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'...the true wife gets completely dissed by the church. Her children, too."

I wouldn't for a moment exclude the possibility that the declaration of nulliy may have been in error. Canonical judges make errors sometimes. Sometimes people lie to Truibunals. All of this sort of thing is excruciatingly commonplace in the breakup of a marriage, whether the whole agony of it is dragged through civil or ecclesiastical courts, or both.

However it is no reflection on the Church if people are dissing this man's original wife, and his children. The Chrch did not do that. The Church published no record of moral judgment against this woman, and said no disparaging word about the children.

This whole "she was called a whore, and her children bastards" thing is attributable to stupid or hateful onlookers. It has nothing --- nothing --- to do with the deliberations of the Tribunal.

The Church respeted her and her husband enough to treat their nuptial relationship seriously and try to evaluate the soundness of their vows on the basis of their own testimony ()hers as well as his.) She woud have had a canonical advocate: these things are not railroaded through on the insistence of one party only.

And a Declaration of Nullity does not mean their whole life together was a nullity. It just means that their vows involved some defect with the result that their marriage was not canonically whole from the start.

It is relly unjust to blame the Church for the damage done by slanderous gossip, by rash judgment, by ignorant and vicious tongues.

Some people dig their way to hell with their mouths.

Are you insinuating that I'm going to hell for criticizing a policy that on its face has many cruelties? If the church wants to "forgive" the cruelties of divorce and conduct the sacraments, that is one thing. That is in fact what many conservative Protestants have to do, and the congregations have to wrestle with the consequences of that, good or bad. But to engage in some kind of theatre of "annulment", to wave a hand and declare that a marriage is not worthy before God, particularly a marriage that has produced children--

Jesus confronted divorce without metaphor and wishful thinking in the gospels, and the bottom line was, God allowed divorce in the OT because humans were so fallen, and had such "hard hearts." Jesus said remarriage after divorce is adultery. To deal with divorce is one thing, to engage in such fatuous conceits is quite another.

Gossip? The divorce happened, did it not? Children are born of a man and a woman joined together, did it not? The present adulterous man is now traveling the world, trying to "buy" babies to give his wife, who is infertile--the illusion that she is

as good as the True Wife. And in the clear common sense of Jesus Christ, the Church is disobedient to his Word. Not that we don't have to face the harshness of divorce in every congregation, but to add these layers of hocus pocus, is, I contend, cruel. I'm hoping Francis will deal with the histrionics and come back to plain sense. The temptation to escape reality is truly the temptation to escape conscience.

This True Family continues, I contend, to have a righteous issue against a church that puts them away for the convenience of an immoral woman. The Church should be ashamed of this.