Henry's Revenge: Pope "Streamlines Annulment Process"

Early reports are in, and it looks like Pope Francis, as expected, has radically reformed the process by which Catholics may annul their marriages, streamlining steps that many liberals in the church considered too cumbersome.

The move is the latest in a series of public relations initiatives, whereby Francis hopes to make his pontificate appear more responsive to the needs of lay Catholics, especially those who have "long felt marginalized" by the hierarchy (READ: Don't like Catholic moral theology).

• Giving bishops the ability to fast-track and grant the annulments themselves in certain circumstances -- for example, when spousal abuse or an extramarital affair has occurred.

• The process should be free, except for a nominal fee for administrative costs, and should be completed within 45 days.

The Pope's reforms came Tuesday in the form of two "motu proprio" documents, Latin for "by (the Pope's) own initiative." They become part of Catholic canon law on December 8, the beginning of Francis' declared "Year of Mercy."

REMNANT COMMENT: We'll have to wait for the official translation later today, but this already promises to dramatically undermine marriage, especially in third world countries where the annulment process is less popular and marriage vows are stronger.

The Pope is reportedly waiving fees, leaving it up to local bishops to delegate priests to handle annulments, removing one of the tribunals, removing the automatic appeal, and green-lighting annulments when both parties want the annulment. (This last one is my favorite, by the way, since it basically means that when you and the missus decide to call it quits all you need is mutual agreement that the thing never happened in the first place. Now . isn't . that . convenient!)

And of course the Holy Father is adding a “lack of faith” to the growing list of trumped-up reasons to conclude there was never a marriage in the first place, as well. At the end of the day, if you WANT an annulment you GOT an annulment . . . but let’s not call it “divorce”. Heck, no! That would tamper with the indissolubility of marriage!

By the way, what about those of us who feel marginalized for believing as Catholics believed for thousands of years, that marriage vows actually mean something, that only death can break them, that we are married in the eyes of God, that there is no opt-out clause? What about us?

What about those who follow the rules and take marriage seriously, and who firmly believe that "streamlining the annulment process" is just an embarrassingly transparent euphemism for on-demand divorce for Catholics? Any chance of us getting a little mercy up in here? No? I didn’t think so!

What a joke! How the halls of hell must be echoing with the booming laughter of old Henry the King of England.

From Edward Pentin’s, “The Rigging of a Synod”:

On Friday, October 3, (2014) two days before the opening of the synod, this scholar received a call directly from Cardinal Erdö to come and meet him the next day. “I said: ‘Sure, when would you like me to come, maybe 4 or 5 P.M.’ ”, reported the scholar, thinking he would prefer to meet after a siesta after lunch. But the call was more urgent than that. Erdö wanted to see him at 1:30 P.M.

When he arrived at Cardinal Erdö’s office, the Hungarian cardinal was “ashen faced”. He had just come from Cardinal Baldisseri. Erdö had read to Baldisseri the Relatio that he had written, and the synod secretary general had picked it apart. “He’d just brow-beaten him into submission”, the scholar said.

Cardinal Erdö had, it seems, drafted the document with the opening line beginning with “Jesus Christ is our Master before all others and our only Lord”, and had stated, in an allusion to 2 Timothy, that the faithful owe obedience to Him whether it is convenient or not convenient.

“We’re sitting across the table from another, and he says with a tortured expression on his face: ‘Cardinal Baldisseri wants me to
change that.’ “

“I said ‘Why?’ ” “

He said: ‘It’s negative’ and that I should I begin with the ‘Joy of the Gospel’ [Pope Francis’ 2014 apostolic exhortation]33 and quote Pope Francis. Before Jesus Christ.”

Erdö asked the scholar: “Do you think I should quote Pope Francis first?”

The expert had been told by someone who knew Cardinal Erdö well that, although solidly orthodox, he would be liable to backtrack under pressure.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather”, the scholar told me. “Here we are, two days before the opening, there’s the Mass, two days before, and he’s asking me if we should start with Jesus Christ? I said, ‘Eminence, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the Alpha and the Omega. We start with Jesus Christ.’ He left it in. You’ll see it, it’s still the first line.”

But the cardinal was not so successful with the second line. In his draft, Cardinal Erdö had wanted to move from Jesus Christ to Pope Paul VI, Evangelii nuntiandi (his 1975 apostolic exhortation on evangelization in the modern world), and from there to Pope Saint John Paul II with Familiaris consortio and then Benedict XVI and finally Pope Francis.

But Cardinal Baldisseri said, “No, invert the order.” He wanted the opening Relatio to begin first with Francis and Evangelii gaudium and then cover the other popes. The scholar reminded Erdö that it was common to start with the earlier popes and follow through, in chronological order, to more recent popes, because that is how doctrine develops.

Despite this, Cardinal Baldisseri got his way. According to the scholar, after pushing Erdö to make several rewrites and appealing directly to the pope to have contributions from Forte and others reinstated that Erdö had removed, the text was accepted..

He just eliminated the secondary review process.

Pure B.S.

• One judge under the responsibility of the bishop is enough to oversee the process.

• Under certain circumstances, each bishop can himself serve as the judge.

• In case of the annulment being “evident,” there will be an even shorter process.

• The local bishops’ conferences are called to help individual bishops through the reform process, and are called to help guarantee, save for the “just and decent remuneration of workers of the courts,” that the process be free of charge.

• Appeal of a sentence, in case it’s required, can be dealt with locally (on the level of the nearest archdiocese) instead of taking it to the Vatican.

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