Posted on 03/01/2014 10:49:19 AM PST by NKP_Vet
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic Church needs to find a way to offer healing, strength and salvation to Catholics whose marriages have failed, who are committed to making a new union work and who long to do so within the church and with the grace of Communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper told the world's cardinals.
Jesus' teaching on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage is clear, the retired German cardinal said, and it would harm individuals and the church to pretend otherwise. However, "after the shipwreck of sin, the shipwrecked person should not have a second boat at his or her disposal, but rather a life raft" in the form of the sacrament of Communion, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnews.com ...
I do happen to think the Church has missed out on this or these whole scenarios. Given the highly charged sexual revolution, the cultural propaganda several generations have been exposed too...I think many fell into temptation with a marriage that should have never been.
I was married at 19 and did so to escape a dysfunctional home life. Sadly, I struggled along with his parents to make a solid go our marriage. 14 years later I finally filed for a divorce, fully realizing he was leading a double-life. Before the court documents were even signed he already had the images of other women framed and displayed for all the world to see.
I’ve now been divorced longer than I was ever married. Single, celibate, and becoming an old maid. Our parish is holding an introduction to the annulment process...I looked through the paperwork and just shook my head.
No, an annulment should not be easy, but now after 16 years I don’t think my husband is ever coming back either. How long should a penance like this be? How long do I have to suffer for his sins and indiscretions? All because he would not repent and return the marriage I cannot participate in the Church. Where is this Godly mercy?
Hope she was able to get an annulment.
Sure you can. You've certainly been given a heavy cross to carry, but the Lord loves you and will give you strength.
I Peter 2:19-22 For this is thankworthy: if, for conscience towards God, a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, committing sin and being buffeted for it, you endure? But if doing well you suffer patiently: this is thankworthy before God. For unto this are you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps.
Some of the comments below the YouTube video are from people who have had losses in life.
Annulment is the recognition of reality, no? A marriage is de facto not a marriage even before the church recognizes it is not. Those who know that they do not have a marriage or did not make a valid marriage, do not sin thereby and I do not know anyone who teaches that they do. The forms and forums only to ensure your conscience. They do not change the state of reality.
you posted “people whose partners later “decided” they were gay” I asked a friend of mine, Catholic Deacon: What about divorcing a spouse who declared herself ‘a man in a woman’s body.’ he said that would be grounds for getting the marriage annulled by the church. This was the situation an acquaintance of mine found himself in.
Or course they sin. They sin by lying to each other, to the witness (e.g. priest) and to God. They continue to sin by fornicating if they think they're not in a valid marriage.
Her first marriage was to a man who was part of some kind of elite military unit. Neither of them were Catholic, but they were both baptized Christians and got married in a Methodist chapel.
The marriage ended in divorce in less than a year.
In the first months of marriage, she discovered he was e-mailing romantic and sexually-oriented messages to other women. (Whether there was physical adultery she does not know.) He used to go out at night with no explanation, and return forbidding her to ask questions.
Sally's husband had immediately turned abusively controlling and threatening, starting when they were on their honeymoon.
He told her once that if she ever tried to "find out his personal business" (for instance when he was out all night without explanation) he knew how to "make her disappear so that they'd never find the body."
Long story sort, at one point he threatened to kill Sally and/or himself with a gun, she got away and called 9-1-1, and he was taken away by the police. In the process, the police searched their apartment and seized four duffel bags of weapons and other equipment her husband had stolen from the military. The police took him to a VA psychiatric hospital.
If Sally could prove all this she could get an annulment. Trouble is, it was 20 years ago.
The only piece of documentation she still had in her possession to prove the truth of this story, after 20 years, was a receipt the police gave her when they carried all the weapons out of the apartment.
She remarried ten years later in a civil ceremony, and she and her present husband Brad have an 8-year-old daughter who was baptized Catholic and received the Sacraments of Penance and Communion in the Catholic Church. She and Brad are simply longing to become Catholic, and get their marriage convalidated in the Church, but the whole process of annulment ground to a halt because Sally doesn't have the papers that would prove her story, and they can't contact the respondent (ex-husband) to ask questions.
Sally is a daily Mass-goer. You see her quietly weeping in the pew because she wants to receive Communion but cannot. She longs to have her present marriage convalidated, but she cannot. This is the kind of situation where I think the pastor should be able to make a finding of nullity for Sally's less-than-one-year first marriage (to a man who was a sociopath from the git-go) and free her to convalidate her second marriage, so the whole family can be in peace in the Church.
A sad story, but how do we know that it’s accurate? Maybe the ex would tell a different story. Wouldn’t it be bad precedent to make a finding of nullity based on the word of only one of the parties involved? Would it be fair to burden pastors with the responsibility (and the potentially unreasonable expectations) that would likely arise were they to be vested with the authority to make such a unilateral decision? The tribunal process (imperfect though it may be) ensures a greater measure of integrity than putting pastors in the position of making a judgement call.
The Diocesan Tribunal has been on it for well over a year now, but they're so jammed up with Nullity Petitions, they told her frankly they are "triaging" the cases and have made a priority of expediting the ones that are a whole lot more plan and simple (like the husband hadn't told his bride he already had another wife in Thailand.)
In essence, the Tribunal has admitted they cannot provide for Sally's family's spiritual well-being because of the factors of time, complication and paperwork.
Does Sally have a known history of lying, fraud, confabulation, a dissipated life, any record of wrongdoing whatsoever? According to those who know her best --- her present husband, parents, teachers, employer, friends --- No.
Sally does have the one receipt which shows her ex was in trouble with the police about military weaponry he had appropriated for personal use. I think it is reasonable to conclude she is telling the truth, and a grave injustice to keep her shackled canonically to a sociopath. Plus, there is zero chance she and the ex would ever "reconcile" after 20 years and after her marriage to her present husband.
And I think it's reasonable in a few, well-defined cases, to entrust the Petition to the pastor, who actually knows Sally and her husband and their child personally, and is the one responsible for their pastoral care.
My opinion, free to all comers and worth every penny!
What a terribly sad story. Here is the part I don't understand: why does the RC church regard a non-Catholic marriage so binding as to prevent a Catholic marriage? I'm not saying it is wrong; just wondering how the policy is taught.
"Sally" needs to clear this up, not cry. She needs to find the money for a good private investigator who will get her the facts and the records she needs, without her having to contact him. For all she knows, he may be dead or have been declared incompetent from the time of his first hospital commitment.
Sad circumstances, for sure, but every legal proceeding has to follow its due course. The Church has established safeguards to protect the Sacrament of Marriage. It’s a difficult process because it’s meant to be so. “Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
The fact remains that Sally was previously married, of her own free will. Unfortunately, although it didn’t work out, she is still responsible for her decision. To set up the procedure that you are recommending would lead to abuse of the process. Clergy such as Cardinal Kasper would be handing out annulments with no concern for the facts, and people would go priest shopping to gain the desired outcome. There are unfortunately priests who lack integrity (e.g. my parish priest was a raging pervert who molested so many boys he was eventually laicized). The potential for corruption would be exacerbated if the tribunal process were to be undermined by special exceptions.
But on top of that, if people are baptized Christians, they are certainly (though imperfectly) members of the Catholic Church, no matter what "denomination" they were in. And according to the Catholic understanding of marriage,. the "ministers" of marriage are the spouses: the wife confers marriage on her husband, the husband on his wife. Therefore, their marriages establish a permanent, till-death Sacramental bond recognized and respected by the Catholic Church!!
We honor these couples by taking them at their word. Our default position is that their marriages are canonically valid, unless it can be proved that they were defective from the git-go.
Your point that the ex might be dead by now, is a good one. Sally’s parents are moderately well-off, and Fr. Pete has already urged them to hire a professional PI. I actually have hopes for this one, but it’s going to take a long time, and Sally is struggling and suffering. It’s very hard to watch this happen. And she hasn’t even the Sacraments to console her.
She could receive the Sacraments every single day if that was her highest priority. Another FReeper (Steve something, can't remember his exact handle) has pointed out repeatedly the option of a "Josephite" marriage in cases like this. She and her husband could go to a different church (one where nobody knows their business). Single Catholics and homosexual Catholics must practice chastity. An exception for those remarried civilly for a second time is morally inconsistent.
But consider well how unjust it is to prevent a person from "second" marriage when the "first" union was a fraud, when he or she really wasn't Sacramentally married to their ex at all. You've got people who never had valid vows nor that one-flesh bond of which the Scripture speaks. Christ Himself says the bond is indestructible "except in the case of porneia" --- and that first attempted marriage was porneia.
"Sally was previously married, of her own free will..."
The State of North Carolina might say that, but the Catholic Church would not say that: because her so-called spouse demonstrated from the very inception of the attempted marriage, that his vows were a fraud. That's the law of the Church: no intention, no vow; no vow, no bond; no bond, no impediment for her present, real and final marriage with a man who really did and does intend what the Church intends.
Therefore this does not solve the problem that Sally has not received a Declaration of Nullity concerning the first attempted marriage, and the related problem that she and her present husband cannot get their present (and only) marriage convalidated in the Church.
Do you --- seriously--- think relying on the "internal forum", already excluded as a solution by the Holly See, is to be preferred to a reform of the marriage law in which their pastor could make a Declaration of Nullity under certain circumstances?
"Josephite" marriage --- with no sexual relations --- St. Paul himself says that people can abstain from marital relations only by mutual consent, for a time. For Sally to impose this on her husband unilaterally would be a violation of the spousal debt.
" The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights,
and likewise the wife to her husband.
For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does;
likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.
Do not refuse one another
except perhaps by agreement for a season,
that you may devote yourselves to prayer;
but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control."
1 Cor. 7:3-5
“Holy See” not “Holly See.” For this and other typos I am truly sorry.
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