For only a prepaid $50 more, you'll be able to supersize you annulment and get your second annulment free, at no extra charge. Just fill in the blanks and mail it in. How''s that for streamlining?
Posted on 02/21/2014 10:14:48 AM PST by ebb tide
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis on Thursday (Feb. 20) opened a major two-day meeting on the church’s approach to the complexities of modern family life, telling the world’s Catholic cardinals that the church needs a “pastoral” approach that is “intelligent, courageous and full of love” and not focused on abstract arguments.
In brief introductory remarks released by the Vatican, Francis pushed the closed-door summit of about 150 cardinals to “deepen the theology of the family and discern the pastoral practices which our present situation requires.”
He asked that they do so “thoughtfully” and by keeping the focus on “the beauty of family and marriage” while at the same time showing that the church is ready to help spouses “amid so many difficulties.” Francis added the phrase “intelligent, courageous and full of love” extemporaneously.
Francis summoned the cardinals to Rome for a weekend of ceremonies at which the pope will appoint his first batch of 19 “princes of the church,” as cardinals are often called.
But he asked them to arrive early so that they could spend time discussing one of Francis’ signature themes: shifting the church’s approach on controversial topics like divorce and remarriage, cohabitation, gay marriage and contraception.
Those issues will also be the focus of two larger and longer meetings of bishops at the Vatican this fall and in 2015.
“The pope has opened a dialogue, he’s not decided anything yet and now he’ll let us discuss,” Cardinal Walter Kasper, a German theologian who is a favorite of Francis, told Reuters on Thursday.
Kasper said the talks were not about changing doctrine or watering down traditional marriage — “that’s not possible,” he said. But “it’s a question of how to apply (church teaching to) the concrete, difficult, complex situation.”
Francis tapped Kasper to open the meetings with an address that would set the stage for the talks. Kasper — a onetime sparring partner of another German cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Benedict XVI — delivered a two-hour talk that centered on marriage and took up most of the morning’s session.
Kasper has pushed for relaxing the ban against Communion for Catholics who have divorced and remarried without an annulment; as a bishop in Germany in the 1990s, he tried to institute a policy that would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion in certain circumstances. The plan was rejected by the Vatican’s doctrinal office, then headed by Ratzinger.
In his talk on Thursday, Kasper did not offer any specific proposals, but repeatedly stressed the importance of pastoral flexibility and realism in dealing with people in challenging or unusual family situations.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, said Kasper’s talk would remain private but he provided reporters with an overview of the address.
“Our efforts are not about restating that the doctrine of the church is thus and so,” Lombardi said in summarizing Kasper’s remarks. “Our efforts are about returning to the beginning of the doctrine itself, which is the gospel.”
Lombardi described Kasper’s talk as “in great harmony” with Francis’ views, stressing the importance of accompanying people in difficult circumstances and the need for patience in helping them.
Even before he was elected pope last March, Francis — then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires — blasted priests who “hijacked” the sacraments and refused to baptize the children of unwed mothers. He called such clerics “hypocrites” who “drive God’s people away from salvation.”
After his election, Francis continued to make the point, telling a pregnant single woman that he would baptize her baby if she couldn’t find another priest to do it, and baptizing — in the storied Sistine Chapel — the baby of a couple who were married civilly but not in the church.
In other venues Francis has also repeatedly stressed the priority of preaching God’s mercy rather than focusing on the details of doctrine and church rules. That, in turn, has led some to wonder if he was signaling a possible change in some teachings.
But Vatican insiders say the pope prefers to try to change the church’s approach rather than start a civil war over doctrine that would distract from the church’s mission to the poor and marginalized.
That doesn’t mean the shift toward mercy and away from finger-wagging is sitting well with all church leaders. Disagreements were expected as each of the cardinals gets a chance to weigh in with their own views.
“Everybody will have a chance to yell about something,” one cardinal quipped after the first day’s sessions.
Well, considering his absolute lack of desire to convert atheists, Jews, Muslims, etc, to the True Faith, all that’s left is socialism.
That's not technically correct. Dogma is solemnly defined truth, doctrine is teaching. But beyond that I'm not sure how much more relaxed the annulment procedures could be, the last I heard 80% of the world's annulments come from the 5% of Catholics who live in the US.
I agree with you, married, and believe that much of the rash of catholic divorces has been directly caused by marriages that should never have taken place, or were improperly prepared for, mine included. Many couples who are not really ready to enter into the sacrament of marriage are allowed to for a myriad of superficial reasons, so they will not be “living in sin”, because I don’t think the Church believes that it can say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ anymore.
Non-catholic and even Catholic marriages can be ‘valid but non-sacramental’, which is a concept I just became aware of in researching for my own annulment...and which is incomprehensible to me. I have been trying to find out how old this designation is, because I have suspicions that it is a relatively modern attempt to make the Church seem ‘nicer’ to those who would otherwise be considered to be ‘living in sin’ because they married outside of the Catholic church. Whether or not a non-catholic marriage is accepted by God is a deeper question, but this extension of the Catholic church into more marriages and the allowing of more Catholic marriages that should never have taken place has greatly increased the number of marriages that are likely to fail because they lack the blessings of the Sacrament or were truly null from the onset.
I do believe the annulment process is confusing and cumbersome. I think the effort to ‘defend the bond’ of marriage may have become a bit overzealous and could use some modification, especially in the circumstance of ‘non-sacramental’ marriages. I hope this is among the subjects to be discussed during the conferences.
That said, I take everything I read about Pope Francis with a grain of salt...every time there is some great hype about how he is going to ‘liberalize’ some aspect of the church, he comes down solidly on the side of tradition, and injects a great deal of love into the process.
Just my 2 cents, (ok, I rambled...more like 49 cents)
Love,
O2
Doctrine has not been put on the table. Pope’s can’t change settled doctrine. Francis ain’t changing anything. Please quit worrying about it. He couldn’t even if he wanted to. On matters of moral and faith the Pope is infallible, which means he makes no errors. In other words all the Popes that came before Francis were also incapable of making error.
Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error[1] “when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church”.[2]
I am specifically talking about streamlining the process. It can take years to get an annulment. That needs to change. And I think it will.
He could no more legitimately do that than he could relax the Ten Commandments, which is really what he's trying to do (see the Sixth Commandment).
The juridical term annulment used for marriages means that the marriage that had been celebrated, recognized, and lasted for some time actually was not valid. This is an extremely grave sentence that cannot be given superficially for several reasons:
The union had been celebrated by the parties according to all the Catholic requirements, before God, and witnessed by the representative of His Church.
The union had been accepted by society as a true marriage, which means that the couple was known for living an honest conjugal life, and not in illicit concubinage.
The stability of the family life, principally of the wife and children, had been guaranteed by the Catholic certainty that the matrimonial bond would never be broken.
These characteristics of the Catholic marriage are thrown out the window when an annulment is issued: the vows declared before God and the Church are considered void; the union is declared illegitimate, equivalent to a concubinage, and finally, the family life is completely broken with all the psychological and social consequences this entails. It is indeed a sentence disruptive of the life of the family and indirectly of all social life.
It is evident that to issue such a sentence, a tribunal must have very serious reasons and only do so very rarely.
Are Present Day Annulments To Be Taken Seriously?
And you want to "relax" the procedure?
You still seem to be confused on the differences between doctrine, dogma and papal infallibility. Hang in there, you’ll catch on.
It can also be over in a matter of months. The real problem is on the front end with people who have no business getting married slipstreaming through the pre-Cana programs. But just think about it...
Each diocese has a tribunal that handles all the requests, if you spread the numbers out evenly it's like each tribunal handles one case per day... 50k successful declarations of nullity per year spread out over 150 tribunals. That's assuming no weekends off too I think, I'm just doing the numbers in my head. Considering all the prep that goes into the average wedding these days I'd like to hope that at least 8 hours can be spent determining whether the bond is sacramental or not.
I hope Francis does.
For only a prepaid $50 more, you'll be able to supersize you annulment and get your second annulment free, at no extra charge. Just fill in the blanks and mail it in. How''s that for streamlining?
It’s all politics.
No way JP II should be canonized, when tens of thousands of Catholic children were raped and molested under his watch, and he turned a blind eye.
It never hurts to pray for miracles. It’s part of Faith.
Looks like we’ll need a few. I’m a prayin’.
I am not confused about anything, but I also don’t worry about the Pope changing anything to with morals and faith. Not going to happen. The infallibility sentence I posted was taken directly off wikipedia. I didn’t make it up.
Right! Just ask the Kennedys how it’s done.
When I’m talking about streamlining procedures I am talking about 6 months to a year to finalize an annulment, the length of time the priest told me and wife it was going to take when she put in for hers. It took almost two years. All it was was red-tape. I am not talking about the requirements of the annulment process.
“No way JP II should be canonized, when tens of thousands of Catholic children were raped and molested under his watch, and he turned a blind eye”.
Links please.
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