Violating Inviolability

Last month, Daniel Nichols over at Caelum & Terra blogged an entry entitled An Open Wound, in which he shared the news of couple that he and his family knew and with whom had once been close having received an annulment. They had been married over twenty years and were blessed with nine children, whom they homeschooled. The couple had in all manner been devout, articulate, exemplary Catholics. After some amount of time, however, the wife left her husband and eventually applied for and obtained an annulment. An annulment is a finding from the Church that sacramental marriage, which Catholics hold to be unviolable, never happened. And Mr. Nichols’ reaction to this news, and any sane person’s reaction would have to be,

[I]f they can get an annulment, anyone can!

That the Church has come to this–providing excuses for sins against God and man–is a scandal, an open wound in the Body of Christ.

Lord have mercy.

A scandal, properly understood as an inducement for others toward sin, is precisely what this is. But what makes it a scandal is not merely this one particularly egregious instance, but as is shown in the fine comment exchange between Mr. Nichols and several astute commenters, just how easy it is to get the Church in America to agree with people wanting "out" of a marriage that sacramental marriage never occurred. It would seem that the only way one couldn’t get an annulment from the RCC in America is if one was too stupid or too lazy.

Almost anyone can "prove", or anyone with a mediocre lawyer can, at any rate, prove that they "just weren’t ready" for the commitment of marriage on their wedding day. And what is more, that is all that is required. Never mind that you were perfectly "ready" for commitment on a thousand other days after that day, the Church (apparently, I’m not a expert in Canon Law) says those days don’t count. All that sticking together through good times and bad, the birth of nine children, teaching NFP to young couples, all those days of faithfulness and commitment to each other and Christ’s Church, all those thousands of ways in which folks may have ratified the true sacramental nature of their union, gone with the stroke of a pen, gone in a wisp of smoke. Gone, that is, if you merely prove that 20-odd years ago, you "just weren’t ready".

A few statistics. According to this source, we find

For the year 2002: of the 56,236 ordinary hearings for a declaration of nullity, 46,092 received an affirmative sentence. Of these, 343 were handed out in Africa, 676 in Oceania, 1,562 in Asia, 8,855 in Europe and 36,656 in America, of which 30,968 in North America and 5,688 in Central and South America.

Let’s get this straight: Worldwide about 82% of requests for annulment are granted?!! Must’ve been a lot of "no fault" annulments. Let’s get this straight, of all the granted annulments worldwide, two-thirds were granted in North America??!!! I’m certain it must be the tragically low average age of first marriage in North America; all these poor immature boys and girls being forced into marriages (so often at gunpoint) without the least amount of preparation or "real world" experience. Things are just so much harder these days than they were for example in 1968 when there were (according to this source, SSPX yes, but broadly consistent with other numbers I’ve seen) 338 annulments granted in the US. Something stinketh here!

So what was supposed to be invoilable is actually quite easily violated. Violated really by a simple technicality, reserved for the rare case when the ability to choose marriage with free will was violated, or when a marriage was never consummated. I am hereby reminded of Christ’s taking of the Pharisees to task:

"Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban’ (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down."

Mark 7:10ff (NIV)

Jesus said what God hath joined, let not man put asunder. But you, Catholic Bishops of the United States and your legal minions, by your technicalities give aid and comfort to those who for their own selfish reasons, or for just about any reason apparently, would tear apart what God has joined. And by such technicalities (wide enough for a Hummer to drive through) you have nullified the words of Christ, such that it remains no longer even plausible that the RCC (at least in America) actually believes in the inviolability of sacramental marriage. Why not take the more honest, the Protestant approach and simply bless serial polygamy? For while it is deformed and thoroughly pagan, I think it would be less deformed than the current practice.

5 thoughts on “Violating Inviolability

  1. Emily (the ohioan one)

    I don’t know if you’ve heard about Bud Macfarlane’s divorce, but for a while it was in the news up here because both he and his (now ex-) wife live in the Diocese of Cleveland. He left her and filed for a civil divorce. Her attorney filed several motions to remove the matter to canon courts, arguing that Mr. Macfarlane broke the pre-nuptial “agreement” that they had to sign before getting married in the Catholic Church and that the matter was therefore under canon law. It was an interesting argument, but in the end the judge rejected it and granted the divorce. The judge also awarded full custody to Mr. Macfarlane because of Mrs. Macfarlane’s failure to acknowledge the ending of her marriage (this is my RD version of the ruling).

    Granted, we have no idea what went on inside the Macfarlanes’ marriage. There may indeed be grounds for divorce and a declaration of nullity. I can’t say — only God can. But it caused quite a scandal around here.

    Bai Macfarlane has been on somewhat of a crusade to reform the systems of no-fault divorce and the Church’s process for annulments. I think she has some valid points. Even just looking at statistics ought to be enough to show us that something is broken.

  2. dilys

    The dissolution of marriage is one of the emotional AND theological hotspots, and I see no way out of the box from within the box.

    My only contribution is a metaphor that occurred to me while out driving with my husband of almost 30 years. In emotional, psychological, and practical terms, a marriage license is a learner’s permit. Looking back, I did not know how to “be married” for many, many years.

    Is there a new way to look at the moment of the ceremony? A way to back off from any magical or superstitious thinking in regarding sacraments? Perhaps, like conception of new life, there is a beginning at the ceremony, with much remaining amplification (meiosis and mitosis) to do on the way to a viable marriage. Sometimes, there are miscarriages. This perspective would encourage great care in the living out of the marriage until “it is done,” the couple and outsiders realizing that the condition requires care and protection.

    Something is broken in our relationship to broken marriages. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it who has a clue.

    None of this BTW is to justify lightly abandoning marriages, and is a useful argument only in a context of grave reverence for the existing bond and everyone involved, including the community.

  3. Steve Nicoloso Post author

    My suggestion of the protestant practice was intentionally inflammatory. It is I think preferable to the current practice, but the Catholic ideal (truly inviolable marriage) is most to be preferred over all.

    Now EO practice is apparently all over the map on this, but according to some of the C&T commentators, at least some EOs have a fairly rational way of handling the divorce & remarriage problem that doesn’t rape sacramental marriage: for the non-adulterous, non-abandoning spouse, allow a non-sacramental marriage, possibly after penance, after which for the said spouse may receive communion. Doing this, you don’t nullify the original marriage, which (in most cases) was patently and objectively valid, and thereby make a mockery of an “inviolable covenant”. And at the same time you avoid pretense that the second marriage (non-sacramental, an admission to and compromise with human frailties) is no different from the first (sacramental, God’s ideal). I don’t think there is any RC Church dogma that would prevent the development of such a practice.

  4. Tom Smith

    Ideally, we’d be granting annulments very rarely, as in the 1968 statistic, because it’s true that the number of declarations of “nullity” granted today is completely ridiculous.

    But I don’t think the Orthodox practice of multiple marriage services is appropriate. Although the second wedding service maintains a penitential character, and doesn’t include the crowning ritual, I still think it’s inappropriate. If the first marriage remains intact, how can someone rightly marry another, even if it is a pseudo-marriage? And, if one remains married to one’s first spouse, how do normal “marital relations” not constitute adultery? Does this become a “marriage” for legal functionality?

    My second point with regard to the Orthodox practice of re-marriage is that the Orthodox have not traditionally allowed many second marriages. Basically, their tradition requires something very much like an annulment, coming from the decision of a bishop or spiritual court that, indeed, a second marriage is appropriate because of adultery, apostasy, or other causes. The fact that the Orthodox Church looks down upon second marriages is obvious; they don’t let clergy do it under any circumstances. Many Orthodox bishops simply grant what Catholics would refer to as “automatic indult” to divorce applicants; basically, they are granted permission for divorce and remarriage automatically upon applying.

    It’s really sad that, in order to get an honest appraisal of the situation in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, our only real mouthpieces are people like the Catholic SSPX and Orthodox ROCOR. The ones protesting the abuses most loudly are a bunch of schismatics from both Churches.

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