...American Catholics are seeking annulments — the church's declaration that a marriage was invalid — in large numbers. Whether, like Erickson, they're hoping it helps them heal after a divorce, or allows them to get remarried in the church, annulments are in demand, and the church in the United States is granting them.

The St. Louis Archdiocese granted nine out of 10 requests for an annulment last year. American Catholics make up about 6 percent of the global church, but according to the most recent Vatican statistics available, the church in the United States granted 60 percent of the world's annulments in 2006.

Pope Benedict XVI has indicated that he believes that's too many, and some Vatican watchers say the church may decrease the number of annulments granted to divorced Catholics.

In a speech in January to the Roman Rota, the Vatican's highest appellate court, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the church's teaching on invalidating Catholic marriages, emphasizing the need to balance "justice" and "charity." He also cautioned church tribunals against allowing the growing civil divorce rate to dictate the number of annulments — called decrees of nullity, in church parlance — they grant.

Even after a Catholic couple gets a divorce, the church still considers the marriage valid. An annulment is a tribunal's declaration that a marriage was never valid to begin with, that there was a hidden impediment or "defect of consent" that kept the marriage from being legitimate.

Labels: annulments, Catholic Church, culture, divorce, religion

posted by Eve at 2:44 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

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.” ...

The Pope went so far as to suggest that tribunals should do their best to save marriages intact whenever that is possible. In most American dioceses, couples are required to file for a civil divorce before submitting an annulment application. But the Pontiff suggest that “effective efforts be made, whenever there seems to be hope of a successful outcome, to encourage the spouses to convalidate their marriage and restore conjugal cohabitation.”

Labels: annulments, Catholic Church, divorce, Marriage, religion

posted by Imapp Staff at 1:59 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT