WASHINGTON — American Catholic marriage tribunalists are denying rumors of a Vatican crackdown on the high number of annulments granted in the United States.
Secular news reports on Pope Benedict XVI’s late January comments to the Roman Rota, the Church’s court of final appeal, used “crackdown” in headlines and singled out the Church in the United States as the target of Benedict’s comments about tribunals showing a “false charity” untempered by justice and granting annulments erroneously.
But these stories failed to back up their sensational headlines with documentary evidence or named sources.
“U.S. annulment rate may spur Vatican crackdown,” warned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a March 20 story, which began with a discussion of the therapeutic value of annulment for one St. Louis woman previously divorced by her husband. Beyond the headline, it said nothing about a crackdown; it did attribute to “some Vatican sources” the opinion that “the Church may decrease the number of annulments.”
A Jan. 29 Associated Press story interpreted Benedict as having told the Roman Rota “that they shouldn’t confuse ‘pastoral charity’ in granting annulments with their need to uphold Church law.”
The story goes on to claim, without giving evidence, that “the Vatican’s concern is seen as being mainly directed at the United States, which in 2006 had more annulment cases launched than the rest of the world combined,” though only 6% of the world’s Catholics live here.
The Vatican’s Annuario (statistical yearbook) of 2007 shows 60% of the Church’s annulments coming from American petitioners, 5% from Italy, 4% each from Poland and Brazil, and 28% from the rest of the world.
However, several canon lawyers contacted by the Register agree there is no crackdown — nor any need of one.
Sister of Mercy Victoria Vondenberger, chairwoman of the Association of Canon Lawyers’ Committee on Sacramental Law and the director of the Cincinnati Archdiocese’s marriage tribunal, says the Pope’s address to the Roman Rota, which is given annually, should not be interpreted as a signal to any particular part of the Church.
“The U.S. simply has the largest number who ask for annulments,” she said.
According to Sister Victoria, the large number and high proportion of annulment petitions in the United States is partly a function of the large number here of both functioning marriage tribunals and of qualified canonists to adjudicate them, as well as to act for the petitioner, the spouse and the marriage itself — even if both parties want an annulment, a “defender of the bond” argues for the marriage’s validity.
“He said that charity and justice are not to be seen as opposing each other,” said Sister Victoria. “You can’t be truly charitable unless you are just. A false charity would be to give people always what they ask for.”
To rule a marriage null, she said, when in justice it was not, would be “a false annulment and would also not be charitable.”
Americans Committed
Another perfectly legitimate reason for America’s relatively high number of annulments, said Jaqui Rapp, a judge on the Louisville, Ky., tribunal and co-author of a new book titled Annulment: 100 Questions and Answers for Catholics, is that “American Catholics are still committed to the Church, far more than in Europe. They want to remain in the Church” after getting out of their original marriage.
“In Europe, they just get a divorce, get remarried and stop going to church,” she said. “And, in fact, most baptized Catholics don’t go at all. They are secularized.”
Rapp said there is no crackdown from Rome or general hardening of attitudes: “Tribunals treat every case as unique.”
Rapp’s co-author, Peter Vere, is a freelance canonist based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, who works for both American and Canadian tribunals as judge, advocate and defender of the bond. He supports Rapp’s contention that Americans seek annulments so much because they value their life in the Church.
“What is unique about America is that there still is enough of a sense that it’s important to get the marriage things sorted out so your religious life can continue,” Vere said.
At the same time, he said, America is “oversexualized and very much influenced by the divorce culture,” meaning Catholics want remarriage after the failure of an earlier marriage like everyone else. “In Third World Catholic cultures, marriages stay together,” regardless of their canonical validity. In Vere’s view, America grants more annulments simply because it processes more applications.
Rapp said the biggest reason she sees for granting annulments is the attitude of the partners to marriage itself. Canon 1095 of the Code of Canon Law gives “grave lack of discretion of judgment concerning essential matrimonial rights and duties” as a reason for which a person would be “incapable of contracting marriage.” In other words, Catholics who are recognized by a marriage tribunal to have been too immature at the time of their marriage to understand the significance of their vows are ipso facto considered not to have been married.
As well, in her part of the U.S., “often the marriages we’re looking at are between two Protestants, one of whom now wants to marry a Catholic.” If the two Protestants are validly married, their marriage cannot simply be dissolved in order to permit remarriage. But Protestants often do not hold the requisite sacramental view of marriage as indissoluble, their attitude being “that the ideal is the marriage should last forever, but if it doesn’t work out, divorce is perfectly acceptable — and that a civil judge can dissolve a marriage.”
Steve Weatherbe is based in Victoria, British Columbia.
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A good broadcast on annulment and marriage
http://netny.net/inthearena/episodes/marriage-annulment-divorce/
My sister and her ex- husband grew up in the Catholic Church and were married their. After thiry years of marriage and a son they raised, her ex- husband decided he wanted to be married to a much younger woman he had been having an affair with. He requested my sister sign an agreement for his application for an annulment which she delayed doing until he agreed to purchase her a new home and supply some monetary support so she would not be destitute. The Church granted his annulment from a thirty year marriage which yielded a son. He ex now was abel to re3marry his new young wife in the cChurch and is granted all the blessing and burial in the Church when that time comes. My sister is left skeptical of the Church she was raised in due to it’s history of indulgences and falcious annulments.
Perhaps the problem is not with annulments - but tha Catholics, who have no idea what the Church’s teachings are, are marrying thereby causing a marriage which can be easily annulled.
Does the Church grant annulments in error? We need to carefully examine that question to obtain the correct answer. Given the situation described by “Robertlifelongcatholic” at first glance this appears that the Church has in fact rendered a decision in error. However, what information was provided by the parties to the Church? Was this information accurate? If not how can the Church be responsible for someone’s dishonest information? Without the facts in the case we cannot rush to a decision and make a personal judgment on the Church based on limited information. The public may never know the intimate details of the case nor should we because we are not the judge. In the end God will judge the applicant and his representatives.
I think the main problem here in the US is that the ‘assumption’ is that it is the Church’s responsibility _alone_ for the couple to understand what they enter into when they enter the sacrament of matrimony.
I would contest that none of us truly know what we are ‘in for’ when we truly accept any sacrament. But we receive the grace to know it more fully. But if we close ourself to Grace in our life, then there are many truths, marriage just being one, that will remain hidden to us.
So does that mean we should be able to claim a ‘do over’? I often thought the very broad definition the church is using allowed for so many declarations of nullity. I know by the definition we were taught just recently in a marriage prep training, my own marriage could be declared null. And really just about every single marriage would be a candidate for such a declaration.
Or one persons thought.
I pray for our leaders to fully understand the desire God has on our heart.
If the church declares your marriage null in void, have you been living in sin the whole time, or perhaps from the point of realisation that you had grounds for annulment, untill you actually parted.
I was interviewed by the author of this article, and I offer the unique perspective of a spouse who is using canon law to uphold marriage, rather than wanting to find a replacement partner. Marriage is a sign to the world of Christ’s faithfulness. When Christ’s people betrayed Him, HIs response was not, “Oh they really aren’t my people at all. I’ll go find a replacement people.”
What is published in the U.S. about annulments is not in conformity with Catholic Church teaching available in English from the Pope, Rotal Judge Burke, and Rotal Judge-editor- and teacher in Rome, Egan (who help craft the language in the code itself).
We link to sources from the Holy See on our webpage:
http://www.marysadvocates.org/annulment/annulment.html
The editors of National Catholic Register cut me out of the story that they received from the author.
Do the editors of National Catholic Register refuse to publish anything that would lead readers to conclude that the US tribunals are doing anything contrary to Catholic teaching, doctrine or jurisprudence from the Holy See ?
Do the editors not want to quote anyone as controversial as “Bai Macfarlane” who tens of thousands know as the cofounder and voice on the audio recordings distributed by she and her husband?
I don’t know.
I am really concerned that my husband filed annulment in June 2008 and I received the package in Aug 2008 was approved 30 April 2009 in Houston Texas.
I participated in the whole process that took me months to complete and even asked extensions to the deadline. I was really devastated because all his testimonies were all incorrect. How come it was approved? We were given a chance to read what we had submitted so I was able to support all his incorrect statements with back-up documents. It was very clear that the annulment was fraud. One more thing he chose only the questionaires that he was able to ruin my reputation. He was forced by his mistress to file annulment because they were living together without marriage. How come Catholic Church can easily approved without proper investigation.
The main reason why the US has more annulments than any country in the world is because of it’s lax and expanded interpretations of canon 1095, “lack of discretion of judgement” pertaining to the essential rights and obligations of marriage.” The Roman Rota requires that a “grave anomaly” exists and is to be identified. US Tribunals interpret this canon in a rather loose fashion, in order to provide “false charity ” to Petitioners, who wrongly attempt to escape their obligations to their marriage.
“For the canonist the principle must remain clear that only incapacity and not difficulty in giving consent and in realizing a true community of life and love invalidates a marriage. Moreover, the breakdown of a marriage union is never in itself proof of such incapacity on the part of the contracting parties. They may have neglected or used badly the means, both natural and supernatural, at their disposal; or they may have failed to accept the inevitable limitations and burdens of married life, either because of blocks of an unconscious nature or because of
slight pathological disturbances which leave substantially intact human freedom, or finally because of failures of a moral order. The hypothesis of real incapacity is to be considered only when an anomaly of a serious nature is present, which, however it may be defined, must substantially vitiate the capacity of the individual to understand and/or to will. (John Paul II, Allocution to the Roman Rota, 5 Feb. 1987, )”
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