[ealgeone]

I think -— correct me if I’m wrong -— we’d agree that if, say, a man and his bride got married, and the man subsequently discovered that the bride was in fact a trans woman, I.e. another male, surgically reconfigured to look like a woman, that marriage was no marriage from the git-go, and could be declared null. Could be annuled, as we say.

And I would say that's why you don't enter into marriage lightly!

In the US today, we've made marriage a very easy thing to do. You can elope, head to Vegas and boom...you're married.

Our choices may be bad ones like the example above.

Ultimately though, you are responsible for your actions...right?

Considering that U.S. Catholics get like 90% of the annulments on the planet (that’s not the exact statistic, but it’s ballpark) and considering that some Dioceses (in places like, say the Diocese of Astana, Kazakhstan) NEVER issue annulments for reasons like “emotional immaturity,” you and I would probably agree that many American Dioceses have corrupt, rubber-stamp Marriage Tribunals, and are “annulling” marriages which were in fact valid and binding.

I would agree with the last part of this statement.

I think it's one of the reasons us non-catholics say if you throw enough money in the pot the marriage can be annulled.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Actually, it’s not a money thing. It’s not money corruption: it’s a mindset that’s just too permissive: corrupt mercy, a theme we see a lot of in Pope Francis and his type of bishops.

No diocese can deny a Catholic’s request to file a petition for annulment on account of money. If the person is financially needy, there’s a sliding scale that can go down to zero.

With some, called documentary annulments, there’s no need to track down the respondent, get various people’s testimony, and incur that kind of expenses. If you can present the documents that show, for example, that hubby #1 already had wife
back in El Salvador at the time he married you in Cincinnati, that would make your marriage to him automatically null.