, the case ends unless it is appealed. If the annulment is granted, it is automatically appealed to the Province, basically where the Archbishop is. In Oklahoma City, we handled the appeals from the dioceses of Little Rock and Tulsa. Different court, different people, same city. I only worked for the Court of First Instance. The Appeals courts is the Court of Second Instance. If someone has appealed the annulment, not just an automatic appeal, and it is upheld at the appeals level, it still has to be sent to the to the Court of Third Instance which is the Roman Rota in Rome. People can also choose to skip the second level and go straight to the Rota, but they have to pay the fees for that then.

The presumption is always that the Marriage is valid, until it is proven otherwise. Annulments are sometimes overturned on appeal. It happened a few years ago to a Kennedy. He had already remarried, so that ended up being a mess.

Bottom line is that the Tribunal is run by humans. There will be people who lie. Mistakes can be made. However, this ultimately falls under the whole, "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven" thing.

[CatherineM]

By the way, the Roman Rota is now headed by Archbishop Burke from St. Louis. He's as hard core as they come, and any decision he makes is definitely good enough for me.

[MichaelFilo]

That does not answer the question of whether the Church rules it to be so and it becomes so or if the Church simply tries to find the truth. If there is an error, does the tribunal actually make it annulled or does the annulment get invalided by reality? These things can happen.

[CatherineM]

I believe that the people who work in the tribunal try very hard to find the truth. In the rare case that a mistake is made, most are corrected at higher courts. If, for example, a former couple collude to lie to the tribunal so both can remarry, and the tribunal falls for it, the annulment recognized in error, would be made so in Heaven. However, those who have lied in the tribunal, while they are free to remarry, they are never truly free. To look at it another way, a person, so self-centered as to lie in a Church Court, was probably never mature enough to marry in the first place.

In the marriage tribunal, you see the deepest hurts in many cases that we can inflict. No one comes out a winner. People who have never been involved with it either think it is a rubber stamp "Catholic divorce," or are angry that the Church allows anyone to have an annulment. I am married to a man who went through an annulment. He didn't want the divorce, but had no choice in it. The longer we are together, the more he comes to realize just how hollow his first marriage was. When you are in a truly valid, sacramental marriage, it is easy to know which ones aren't.

[MichaelFilo]

So, if a tribunal is lied to and they err, which is rare with all the rules and many levels that must be gone through, maybe even virtually but not entirely non-existent, and their decisions are binding even if in the case of error, then you realize what the tribunal becomes. It becomes a body with the power to dissolve marriages, even valid one. That means it does become a divorce court, albeit one with super stringent rules.

The fact that a person still calls it a marriage is an indicator of the fact that it was just that. Not having proper understanding, I feel is a weak argument. After all, we receive communion and forgiveness without fully understanding the implications. Holy orders too. Of course, it is only a side issue because if the tribunals have the power to declare something invalid, whether it was or wasn't, indicates that they have the power of divorce, even if they try their very best not to.

[Deacon Joe]

This is just my opinion but I believe the answer would be that, if the parties knowingly lied to the tribunal, the annulment would be invalid in the eyes of God even if the Church issued a Declaration of Nullity based on the information it has. You can't expect the Tribunal to be able to discern when they are being lied to in every case. I think this goes along the same lines as confession, you can go to confession and confess your sins and the priest may give you absolution even though, in your heart, you know you are not repentant. the sin would not be forgiven. You can fool human beings but you can't fool God. It's best to let the just Judge handle these matters in the end.

JOE

[MichaelFilo]

Understandable,but it doesn't have to be a case of lying. What about honest error? Does the tribunal have actual power to make a marriage invalid, as opposed to simply declare it. If it does, it is a divorce court with stylized rules.

Don't assume the lying scenario, assume a genuine mistake.

[CatherineM]

I guess I'm having trouble understanding what kind of errors you are talking about, if you exclude lying under oath.

[MichaelFilo]

Well, we can use lying, by, say, one party. Not the other, just one. A lie of coercion. They are coerced by say, a parent. The Church believes it, because, say the parents are dead. Now, objectively, there are objectively valid and invalid marriages. When the church declares the marriage invalid, and the marriage is valid, it is working as a divorce court, making that which is valid in God's eyes invalid. Now, we can hold the one party responsible, and say they know it was immoral. But lets say the non-lying party didn't know of the lie. The church has granted him a divorce, in effect. It made his valid marriage invalid.

In a case of non-lying, let us say that a couple knows very little about the process but the Church has some indication that a priest used non-canonical form for a marriage. Let us say they bring up the priest and instruct him of his error, an error he made in the wording introduced by some fellow priest, and he is to list off all the couples he married when he introduced the error. He wrongly lists this couple, mixing them up with another couple. The Church declares their marriage anulled and instructs them to go through the rite again to make it valid because of the priestly error. Now, in actuality, they were not improperly married, but did they just have their marriage declared a divorce? What if they choose to remain unwed because they did not want to be together anyway. I know it would take a perfect storm to come together, but supposing it is not outside the realm of possibility, which it isn't, then the tribunal is a divorce tribunal.

A more empirical way to look at it is this way; the tribunal is not perfect, no matter how layered, and we have seen an increase in annulments from some small number in 1968 (around 600) to 59,000 marriages between 1984 to 1994 in the US annually.( Fr. Leonard Kennedy, Catholic Insight, “The Annulment Crisis in the Church,” March 1999 Issue, http://catholicinsight.com/online/church/divorce/c_annul.shtml ) I just don't imagine that US marriages suddenly became invalid en masse. This must indicate something about tribunals or the understanding of annulment in the US. With that said, we can assume at least some were valid marriages, if not for the sheer number. If that is the case, then the tribunals must have ruled some valid marriages to be invalid. If that is the case, then today the tribunals are nothing more than divorce courts for Catholics.

[MichaelFilo]

Allow me to add as an addendum to the last paragraph, in the US 78% of the annulments in the world are granted here. We have to imagine that the rule of law is not being applied correctly. Do we have, then, people who are now divorced because the Church said so or do we have people who think they have annulments that they do not have? If the latter, many get them to get remarried later on, are they now living in sin?

[CatholicCid]

I'm going to toss in my two uneducated cents.

A tribunal cannot invalidate a valid marriage. An annulment is not a divorce. An annulment, as previously stated, is recognizing that the marriage is null, that it never was.

If there is an instance where a tribunal rules incorrectly, it would hopefully be caught in the appeal. As CatherineM discussed in her post, the Church assumes all marriages to be valid and has several methods in place to ensure that each tribunal decree is correct and accurate.

As there are appeals, it should make one realize that a tribunal's decision is not necessarily final or correct. If the local tribunal acknowledges a marriage is null, but the final court, the Rota, overturns this decision, then it is recognizing that the local tribunal made an errant ruling and the marriage a valid marriage. This does not mean that the local tribunal "dissolved" the marriage and the Rota "ressolved" it. It means that the local court thought that the marriage was invalid and that the Rota realized that it was actually valid.

How would this affect the situation? This goes into my own opinion, so it might be chocked full of errors. If a local tribunal offers an errant opinion, the unknowing married couple, who now truly believe their marriage to be null, would not be culpable for actions/sins regarding their marriage. If the husband starts dating again, this would be a form of infidelity. However, he would not be culpable as he believes himself to be unmarried in the eyes of the Church and eligible to date. Note, the man is still married, he is just ignorant of this fact. When the Rota would overturn the decision and recognize that the marriage is still valid, then the man would have to recognize he is no longer eligible to date and must live in his situation as a married man, as would his wife.

If the couple lied to trick the tribunal when in a valid marriage, then as Deacon Joe pointed out, they would be culpable. While the couple might trick the tribunal into viewing the marriage as null due to false testimony, the couple is knowingly deceiving the court and creating any decision given itself to be null. In such a case, if they were not to bring to light their trickery, it seems that they would have to answer to the highest court, aka God.

That being said, such proceedings should be approached with absolute honesty and one should also trust in the judgment of the Church, offered through the tribunals. To the statistics given, I do not think we can assume that some of the marriages would be valid due to sheer number alone. Instead, we trust that the Church has issued proper decrees and take the large numbers of annulments granted in the US as a sad state in the preparation of marriage and the view in our country where marriage is apparently attempted so haphazardly at times.

*As formerly warned, I have no formal education involving annulments at this time. This is just my own opinions/understandings.

Edited October 19, 2010 by CatholicCid