St. Elizabeth Parish, Tecumseh at 506 N Union Street, Tecumseh, MI 49286-1304 US - Information about Marriage and Annulments
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Information about Marriage and Annulments
by Fr. Charles Irvin |
Note: Canon Lawyers no longer care to use the term "annulment". They have no shorthand word as yet to denote the fact that this an internal Roman Catholic "procedure for declaring the invalidity of a marriage". Because there is a separation of Church and State, this procedure has nothing to do with the status the parties (or their children) in civil law. The following essay was written when the term annulment" was still in usage. PRIMARY SCRIPTURE The Sacrament of Matrimony actualizes this love of God, makes it human flesh and blood, makes it a part of human living. All Christian marriage is built on this fundamental reality, a reality that is indissoluble and which can never be shattered. In giving their consent to each other, baptized couples confer the Sacrament of Matrimony on each other. Their consent to mutually give themselves as total gifts each to
the other is a juridic act to which the Church witnesses and ratifies as the family of faith to which the couple belong. Such a union is presumptively authentic and valid unless and until that presumption is overcome. In an annulment process the Church examines the interior nature of the mutual exchange between the parties and then ratifies the fact that some vital and necessary element or elements in that exchange of consent were missing in
either one (or both) of the parties involved. Of course external elements could invalidate the exchange, but the great majority of annulment cases involve an interior discernment. There are people who question the fact that the Roman Catholic Church is involved in annulments at all, claiming that annulments are "Roman Catholic divorces." There are others who decry the interior discernment, claiming that it is "invasive, intrusive, paternalistic and degrading." On the other hand, there are those who say
that if the Sacrament of Matrimony was not truly present in a marriage then it is proper for Christians to call upon the Church to declare that to be the case. It is the duty of the Church to protect the integrity of the Sacraments and to inform us whether or not they
are validly present in our human activity. That raises a second fundamental question. If it is proper for the Church to employ the annulment process, what criteria should the Church use to determine whether or not the Sacrament of Matrimony or a valid non-sacramental marriage is present in any marriage
being questioned? While in a few instances involving external forces the Church's tribunals use the same criteria employed by civil courts, nevertheless we must hold to the principle that civil divorce cannot dissolve the Sacrament of Matrimony or a valid non-sacramental marriage; a divine institution cannot be terminated by a human institution. However the Church has within her range of responsibilities the duty to determine whether or not that which was instituted by God was truly present. This is equally so with respect to all of the Sacraments. The Church and the State have separate and distinct legal systems and it is important here to strictly observe the separation of
Church and State and not mix the elements proper to each. NOTE: The Catholic Church does not "grant annulments," it simply declares the
juridic fact of nullity. The jurisprudence is one of witnessing to the reality of what is
present or not present in a marriage presented to it, determining whether what is present
in that relationship is consonant with what it understands to be essential to the nature
of a marriage. One of the duties of the Church is to witness to the presence of Christ reaching us and
sharing God's life with us in His Sacraments. One of the Church's concomitant duties is to
tell us when a sacrament is truly present and when it is not. The Church ought to tell us
whether or not a priest validly offers the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Holy Mass, when he
uses pizza and beer instead of bread and wine. Similarly, the Church ought to tell us
whether or not the Sacrament of Baptism is authentically administered when the one
baptizing uses rose-water and glycerin instead of water. Likewise, the Church has the duty
to declare whether or not a true marriage is present when either one or both of the
parties offers the other a consent to marry that is a radically defective consent. A divorce is the ending of a marriage contract by the civil power of the state; the
state uses its power to rescind the marital contract. An annulment, however, is a
determination by the Church that the requisite elements for a valid marriage were not
present in the first place when the parties exchanged their consent. Behavior patterns of
either or both persons, either early on in the beginning or later on in their
relationship, can provide strong indications of a fissure which might be traced back to
the beginning of their union. The evidence must demonstrate that the requisite consensual
elements were missing all along. The Church's annulment process does not negate the truth that a loving, spousal
relationship was present and that the children born of that union were legitimate. The
Church's annulment process does not deny the civil recognition of the previous union, or
its social or anthropological existence. Annulment is a very limited thing, focusing
strictly on the essence of the commitments made, each party to the other. For there to be
a valid marriage, sacramental or not, certain necessary components must be present. And
while it may be alleged that the children of an annulled marriage are second class
citizens in the Kingdom of God, the reality is that the graces of marriage run or do not
run to the spouses. The status of their children in the eyes of God is never in
question. Simply because their parents did not share in an authentic Sacrament of
Matrimony does not mean that the children born of that union received any less than a full
measure God's graces. Nor can it be properly said that children born of parents who are
not baptized are deprived of God's graces. The Roman Rota (so named because of the rotating teams of three judges) is the highest
marriage tribunal in the Roman Catholic Church, adjudicating as an appellate court
petitions for declarations of nullity within the jurisprudence of the Catholic Church. The
Rota has made some remarkable decisions based on Pope Paul VI's teachings on the nature of
marriage found in his Encyclical Humanae Vitae and based also on subsequent
papal teachings. These Rota decisions have opened the way for declarations of freedom to
marry again in the Catholic Church that were previously not thought possible. This has
been brought about by newer understandings of the nature of matrimonial consent and the
psychological capacities needed to support such a commitment to a lifetime of
co-partnership between a man and a woman. Because of the Second Vatican Council, marriage is seen not simply as a legal contract.
It is also a covenant between a man and a woman to establish and live together in a
partnership for the whole of life, "communio totius vitae." A careful reading of
the Nuptial Blessing, a beautiful and essential part of the Nuptial Mass, reveals much:
"Father, by your plan man and woman are united, and married life has been established
as the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood.
Look with love upon this woman, your daughter, now joined to her husband in marriage. She
asks your blessing. Give her the grace of love and peace. May she always follow the
example of the holy women whose praises are sung in the scriptures. May her husband put
his trust in her and recognize that she is his equal and the heir with him to the life of
grace. May he always honor her and love her as Christ loves his bride, the Church. "
In the twenty centuries of Church history the science of psychology has appeared and
developed only within our century. This has given us new insights as to the nature of
consent, commitment to another, and the psychic capacities necessary to support decisions
to live in total commitment to one another. Revisions were proposed for the Church's Code
of Canon Law based on these newer psycho/spiritual understandings. Much of the content of
this expanded jurisprudence is used in the Church's diocesan marriage tribunals. While the
jurisprudence of the Church is well grounded, it is also dynamic and continues to expand
as the Church reflects on the mystery of marriage in the light of Christ's teaching and in
the light of human experience. It is a wondrous and joyful thing to behold the return of
Catholics to the sacraments, sacraments which had been denied them in the past because of
the previous state of matrimonial jurisprudence in Roman Catholic church tribunals. One of the basic sources for these new annulment possibilities is found in the Second
Vatican Council. The Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium
et Spes) defines marriage in terms significantly differing from those pertaining
to legal contracts. Contracts speak of rights, duties, and property. Those are terms
involving property and ownership rights. They are inadequate notions relative to the
inter- relationships between human persons committing themselves to living Christ's
covenant love in their lives. They are inadequate tools to be used in discerning the
commitment spouses give to each other in what God has joined together. In addition, Vatican II does not speak of marriage in terms of "primary" and
"secondary" purposes. In his encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul
VI shifted the theological focus on the fundamental elements of the Sacrament of
Matrimony. Humanae Vitae, along with other papal encyclicals, presents
marriage as a total partnership in all of life, a "communio totius vitae" as
Pope Paul VI put it. The covenant love of a couple, said the pope, must be human, total,
moral, and fruitful. Marriage is not viewed solely in terms of the giving and receiving of
rights, duties, and obligations. Nor is it seen primarily in terms of reproduction.
Marriage is now to be seen in terms of God's unbreakable commitment to belong to us
forever in love, a love that is, at the same time, generative and creative. There is cause for alarm in the woeful lack of understanding in the minds of many
couples regarding the basic Christian reasons for marriage. All too often pastors find
themselves talking with persons who want only a pretty ceremony that is somehow vaguely
blessed by the Church. This is little more than a license to live together. Even worse, it
reduces the covenant nature of this commitment, and the total love that it entails, along
with the meaning of the relationship as a Sacrament of Christ, to the level of a mere
legal agreement. The Christian covenant of matrimony is something which has elements within it that the
couple do not determine for themselves. These fundamental elements of the Sacrament come
from One who is beyond the will of the partners. They come from Christ, the One who gave
Himself to us, Body and Blood, in an Everlasting Covenant. The terms of the covenant are
His, not ours. And the same is likewise true for divorce. The law against divorce is not a
law invented by the Church. It comes from Christ who told us: "What God hath joined
together, man must not divide." The Sacrament of Marriage is an outward and visible sign of that inward spiritual
reality that is God's love, God's Word made flesh in the human condition. In Christian
marriage Christians 'ordain' themselves to minister to each other (and others) a sort of
love that is divine. Their own human love remains, of course. And it retains its own
integrity. But the couple's human love in the Sacrament of Matrimony contains within it
the special power of God's Covenant love, a love that is for the whole of life in its
complete totality, a partnership love, a covenant of love that goes beyond a mere legal
contract. Christians give themselves, therefore, irrevocably, so that if one party fails
or hurts the other (or even tries to crucify the other), the covenant relationship
remains. Contracts are terminated by breaches, covenants are above and beyond breach of
contract. Moreover, Sacraments are acts of a community of faith; they are for the Faith Community
as a community. They are not simply acts of private individuals. While it is true that
each spouse in a marriage partnership needs affection, approval, affirmation, and
acceptance (and rightfully we should expect such), it is nevertheless true that others who
relate to the partners in marriage need their support, the strength and power of their
relationship, and the Spirit within their love. This is especially true when children are
conceived and raised. The marriage relationship is placed in the hands of God in order
that His grace and power might work through, with, and in that marital love. This is
absolutely and fundamentally necessary for the psychic, emotional, and spiritual health of
children. They need a vital, stable, and loving bond between their mother and father more
than they need bread and milk. In the Christian context there is a recognition that God has given Himself to us in the
mode of a Covenant. He has "married" himself to humanity. As a result, He can
never not be integrated or "married" to our humanity. He has therefore not given
himself to us in the form of a contract. His commitment to us, springing out of the Jewish
Covenant and coming to us in the Christian Covenant, comes to us in these terms: "I
will be your God and you will be my people, and I will love you no matter what happens.
Even though you ignore me, even though you go whoring after false gods, and even though
you try to crucify me, I will still be your God. You cannot escape me or avoid my
relationship with you." And in the Word becoming Spirit-filled flesh, the nuptials
are consummated. It can be seen, therefore, that it is no accident that the Gospels begin
with the first miracle of Christ occurring at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. The Last
Supper is, as the Book of Revelation puts it, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. In Roman Catholic theology, a marriage is a sacrament when two baptized Christians give
themselves to each other in a proper forum and with the requisite interior dispositions
and capacities. The Church quite properly recognizes that other marriages may have all of
the requisite elements but involve unions where either one or both of the parties are not
baptized. In cases where such marriages break down the Church's jurisprudence is based on
what is commonly known as the "Pauline Privilege" and the "Petrine
Privilege." A discussion of the jurisprudence involved in such cases is more
appropriately done in a separate essay. Persons involved in the breakdown of marriages
wherein one is baptized and the other is not should consult their local priest or call
their local tribunal for assistance in such instances. We see now that the Church regards marriage as a commitment in the nature of a
covenant, that is a commitment to share in a partnership in all of life. The consequence
is that if either party willfully excludes a commitment to that total community of life
(or any part thereof) then there is no covenant commitment, no Sacrament. There is, on the
contrary, a falsification of what the Sacrament of Matrimony is all about. The Canon Law of the Church reads: "Marriage is that intimate partnership for the
whole of life between a man and a woman which by its very nature is ordered to the
procreation and education of children." Note the significance of this language. It
does not speak in terms of rights, duties, and obligations. Nor does it speak of primary
and secondary purposes of marriage. Rather it places primary emphasis where it should be
placed, namely upon the total community of life of the couple, that basic necessity needed
for the emotional, psychic, and spiritual health of their children. What, then, are some implications? First of all, Christian married couples commit
themselves to love in such a way that their love overflows, becomes a fountain so to
speak, into the lives of others. They are not only a sign of God's love in our world, they
are a source of it. They are a Sacrament. Theirs is a community act, not just the act of
two isolated egos. They live so as not to be merely a duality of egos, totally dedicated
only to themselves alone. To expect that is to falsify God's love in a narrow and confined
exclusivity. Christian couples destine and ordain themselves in the Sacrament of Matrimony
to live for others, for their children, their friends, and for the Other who is God. Now while the indissolubility of the Sacrament of Marriage is something that is
precious to Catholics (and the Catholic Church will always hold on to the injunction of
Christ not to dissolve that which has been joined together in God) nevertheless people
should not be held to marriages which have such defects within them from their beginning
as to render them false signs of God's love for us. This is particularly so when those
marriages failed because of a radical defect in their constitution or that the intentions
of the parties were not consonant with the Church's understanding of the essential nature
of matrimony. Those radical defects may have existed through no willful intention of
either or both of the parties in that attempted marriage. Consequently even though we
cannot put asunder what God hath joined together, we have the duty and the right to
examine what hath allegedly been joined together in God. A reading of Galatians 5:16 ff.
is helpful in discerning the signs of the presence of God in any relationship. These
verses give us good indices, among a wide array of others, to judge whether or not a
marriage is really a Sacrament of the presence of God in our lives. Since human life is not absolute, we are touched by death in all aspects of life. Thus
faith can be lost, grace can be lost, and marriages can appear to "die." And out
of a desire to cover up death we often use cosmetics in order to avoid facing it. Thus
when relationships between human beings deaden we often cover up by suppressing,
repressing, denying, or appealing to law, duty, and obligation in order to maintain at
least the appearance of a relationship. Most of the time this is done to avoid looking at
radical defects that existed in those relationships from the very beginning. Perhaps some examples of marriages that have "died" (from hidden defects
present at their beginning) would be helpful on this point. Consider alcoholism, chronic
alcoholism, the sort that completely anesthetizes the heart, mind and soul of one of the
partners such that the other has no hope of ever living in a covenant of love with a
genuine partner. Can we call such a relationship a Sacrament of God's love? Or suppose
that one of the partners is psychosexually fixed in a homosexual orientation, such that
change is, in the judgement of experts, impossible. Can we consider such a person to be a
true partner in the Sacrament of Matrimony? Or suppose an alleged partner in marriage is
so psychologically fixated in adolescence that he or she cannot maintain sexual fidelity
in a permanent commitment to only one other. Is such a relationship a "sign of God's
covenant love among us"? Perhaps, also, a young man is raised in a family that has a history in which the men
regard women as objects, objects for sexual gratification, trophies that have been
"won," or possessions that add value to the perception the men have of
themselves. Perhaps, too, women are married out of political expediency for the men. In
any event and for a host of reasons, women can be married because they are objects instead
of persons. Certainly such an intention, however conscious or unconscious, could be little
more than a simulation of marriage diametrically opposed to the Church's basic notions of
marriage. There are other instances, to be sure, used in Catholic Church annulment jurisprudence
to declare alleged marriages invalid. These are cited as just a few examples in order to
demonstrate that marriages can and do appear to be superficially real but in reality are
rendered invalid by one or more radical or intentional defects hidden deep within them. To hold people in such "marriages," or never allow them to remarry simply
because policy is more important than people, is to embark upon a course that is cruel and
inhuman. Marriages can fail through no fault of the persons involved. Bad marriages
falsify the sign of God's love in our world. The Catholic Church recognizes that reality.
For this reason, the Church undertakes a careful judicial discernment to investigate the
marriages of persons seeking to clarify their status in the Catholic Church. When two baptized Christians marry they enter into the Sacrament of Matrimony in the
act of giving their consent to each other, a consent which is witnessed by a clergy person
acting on behalf of the Church. The bishop, priest or deacon receives the consent of the
parties on behalf of the Church. This being so, the Church does not "grant" an
annulment should that marriage break down. The annulment process is such that the Church
is presented with the question: "Is it proven that the marital consent in this
presumptively valid marriage is null because of [the exact canonical reason given] on the
part of either one or both of the parties involved?" The decision given by the
tribunal is an answer to this question is either in the Affirmative or the Negative. The
Church simply witnesses to the factually established data. The consent can be analyzed in terms of the capacity to given valid consent, the will
to give valid consent, and the proper form in which the consent is manifested.
"Capacity" examines the intellectual and judgmental capabilities of the persons.
Is the person or are the persons involved able to make a decision that has future
consequences and obligations that constitute the fundaments of that consent? Some people
are simply incapable of discharging the obligations and commitments they made, however
well intentioned they were when they gave their consent. Some people "will it",
but cannot "do it" when it comes to giving one's self over to another in a total
communion of life. Additionally, some lack the necessary will and capacity to remain sexually faithful for
life; some people will not to have children of their marriage, and some have the intention
of calling in the divorce lawyers when the marriage becomes difficult to maintain. Such
may lack the necessary will to give valid matrimonial consent. Both the party seeking the annulment, the Petitioner, and the other party, the
Respondent, have rights that must be observed, the Respondent having in fact more rights
than the Petitioner. The Respondent has a right to a defense. Both Petitioner and
Respondent must be notified that the case has been submitted and the Tribunal will examine
the matter based on clearly stated and specific grounds, also known as the "Joinder
of Issues". They have the right to an Advocate, the rights to inspect the acts of the
case at the time designated by the Judge, to be notified of the decision of the Tribunal,
and the right to appeal the decision. In other words, the procedure seeks to guarantee the
"right of defense" of both parties while the case is under consideration.
THE LOGICAL REFLECTION
QUESTIONS
GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH
MARRIAGE AND VATICAN II
MARRIAGE AS A SACRAMENT
VALID NON-SACRAMENTAL MARRIAGES
MARRIAGE AS COVENANT
MARRIAGES AS FALSE SIGNS
THE ANNULMENT PROCESS