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The
Revolving Door
"In
1968 there were 450 Catholic marriage annulments in the
In the twenty-three year span from 1968 to 1991, the rate at which U.S.
tribunals were declaring marriages each year to be unsacramental, or
invalid, had increased a staggering 14,207 percent!
Because of this
incredibly high escalation of annulments issued each year in the
The
Seven Sacraments
Marriage is one
of the seven sacraments instituted by Christ. A sacrament is a supernatural act
done by God through His instrument, the Church. Whenever a sacrament is validly
performed, a real and permanent change takes place by God's power and therefore
no sacrament can be undone. [Ed.: Here we affirm that only Baptism,
Confirmation, and Holy Orders leave a permanent character on the soul, and
therefore cannot be received again, while all the other sacraments can be
received repeatedly, e.g. Holy Communion, Confession, Anointing of the Sick, and
even Marriage, but only after one's spouse dies.] Once you are baptized, you
receive a permanent, indelible mark on your soul and no one can unbaptize you.
And once you receive the seal of Confirmation on your soul, no one can remove
that seal, which remains with us even if we go to hell for all eternity. Once
God removes your sins from your soul via the sacrament of Confession, the Church
cannot undo the sacrament and put those sins back on your soul. Once a man is
ordained, he receives the character of the priesthood on his soul, and from then
on, no matter how bad a priest he turns out to be, no one, not even the Church,
can take that priestly character off of his soul. For the rest of his life, he
is a priest with the power to unfailingly have Christ act through him to change
the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus whenever he as a priest so
wills. And once the sacrament of Holy Eucharist takes place, Christ is present
where the bread and wine was, and no one can make God turn the Body and Blood of
Christ back into bread and wine. The seven sacraments are each a one-way door.
Marriage
The sacrament of
Marriage is a supernatural act whereby God joins a man and a woman by the
sacramental bond of Holy Matrimony. Like the other six sacraments, it is done by
God Who operates through His Church and therefore, two people, who are so
bonded, cannot be supernaturally unbound except by death. If two Christians have
intercourse and neither is sacramentally bonded in Holy Matrimony, they commit
fornication. If either of these two people are sacramentally bonded to a third
person, then the sexual act is adultery. "Know you not that the unjust shall not
possess the
Before Christ
established His Church, whereby He could then communicate His grace to us via
the seven sacraments, there was no sacramental bond in marriage because there
was no sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Therefore, not being bonded to one person,
it was possible to have more than one spouse and possible to separate from your
spouse and to take another. But when Christ came, all Christians, whether
Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic, can only be bonded to one spouse in wedlock,
and therefore cannot be bonded to someone else at the same time nor break the
original bond except when their spouse dies. In section 1640 of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, we
read the continual reaffirmation of this teaching in the following words, "Thus
'the marriage bond' has been established by God himself in such a way that
marriage concluded and consummated between baptized persons can never be
dissolved. This bond ... is a reality, henceforth irrevocable.... The Church
does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom." Jesus
Himself said, "What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."
(Mk 10:9) "And if the wife put away her husband, and be married to another, she
committeth adultery." (Mk 10:12) "...and he that shall marry her that is put
away, committeth adultery." (Mt. 19:9)
When two
baptized persons take vows before God in their respective Christian ceremonies,
vows that include being open to having at least some children at some time
during their marriage, and the intention to remain with their spouse for the
rest of their life, and the intention of sexual fidelity, and do not violate any
Catholic impediments such as no witnesses, impotency, etc., then the marriage is
said to be concluded but not consummated. It can still be dissolved. But after
the first marital act following their vows, the marriage is consummated at which
time the Sacramental Bond of Holy Matrimony is irreversibly established between
the man and woman which can never be destroyed except by death. There are
several diriment impediments which the Church institutes, in Her wise regulation
of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. It is important to remember that these
impediments actually stop the flow of grace from God through His Church which He
established for just such purposes, and thereby stop the sacrament from taking
place. Only certain of these impediments are directed by the Church toward
Protestants or Orthodox Christians but all of them apply to Catholics.
Theological
knowledge of the indissolubility of marriage is not required to conclude a valid
marriage—only the intention to remain married is what is required (all else
being equal). This can be seen in the fact that both Protestants and Orthodox
Christians believe that a valid marriage can be ended and another valid marriage
can be established. Nonetheless, professing their vows with that erroneous
understanding does not stop them from having valid sacramental unions, as long
as they do not have the deliberate intention on the day they profess their vows
of only staying married for a limited time.
Annulments
An annulment is
a decree, issued by a tribunal which is acting on behalf of the Church, stating
that legitimate, concrete evidence has been recognized by that tribunal, proving
to them with moral certitude that a marriage was invalid from the beginning and
thus no sacramental bond ever existed. An annulment does not dissolve a valid
marriage, nor is it a dispensation to leave a valid marriage and remarry someone
else. It is merely an official statement informing you that a serious problem
was proven to them to have occurred previous to taking the marriage vows and
that you were therefore never married. These tribunals, which often include lay
men and women, are not infallible, as the following quotes show.
In 1989, "Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, head of the Church's highest
court, told U.S. bishops to exercise more 'vigilance' in their marriage
tribunals because they are granting too many annulments, calling into question
the validity of their procedures."[6] On January 29, 1993, in an address to the
Rota Romana, the highest judicial court in the Church, Pope John Paul II said it
would be wrong for the judges "to bend canon law to capricious or inventive
interpretation in the name of an ambiguous and undefined 'humanitarian
principle.'" Again, in that same address, the Pope said, "it would be entirely
arbitrary, indeed openly illegitimate and gravely wrong, to attribute to the
words used in canon law not their proper meaning, but a meaning suggested by
other disciplines outside of canon law." And finally, in the same address the
Pope spoke about 'mental reservations' that many people who apply for annulments
assert to have had on their wedding day thus invalidating their marriage because
they claim that they really didn’t mean what they said. Of this the Pope said,
"If there is a 'mental reserve' at the moment the vows are pronounced, that must
be thoroughly proven."[7] And in February of 1995, "Pope John Paul II himself
warned the Roman Rota, the Church's appeals court for marriage cases, not to
rely on evaluations of psychiatrists who do not accept the Catholic doctrine on
marriage."[8] "At a June 2nd Vatican-sponsored conference on 'The
Rights of Families and the Communications Media', Archbishop Vincenzo Fagiolo,
president of the Pontifical Council of the Interpretation of Legislative Texts,
criticized the large number of annulments granted by marriage tribunals in the
Being aware of
all the possible skullduggery and widespread incompetent jurisprudence going on
today in
An annulment is not
'granted' in the sense that a tribunal 'gives' the decree to a worthy person who
'deserves' it. How much you have suffered, or how nice a person you are have
nothing to do with whether you are validly married or not. Also, a bad marriage,
where one of the spouses abuses or abandons the other, doesn't prove that the
sacrament of Matrimony was invalid any more than a Christian who abuses other
people or abandons the Faith proves that his Baptism was invalid or a priest who
abuses his parishioners or abandons his parish proves that he was never validly
ordained. God extends His grace to us and it is up to us to utilize and
cooperate with that grace in overcoming the temptations caused by the effects of
original sin, the temptations from the fallen angels, and the temptations from
this sinful human world.
Obligations of Divorced Persons Who 'Remarry'
The following quote is from Pope John Paul II in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, given on November 22, 1981. In section 84, John Paul, speaking of the relationship between divorced and 'remarried’ persons with each other and with the Church says,
"...as
baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. They should be
encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to
persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts
in favor of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to
cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God's
grace. Let the Church pray for them, encourage them and show herself a merciful
mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope.
“However, the
Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not
admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried. They are
unable to be admitted thereto from the fact that their state and condition of
life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church
which is signified and effected by the Eucharist. Besides this, there is another
special pastoral reason: if these people were admitted to the Eucharist, the
faithful would be led into error and confusion regarding the Church's teaching
about the indissolubility of marriage.
"Reconciliation
in the sacrament of Penance, which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only
be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and
of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no
longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means, in
practice, that when, for serious reasons such as for example the children's
upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they
'take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by
abstinence from the acts proper to married couples'."
Our
Responsibilities
On Judgment Day, our
Divine Tribunal will remind us of the words He spoke to Ezechiel, 3:17-18, "Son
of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of
We all have to use the
opportunities God gives us to keep the sheep in the fold and to help bring back
any sheep that stray. Couples who are preparing for marriage, or married couples
who are contemplating civil divorce, including those who have separated and are
sexually involved with another mate, are especially in need of a correct
understanding in these areas which is so dreadfully lacking today. Sins of
omission have their consequences. Our life on earth is but a moment but Heaven
and Hell are forever.
References:
1.
Msgr. Joseph A. Cirrincione and Thomas A. Nelson,
The Rosary and the Crisis of Faith,
(Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc. 1986), p. 24.
2.
The Brooklyn Tablet,
3.
1993 Catholic Almanac, p. 235.
4.
1994 Catholic Almanac, p. 236.
5.
ibid.
6.
Agostino Bono, "Annulments," The (
7.
30 Days Magazine, March, 1993.
8.
Newsweek, March 13, 1995, p. 58.
9.
The Wanderer, July 1, 1993.
Directives
D15 - Holy Matrimony PDF
D223 - Adultery & Divorce PDF
Articles
Pope John Paul II, In Address To US Bishops, Blasts Number Of Annulments
(Catholic World Report, October 19, 1998)
https://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=8679
Annulment Nation (Catholic World Report)
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2011/04/28/annulment-nation/
Too Many Invalid Annulments (Msgr. Clarence J. Hettinger)
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=350
The Annulment Mentality: What You Can Do About It
http://www.tldm.org/news36/the-annulment-mentality-what-you-can-do-about-it.htm
Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI: Too Many Annulments
http://www.tldm.org/news36/popes-john-paul-ii-and-benedict-xvi-too-many-annulments.htm
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Revised:
March 03, 2018