I hope the outcome is very serious pressure on parish priests to actually prepare couples for Catholic marriage, not look the other way at co-habiting and other accommodations to worldliness, such as intent to have just one or two children in order to maintain a certain standard of living, or to keep partying like they are single.
Catholics are supposed to live right and make it last and be unselfish and affectionate in their marriages. Priests can’t just say “at least they’re getting married in church”. Marriage is for mature people, and priests who want to be “nice” are doing couples a disservice by soft-pedaling what God is asking of us, and not explaining why such effort is totally worth it, because it offers a truly happy and lasting marriage.
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
It has to go back further. If we are not teaching our teens, then by the time they are ready to marry they will have 3 kids with a couple of different partners.