Interesting. What could be such a scenario? I'm thinking possibly of the marriages made in highly stressful situations, such as the WW2- and Vietnam-era marriages of draftees about to go off to war, or people whose partners later "decided" they were gay...
**or people whose partners later “decided” they were gay...**
One of my daughters experienced this. I didn’t care for the gent from the beginning.
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?
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.
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.