Free Republic

Catholic Divorce: The Deception of Annulments is a collection of essays by theologians, historians, and Sociologists who critically examine the Catholic Church's teaching and practice on divorce, annulments, and remarriage. The book opens with a brief essay by Pierre Hegy in which he describes why so many Catholics have become disillusioned with the church's position on these issues. He suggests that the chief reason why 80-90 percent of divorced Catholics simply ignore the annulment process and marry outside the church is because they regard the practice of annulments as deceitful. Because the grounds for an annulment have become so broad...

A DECADE AGO, the Catholic Church tried to annul my marriage. My former husband, Joseph Kennedy II, wanted to remarry and stay in the good graces of the church; to do so, he needed the ruling. Despite 12 years of marriage and two children, a tribunal of the Archdiocese of Boston decided that our union was never valid; nor were our children the offspring of a true Catholic marriage. I did not agree with the archdiocese's decision. I was sure our marriage, though failed, had been real, and I appealed to the Vatican. Finally, this May, I learned that Rome...

From John Allen: A Rome conference in late April hinted that the Vatican may be moving towards a more restrictive posture on annulments, the procedure in church law for declaring a marriage null and void, which some critics refer to as “Catholic divorce.”If so, the fallout could have special significance for the United States, home to just 6 percent of the world’s Catholic population but accounting for roughly two-thirds of the 60,000 annulments issued by church courts each year.The April 26-27 Rome conference focused on canon 1095 of the Code of Canon Law, which allows a marriage to be declared...