Catholic Divorce Mills?
ANNULMENT STANCE OF DIOCESAN CANONIST ASSAILED
By Tom Barbarie
How is it possible, some might wonder, that entertainer Frank Sinatra -- who divorced first wife Nancy to marry Ava Gardner and, after a brief stopover as Mia Farrow's spouse, took Barbara Marx as wife number four -- could die a Catholic? Why was Henry VIII treated so differently by a church whose official teaching is that marriage is indissoluble, and which furthermore insists that time does not alter its stance on matters of morals?
Is the answer simply that Sinatra had the good fortune to be alive in 20th century America, where kinder, gentler ecclesiastical tribunals are the rule? It was one of those tribunals that cleared Sinatra's path to a valid fourth marriage by agreeing with his claim that his first three marriages were null.
That annulment and the scores of thousands like it granted each year in the U.S. are seen by some as the compassionate workings of a Church whose sensibilities are catching up with the times. Others see them as the product of thinly veiled American Catholic divorce mills.
In a November 1996 article in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, the San Diego diocese's director of canonical affairs, Dr. Edward Peters, defended Church tribunals in this country, where annulments have soared from about 600 per year in 1968 to well over 60,000 in some recent years. (The article, slightly modified, was reprinted as chapter XII of Peters's book, 100 Answers to Your Questions on Annulments, Simon & Schuster/Basilica Press, 1997).
According to Peters, who is a judge on the diocesan tribunal, the increase can be attributed not to a relaxation of the Church's teachings on the permanence of marriage, but to other factors, among them that heterodox, pro-contraceptive marriage preparation courses are "legion" and that psychological factors render large numbers of people truly incapable of contracting valid marriages. With many spouses ignorant of the fact that marriage is ordered to the procreation of children, true matrimonial consent cannot be present, and the granting of later decrees of nullity for such marriages is a slam dunk for a church tribunal.
Peters defended the Code of Canon Law (Canon 1095), which declares incapable of entering a true marriage: "1) those who lack sufficient use of reason; 2) those who suffer from a grave lack of discretionary judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and obligations to be mutually given and accepted; [and] 3) those who, because of causes of a psychological nature, are unable to assume the essential obligations of marriage."
This canon is "the best tool for addressing cases in which drug and alcohol abuse, physical or sexual abuse, psychological and psychiatric anomalies, and a variety of other mental and emotional conditions have seriously impacted parties prior to marriage," wrote Peters.
He called citing the fact that Americans, who compose only five percent of the world's Catholics, are granted 80 percent of the world's annulments the "shallowest of all tribunal criticisms. Americans make up 6% of the world's population, but they account for 100% of the men on the moon. So what? America functions. Much of the rest of the world does not."
Peters' arguments drew a strong rebuttal from Robert H. Vasoli, retired professor of sociology at Notre Dame University. Vasoli was himself the respondent in an annulment suit granted by an American tribunal and later overturned by the Roman Rota, the Catholic Church's highest court, which handles appeals.
"My argument in a nutshell is: they're granting too damn many annulments," Vasoli told News Notes.
Taking issue with Peters in his own article in Homiletic & Pastoral Review (April 1998), Vasoli noted the distinction between "documentary" process cases and "ordinary" process cases. The former, he said, which deal with such things as marriages contracted outside the Church by Catholics, are cut-and-dried.
It is in the ordinary process cases, in which Canon 1095 is called into play, and where attempts are made to determine a person's state of mind years ago, that "canonical legerdemain" is used to release people from their vows, he argued.
"John Paul II, in his 1987 and 1988 allocutions to the Rota, significantly clarified and narrowed the reach of the canon's [1095's] second and third sections," said Vasoli. "He specified that both grounds are predicated on the existence of a serious psychopathology....
"In 1995, [the most recent year for which figures are available] "there were 39,419 ordinary process annulments granted by United States tribunals, and for the world the figure was 49,445. In other words, the United States granted 79 percent of all the world's (ordinary process) annulments," he wrote. "It is simply beyond dispute that the U.S. tribunals have used spurious findings of defective consent to annul tens of thousands of marriages."
Following Vatican II, new rules termed the American Procedural Norms were rolled out in 1970 to streamline the annulment process. But Vasoli maintained, "One of their latent functions was to act as canonical proving grounds for measures that would sustain a high rate of annulments." If that contention is true, the norms, used until the latest Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1983, were wildly successful. "About 90 percent of ordinary process petitions accepted result in affirmative decisions," Vasoli said.
In his own article, Peters put that figure at 95 percent. But, he suspected, this is in part because petitioners with weak cases are dissuaded from pursuing their claims at the earliest stages, that is, in interviews with their pastors or later when the potential petition is first forwarded to tribunal personnel.
Even if this can be conceded as true of documentary process cases, Vasoli said, "separating the wheat from the chaff in the selection or ordinary process petitions is much more complicated." Harking back to the Pope's clarification of "serious psychopathology," the retired Notre Dame professor argued that the people -- often "lower-level helping professionals, such as social workers and counselors" -- who must ascertain the states of mind of petitioners at the time of their marriage are sorely underqualified to do so.
Vasoli urged the unconvinced to read his book, What God has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism, released in March by Oxford University Press. "It blows the lid off the whole corrupt system," Vasoli said of his book. "I'm going to get crucified for that book by the canon law establishment."
The overturned declaration of nullity in the Vasoli case has a good deal of company in Rome, the retired professor told News Notes.
"I'd like Peters to explain why over 90 percent of the American cases that go to the Rota are reversed," he said, noting that as a comparison only four out of every thousand cases are reversed by U.S. civil appellate tribunals.
As a diocesan employee, Peters is bound by policy not to speak with News Notes. But because the subject had nothing to do with diocesan business per se, the diocese was contacted and asked if Peters could speak in his own defense. The request was denied.
But Peters finds a defender in Father Peter Stravinskas, nationally renowned theologian and editor of The Catholic Answer, who told New Notes, "I agree absolutely with him." Father Stravinskas referred to his letter published in the May 1998 Catholic World Report, in which he said, "Given the mess in which we have been living for so long now, I am amazed that there are so few annulments."
Stravinskas's letter asked, "Do cohabitation for years and absence from the Church's sacramental life (sometimes for decades) make folks apt candidates for holy matrimony?" Grace builds on nature, wrote Stravinskas, but "when nature has been so warped by psychological, sociological and cultural forces inimical to Christian teaching and values -- especially when that devastation is thoroughly integrated into a lifestyle -- grace is not only obstructed, but even natural goods like the lifelong union of a man and a woman, find difficulty achieving their end."
Father Stravinskas proposed as a solution "more rigorous screening processes and more demanding programs of marital preparation."
Even if Sinatra married Barbara without the annulment, he would still have been allowed a Catholic funeral. The Catholic Church denies communion, but they don't excommunicate divorced Catholics who remarry illicitly. When they die, they still can receive a Catholic funeral because the Church says that they can't judge them.
Canon law is manmade law, created by fallibe human beings.
The Bible pre-empts Canon Law. "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder".