Should The Catholic Church Eliminate Annulments And Let All Divorcees

[southern california guy]

According to the book "The Annulment Fiasco" 97 percent of the annulments requested in the US (In 2002) were granted. Only three percent were turned down. And an annulment that is appealed to Rome costs the Catholic church about $10,000 ( http://books.google.com/books?id=ZXVPQk7stJkC&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=each+annulment+costs++the+vatican&source=bl&ots=DgkcNnmS_Z&sig=pFxiLAWc9NQYaQwxwHYFaiUm2aU&hl=en&ei=wT3GTNWAA4r3sgashfyJDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&sqi=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false )

So wouldn't the Catholic church just be better off getting rid of the annulment process and allowing all members who divorce to remarry? In the US only three percent are turned down anyway.

Why should the annulment process be continued? Is there ANY reference to it in the bible? Is there any sort of biblical precedent for it? Why would it be bad if the Catholic church discontinued it?

Edited October 26, 2010 by southern california guy

[CatherineM]

Your local Tribunal is always looking for volunteers. You don't have to be an attorney to help in the process. I'd highly recommend anyone who has issues with the annulment process go down and volunteer. Look into the eyes of the people going through the process. Hear their stories. Feel their pain. Then come back and tell me how we are granting too many.

[truthfinder]

Annulments simply state that sacramental marriage did not occur due to different reasons. Many people probably do not go into marriage right minded, so hopefully an annulment would allow them to really examine their life. I think that some annulments are given out too easily (edit: not all, just some who look like they want to get rid of their spouse for ridiculous reasons. granted, it doesn't happen, probably, all too often. end edit.) However, they should not be done away with. (to me it is all about binding and loosing, if a priest can wipe out sins, then why can't a tribunal state that a marriage is not valid?)
Just my ramblings. I would think that those who pursue an annulment would want to follow the church to some degree, getting rid of annulments completely cheapens the vows which are to be kept until death. Vows have a ontological affect ( I should think) and a divorce does not take that into account. Whereas, an annulment conisders whether the vows were really properly entered into ( as well as other factors)
My $.02. Hopefully one of the scholars will jump in with biblical evidence.

Edited October 26, 2010 by truthfinder

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='southern california guy' timestamp='1288060775' post='2182572']
According to the book "The Annulment Fiasco" 97 percent of the annulments requested in the US (In 2002) were granted. Only three percent were turned down. And an annulment that is appealed to Rome costs the Catholic church about $10,000 ( http://books.google.com/books?id=ZXVPQk7stJkC&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=each+annulment+costs++the+vatican&source=bl&ots=DgkcNnmS_Z&sig=pFxiLAWc9NQYaQwxwHYFaiUm2aU&hl=en&ei=wT3GTNWAA4r3sgashfyJDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&sqi=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false )

So wouldn't the Catholic church just be better off getting rid of the annulment process and allowing all members who divorce to remarry? In the US only three percent are turned down anyway.

Why should the annulment process be continued? Is there ANY reference to it in the bible? Is there any sort of biblical precedent for it? Why would it be bad if the Catholic church discontinued it?
[/quote]
Before an request for an annulment is sent to the tribunal, it has to go thru the parish priest, so the fact that 97% of them are granted can simply mean that the priests are doing an excellent job of weeding out the ones with no chances of success. Many of them also are simple procedures because the couple didn't marry properly - got married in fron of a JP etc instead of in the church.

[MichaelFilo]

[quote name='CatherineM' timestamp='1288061342' post='2182576']
Your local Tribunal is always looking for volunteers. You don't have to be an attorney to help in the process. I'd highly recommend anyone who has issues with the annulment process go down and volunteer. Look into the eyes of the people going through the process. Hear their stories. Feel their pain. Then come back and tell me how we are granting too many.
[/quote]

Annulments are based on objective reality, not the emotions of the petitioners. By letting those emotions guide you, you do the most uncharitable thing a person can do in a tribunal, you destroy the dignity of marriage. I suggest highly if you do volunteer you make sure you are not at the whims of your emotion. It is never pastoral or caring to give people what they want because they feel strongly, or else we would have gay marriages.

[Brother Adam]

Your biblical precedence is Matthew 19:4-6. Valid marriages are never annulled and the parish priest can tell in most cases when the marriage is valid and it goes no further. That is why only 3% of annulments are not granted (though I am not sure about that number). It would be devastating to grant all divorcees the freedom to remarry. The Church would be complicate in endangering the souls of thousands of people.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' timestamp='1288097754' post='2182655']
Annulments are based on objective reality, not the emotions of the petitioners. By letting those emotions guide you, you do the most uncharitable thing a person can do in a tribunal, you destroy the dignity of marriage. I suggest highly if you do volunteer you make sure you are not at the whims of your emotion. It is never pastoral or caring to give people what they want because they feel strongly, or else we would have gay marriages.
[/quote]
I volunteered for over 6 years in the office of the Defender of the Bond. I don't let my emotions guide me. I've had too much mediation training for that. My point was that when you see real people, and how damaged they became in their marriages, you have no trouble understanding that there are times when real marriages do not occur, not matter how many people attended the wedding.

Love the idea that someone thinks I can be whimsical though. You made my day.

[MichaelFilo]

That was my point, a valid marriage does not have to produce a happy one and an invalid marriage does not necessarily produce an unhappy one.

You can't understand that real marriages can be invalid from seeing damaged people. That is the point. The two are separate issues. A valid marriage is no promise of success, and an invalid one is no promise of failure.

[thessalonian]

It's not even a matter of "should". It's can't. To do so would be to go against God's word. Granted there are big problems with anullments. I don't know that I believe the 90% number but even if it were true, for the 3% they should not stop anullments. Truth is not governed by percentages.

Edited October 27, 2010 by thessalonian

[Skinzo]

 John Paul II criticized abuses in the annulment process more than once, and recently so has Pope Benedict XVI:

Reject easy annulments, Pope tells Vatican tribunal

January 29, 2010


Granting easy access to marriage annulments is an offense against both justice and charity, said Pope Benedict XVI on January 29.

The Pope’s message has a particular resonance in the US, whose Catholic Church tribunals account for more than half of the world’s annulment decrees. Pope Benedict, like Pope John Paul II before him, has repeatedly argued for a more vigorous defense of the marital bond.

In an address to the Church’s highest tribunal for marriage cases, the Holy Father warned against “the tendency—widespread and well-rooted though not always obvious—to contrast justice with charity, almost as if the one excluded the other.” He reminded the tribunal’s judges and advocated that the marriage laws of the Church are oriented toward the spiritual welfare of the individuals, and applying those laws properly is itself a work of charity. Ultimately, he reminded them, “the Church's juridical activity has as its goal the salvation of souls.”

“Without truth charity slides into sentimentalism,” the Pope told officials of the Roman Rota, at the opening of its judicial term. “Love becomes an empty shell to be filled arbitrarily. This is the fatal risk of love in a culture without truth.”


“Both justice and charity require love for truth, and essentially involve the search for what is true. … Without truth charity slides into sentimentalism. Love becomes an empty shell to be filled arbitrarily. This is the fatal risk of love in a culture without truth”.

This can happen, the Pope went on, “not only in the practical activity of passing judgment, but also in theoretical studies which have such an influence on concrete judgements. The problem arises when the essence itself of marriage becomes more or less obscured. … Examination of the conjugal bond in existential, personalist and relational terms must never be undertaken at the expense of indissolubility, an essential property which in Christian marriage has, with unity, a special firmness by virtue of the Sacrament”.

“Marriage enjoys the favour of the law. Hence, in case of doubt, a marriage must be held to be valid until the contrary is proven. Otherwise we run the serious risk of remaining without an objective point of reference for pronouncements of nullity, transforming all conjugal difficulties into a symptom of a failed union whose essential nucleus of justice – the indissoluble bond – is thus effectively denied”.





http://www.dfwcatholic.org/pope-justice-charity-and-truth-must-guide-the-roman-rota7729/.html




S.