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Still --- I think a lot of people have a problem with the Church claiming not to accept divorce but handing out so many annulments. I know a couple who married young --- at 18 and 20, they had 8 children and after 20 years of marriage divorced --- the wife got tired of the husband's drinking problem which he started in his 30's. She got an annulment and remarried --- in the Church. I don't see how the marriage was not legitimate --- if he had not started drinking, most likely the marriage would have lasted but he was not an alcoholic at the time of the wedding.

Such reaasonable thinking will get you in trouble here. The annulment-on-request (AKA "Catholic divorce") scandal seems to differ from so many others these days in that so many genuinely committed Catholics have a vested interest in the legitimacy of the system. But it actually makes a mockery of the gospel teaching on marriage, and plenty of people outside the Church realize that. I know one young woman, for example, whose Catholic ex-husband insisted she go through the annulment paperwork because his new shack-up wanted a big wedding in church. The jilted spouse refused but, of course, the annulment was granted and the wedding was celebrated with all possible pomp. When the former wife found a new man, she insisted she would never go through another marriage ceremony but would just live with her lover and bear his children. "More honest than the Catholic Church," she said to everyone who would listen. Frankly, I think she was right.

"Still --- I think a lot of people have a problem with the Church claiming not to accept divorce but handing out so many annulments."

Well that's one thing but claiming that you can "buy" an annulment is cynical and slanderous. And calling the children of an annuled marriage "bastards" is not only cruel it is simply incorrect. Legitimacy is a legal matter that has to do with inheritance, child support, and knowing who one's parents are. It has nothing to do with canon law and sacramental marriage.

Sure in the example you give it seems like, based on what you know on the surface, the marriage was sound. But you can't go just by what is on the surface. The information they tribunal gathers is very extensive, confidential and in depth. I mean they probe deep into the lives of the couple. They interview relatives, they get phychiatric records if there are any aviailable.

While I tend to agree that there might be too many annulments I can't be sure because what is on the surface is not all that is there.