Posted on 06/29/2013 6:03:58 AM PDT by Weiss White
Q: My sister wants an annulment so she can remarry in the Church. But when she began asking questions about how to go about it, she was immediately told that she can’t get an annulment unless she is divorced first. Can that possibly be true, or is her diocese doing something heretical? The Church is opposed to divorce, but then it pressures Catholics to get divorced… why is she being told she must get a divorce? –Denise
(Excerpt) Read more at canonlawmadeeasy.com ...
I looked into annulment in VA a few years ago. There are very few reasons, and the annulment has to be moved for within two years of the ‘marriage.’
The few reasons include one or both parties being under the legal age for marriage; a blood relationship between the parties, having a child by or with another person within a brief time before or after the marriage and not telling the other person.
Most people will opt for the easier, simpler divorce, as did the person I was helping with the research.
Another interesting read on the “internal forum”.
http://astro.temple.edu/~arcc/marriage.htm
sorry link didn’t work first time! Here is another great read on the history of the “Internal Forum”.
Not at all. If a Church tribunal came forward with a finding of nullity and the woman were still civilly married, she would be forbidden by God's law to continue cohabitating with the man, since there is no marriage. (That's what "null" and "nullity" mean.)
If they were not civilly divorced, her leaving their shared domicile and refusing marital relations would be considered (by the state) as abandonment on her part, and the Church could be sued for alienation of affections. In other words, the Church would be blamed for breaking up their (civil) marriage and depriving the husband of his relations with his wife.
If this woman is really convinced in her conscience that this attempted marriage is actually null, she should initiate a divorce, since in God's eyes (which is to say, in reality) they are not validly married.
Perhaps a simpler way to put it: why would she NOT want a divorce, if she believes they are not now actually married?
And/or American Catholics are such damaged individuals, that they routinely lack either the intellectual ability to comprehend, or the psychological ability to commit to, an actual vow.
Slightly /s/ -- I'm making the point here that these people seem to have the capacity to enter into a 30-year mortgage, co-sign on a RV, sign a contract with the U.S. Marine Corps, beget and raise children, share a checking account, etc.etc., but supposedly lack the maturity to say "I do" --- and be done.
Perhaps you think canonical lawyers, judges and advocates should perform these exacting services with no compensation? Sort of as a hobby, whilst keeping their day jobs at Frisk & Crook?
So -— if I understand you -— you’ve left the Church and have deprived yourselves of the Sacraments for 38 years? Or maybe I have misunderstood you. Just trying to clarify.
Not sure what you mean by your "context" here. A marriage is not considered "null" even if one or both parties is known to be infertile. This happens more frequently than one might think, and the couples are still validly married.
In other words, fertility is not what makes a marriage valid, nor was this ever the case.
Or am I misunderstanding you?
Please don’t be offended - I didn’t mean it that way.
Almost all US annulments are granted because the requestor testifies that either 1) they did not intend true marriage at the time of the marriage in question, or 2) that they lacked the capacity to consent to true marriage for psychological reasons.
It is well known (trust me) that if you NEED an annulment, this is how to get one. And many people do.
The ratio of situations in which these things are true to those in which they are false must be 1:500 or more. As a practical matter, if you do not attest to 1) or 2), you won’t get the annulment.
I suspect you have not thought through the implications of this. If an act of natural intercourse (involving the husband's ejaculation into the wife's vagina) is not necessary to consummate a marriage, then there is no reason why two men could not be married to each other, or two women.
The whole concept of gay marriage rests on the assumption that having two kinds of sexual parts --- two sexes involved--- does not matter.
There was a case a few years back where the RCC denied a couple a church wedding because the man was not physically able to have sex due to spinal cord damage. IF the couple knows this and understands this they should be allowed marriage in any church. It was a FR thread years ago I can't remember how far back right now.
But on the other hand thanks to the intercession of a couple of Nuns at a hospital you & I are familiar with right before my second marriage our wedding her severe despite disability took place. Though it was in a Catholic Chapel our Baptist minister did the service. But the hospital Chaplain at the time {Priest} and Nuns were there also.
I'm not anti-Catholic & my dads family is about 50% Catholic. I just think some of the rules are a bit too much. St Mercy as most call it now due to several recent name changes hid my then girlfriend now wife in the hospital real well from an abusive EX wanting to do more harm. One Nun a black-belt kept a close eye on her.
The first time I got married I asked my cousin to officiate. He said he couldn't because neither of us were Catholic. That's fine no problem. When she passed three years later he did do her funeral service at my request. That he was allowed to do but no Last Rites which was fine also.
So in other words the nakedness in care giving would not matter? The fact that the healthy spouse is going to touch private parts of the body would not matter?
Better still what about other factors? A healthy couple dating and becoming very close in love with each other suddenly face a catastrophic illness. Marriage for that matter had already been discussed as a likely-hood within a year. What do you do? You love the person for who they are. I'm not talking Gay here I'm talking about heterosexuals. What could be implications if one of the persons said the church would not recognize our marriage so we can't marry? I don't want to get too much into technicalities but what if the woman is the one injured but can not feel anything from the neck down but can still get pregnant?
I think marriage is 80% - 90% spiritual commitment before GOD of a man and a woman to one another. The sex? Maybe 10% - 20% but not for some a must have. Then again I suppose some folk can't go a day without it. LOL.
A doctor at Pat Neal Rehab Center told us many years ago it is the married couples where disability occurs during marriage he worries about. His reasoning was based on experience. The married couples many times expected their spouse to do things they could previously do after their injury. The couples entering into marriage after disability have accepted the disability.
Churches can be cruel. One was real cruel to my uncle. He was a Deacon and Elder in his church. His time and a lot of his money had been vested in the church including their home being used for visiting preachers.
In his later years he became unable to care for himself or his wife who was also ill. So him and his wife ask her cousins to help one a man one a woman. His wife passed and his health fell even more. Both of his wife's cousins who were brother and sister moved in to care for him. His church had a fit because she was living in his house caring for him and they were not married. He had to leave the church. The man could no have done anything in the way of sex. Who was doing GOD's Will? The ones caring for him or the church who offered rules and no compassion?
28 years ago I was given a choice to make and one that had serious implications not just on my own future but others including my girlfriend whom I loved and would have been placed in a nursing home and her kids took to an orphanage or foster care as the dad was unfit. Or I could act in obedience with what was placed on my heart after a few weeks of prayer.
I did not marry out of pity I married out of love. I was lead into this by The Spirit and by a chain of events it would take pages to list of events that occurred within a few months of my first wifes death that were were to even ever meet each other. I didn't even know her before I lost my first wife yet she was tied in to my first wifes mother and their next door neighbor because her boss was my ex mother in laws friend. She {my wife now} also cared for their next door neighbor mother who was in a nursing home we both worked in after my first wifes death.
I want to point out something. GOD's reason for making woman was for companionship and to be his helper. The other parts occurred after the fall.
GOD knows our future. Before I lost my first wife He was preparing me for mine even as far back as my 7th and 8th grade being placed in a school for kids with disabilities.
Months before her death I would get overwhelming feelings that something was wrong. I was on the road working gone a week or three at a time. I'd stop the rig and call her and shed be fine. I quit my job and took a job in a nursing home doing electrical/HVAC maintenance. Within a moth afterward she passed one morning after I had left for work.
I took a few weeks off and went back. A transfer was offered to me that I wasn't going to take but at the last minute changed my mind and I didn't know why. That was how I met my wife now.
I was with her when this hit and she almost died. We had a police escort from the mall to St Mercy. On the way she was dieing and describing it. Two panicked kids in the car also. Have you known KPD to do a police escort to an Emergency Room? We live in the same area so KPD should ring a bell as well as the mall on the eastern end.
GOD knows our future. In our weaknesses he makes us strong and shows His strength and reveals His plan for us. Nine years after we married I became disabled. Only mine wasn't a spinal issue. Mine is a sensory processing issue that triggers seizures and limits concentration and ability to withstand certain sounds or visual stimulation. But GOD left me with all I need to care for her needs and her strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa.
Although at the times these events began to happen there was much sorrow and pain I was told by what I can only call the presence of The Holy Spirit that It was going to be OK.
I have a wife I love even despite our typical with anyone disagreements that happen, the two kids got a dad to help raise them into adults and have kids of their own. I also have a deeper understanding of Grace and GOD ability to overcome what is put before us.
Looking back I hate to think of where I could have ended up. GOD had a plan even in my youth which gave me a different insight to those with severe disabilities. We are very happily married.
As for your last sentence? Homosexuality is condemned in The Bible in several places. There is no compressions to that and what I'm saying.
The RCC was right to deny a church wedding in this case, because the attempted marriage would not have been valid, sacramentally, since it was not consummated physically. The meaning of marriage, according to the Bible, is that the two become one flesh. They are not one flesh if they cannot or do not perform the Act of Marriage.
This is why, as well, two men cannot get married, or two women, or two surgical neuters that don't have sexual organs at all. They may love each other, be beautifully and sincerely committed to each other, want to spend their lives together in mutual fidelity and unity of heart and mind --- might they not? two loving men? --- but they cannot marry precisely because they can not minister to each other the holy Act of Marriage, which is sacred bodily union of the type by which the human race is procreated.
It doesn't matter whether one or both of them are infertile. What matters for the Sacrament, is that they can and do perform the unique, specific act which makes them one flesh.
BTW, two men do not become "one flesh" no matter how tenderly devoted to each other they may be, and no matter what kind of jiggery-pokery they do. If it does not involve the husband ejaculating into the wife's genital tract, it is not a completed act of natural intercourse.
Historically, this is why the RCC Church said that King Henry VIII's marriage with his first wife, Catherneof Aragn, was valid and indissoluble. Henry said the first marriage was not valid because he was married to his brother's (Arthur's) widow. The Church said that although Catherine and Arthur had been married in Church, the marriage was never consummated (Arthur was very sick at the time of his marriage, and died not too long after) and therefore Catherine had validly married when he wedded Henry, and the marriage could not be annulled.
Thus having a rather serious impact on the course of history, as everybody knows.
Woman was given unto man before the fall BEFORE any sex act was recorded. Adam and Eve were man and wife in chapter 2. Sex is mentioned where? Chapter 4.
You insist upon bringing gay relationships into this discussion which the Bible specifically prohibits . Worse you try and lower a loving relationship of a heterosexual relationship to that one of a Biblical forbidden gay relationship. Please learn the difference.
Not sure how this is relevant. Caregivers (doctors, nurses, CNA's, LPN's, even other family members) handle naked patients and touch private parts of the body all the time. It is not a violation of modesty/purity. It is an everyday reality of caregiving.
"Better still what about other factors? A healthy couple dating and becoming very close in love with each other suddenly face a catastrophic illness. Marriage for that matter had already been discussed as a likely-hood within a year. What do you do? You love the person for who they are."
No on is doubting their love. What is certain, is that if they are not capable of a Marriage Act, they cannot marry as the Church defines the Sacrament as instituted by Divine and Natural Law. They may still be devoted to each other, but the Sacrament of Marriage-- like every Sacrament ---- requires a specific outward sign, and the specific outward sign of Matrimony is marital intercourse.
This in no way minimizes their love. It may be a beautiful, devoted, and lifelong thing. If they have never been able to mate/marry (physically), it is simply not the Sacrament of Matrimony. But it is still love!!
"I'm not talking Gay here I'm talking about heterosexuals. What could be implications if one of the persons said the church would not recognize our marriage so we can't marry? I don't want to get too much into technicalities but what if the woman is the one injured but can not feel anything from the neck down but can still get pregnant?"
If it is the case that she can receive her husband's penis in her vagina --- whether she can feel it or not --- then she can participate in marital intercourse: i.e. her husband can deposit semen in her vagina. That is the basic minimum required for marital intercourse.
"I think marriage is 80% - 90% spiritual commitment before GOD of a man and a woman to one another. The sex? Maybe 10% - 20% but not for some a must have. Then again I suppose some folk can't go a day without it. LOL."
It's not a question of the frequency or the level of desire or satisfaction. One act of intercourse between the wedded husband and wife, consummates marriage.
There are many kinds of love --- brothers, sisters, friends, maybe even the most devoted and committed kind of super-friendship. We are just talking about what specifies marriage. And that is the Marriage Act. The Church is very realistic about this.
"A doctor at Pat Neal Rehab Center told us many years ago it is the married couples where disability occurs during marriage he worries about. His reasoning was based on experience. The married couples many times expected their spouse to do things they could previously do after their injury. The couples entering into marriage after disability have accepted the disability."
It would be very difficult to be deprived of marital sexual relations entirely, after having been married perhaps for only a short time, and then facing a lifetime of continence. We must pray for such people to grow to a heroic level of commitment to each other, whether they can go on having intercourse or not.
The situation you mentioned about the cousins is cruel, and I understand our sensitivity to the injustice of it all. However that is not something that would happen n the Catholic Church. The Church does not consider live-in caregivers to be cohabitators or fornicators, good grief! A caregiver is in a completely non-marital, therapeutic assistant category. No sexual implications at all. Otherwise how could one ever receive care from a nurse or CNA? In that situation you described, that church--- whatever it was --- was just wrong.
"GOD's reason for making woman was for companionship and to be his helper. The other parts occurred after the fall."
If you are saying that sexual relations were not part of God's intentions before the Fall, you are mistaken. Sexual relations were a blessing which Adam and Eve could share in Paradise with complete innocence. Jesus said that "in the beginning" they were intended to become "one flesh." That's sexual union: the one-flesh union. Also, to increase and multiply --- all this before the Fall.
BTW, you have told me much of your story and I am touched by it. It is a moving story and you obviously have much love and caring between the two of you, despite all hardships, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, Amen!
Nothing of what I am saying diminishes or disrepsects the quality of your devotion to each other. I am just addressing the question of whether there can be the Sacrament of Matrimony where there is absolutely no sexual act --- that is, not one instance of physical, genital union. The answer is: there has to be an act of sexual intercourse to consummate a marriage.
This is completely separate from the question of whether you can have love and lifelong devotion. You apparently have that, and I thank you for sharing a very impressive story of your spiritual journey.
God has blessed you --- may He bless you forever.
Many things some churches do to people are wrong. It was my uncle whom was persecuted by his {Baptist} church for having a woman living in his home outside of marriage. Never mind he was in his late 70's and ill. But that was that churches misguided rules made by misguided men. A church more interested in making Laws to place burdens upon members than being Christ like in service.
I do have two female cousins in wheelchairs one is married and has grown kids. Biblical I see no prohibitions upon marriages entered into with disabilities where the marriage can not be consummated. While it may be a reason for annulment if determined after the fact meaning right after the wedding it isn't stated as mandatory. Maybe it's why so many marriages fail today. The focus is more on sex and less on the spiritual aspect of the union. As well as a person ages sex quickly becomes less and less an important issue.
It would be very difficult to be deprived of marital sexual relations entirely, after having been married perhaps for only a short time, and then facing a lifetime of continence. We must pray for such people to grow to a heroic level of commitment to each other, whether they can go on having intercourse or not.
Uh this usually involved men leaving women. The woman couldn't do the cooking, go all the places they went before, etc. They can't accept the persons new limitations. They expect the person to get up and go do what they did before. That is why he stated the after the fact marriages fair much better. The disability is accepted beforehand. That was many years ago.
The thing I do know about my wife is this. If it had been me this happened to while we were dating no one would have stopped her from our marriage and caring for me. The churches see their man made rules. Yea there couple be living together as caregiver and no marriage. But neither one of us would have been comfortable with that.
10Jesus’ disciples then said to him, “Then it is better not to marry!” 11“Not everyone can accept this statement,” Jesus said. “Only those whom God helps. 12Some are born as eunuchs, some have been made that way by others, and some choose not to marry for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let anyone who can, accept this statement.”
In the case of spinal cord injuries and disabilities the male is in fact not biologically a eunuch making one without such desire. The hormones are in fact still intact as is the biological attraction to women. Even in the case of males whom are in adult life made eunuchs in medical treatment for such illness as Prostate Cancer they still can have attraction to women. Someone very, very, close to me had to undergo such and it did buy him about ten more years with us. Never at any point was he any less a man I knew and he was a great husband still to his wife and father to his adult kids.
That is an outright falsehood and one must be careful because endorsing such a position is likely tantamount to implicit and possibly even formal heresy. The Vatican has outright rejected the above quoted assertion firmly, repeatedly, and consistently. For instance, in a 1994 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church the CDF categorically denied that a person could use the internal forum to annul their own marriage unilaterally and remarry. In fact, anyone who does and remarries is to be denied Holy Communion for violation of the marriage covenant. In this letter the Church declared:
7. The mistaken conviction of a divorced and remarried person that he may receive Holy Communion normally presupposes that personal conscience is considered in the final analysis to be able, on the basis of one's own convictions(15), to come to a decision about the existence or absence of a previous marriage and the value of the new union. However, such a position is inadmissable(16). Marriage, in fact, because it is both the image of the spousal relationship between Christ and his Church as well as the fundamental core and an important factor in the life of civil society, is essentially a public reality.
8. It is certainly true that a judgment about one's own dispositions for the reception of Holy Communion must be made by a properly formed moral conscience. But it is equally true that the consent that is the foundation of marriage is not simply a private decision since it creates a specifically ecclesial and social situation for the spouses, both individually and as a couple. Thus the judgment of conscience of one's own marital situation does not regard only the immediate relationship between man and God, as if one could prescind from the Church's mediation, that also includes canonical laws binding in conscience. Not to recognise this essential aspect would mean in fact to deny that marriage is a reality of the Church, that is to say, a sacrament.
The rest of the letter can be found at the Vatican's website here.
The Tribunal does not annul a marriage, the Tribunal only recognizes that marriage was not valid to begin with.
YOU are in danger of sin, as you are might very well be bearing false witness against your neighbors who have taken the rational approach that:
1.) A formal annulment would be SINFUL due to mentally unstable people who might well retaliate or act out on such formal process.
2.) The Tribunal does not “grant” or “perform” an annulment, therefore, if the “internal forum” or ones own conscience clearly dictates that the marriage was invalid, the formal process is not required.
THIS IS CHURCH DOCTRINE, and you are mixing apples and oranges when you say it is not.
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