(Click on the link above to comment on this article or to reply to the reader comments. Younust go to the original article link . I aam just copying the article here for my own research-and anyone else who may be interested in what I find interesting)
Austen Ivereigh Muddled about Marriage
Blogged by James Preece on 25th October 2013
The point of Catholic Voices, if I remember correctly, was to explain Church teaching in a clear way in "the public square". Is there anything clear about this highly misleading article?
Let's read that headline again... "Communion for the remarried: Vatican opens door blah blah blah". Nice one.
Then we have the ludicrous suggestion that the prefect of the CDF "opens the door" to anything. The fact is that Archbishop Müller's article changes nothing. No doors have been opened. Acknowledging that many couples nowadays enter marriage without a proper understanding of it as a permanent, binding union makes no difference.
Canon Law already states clearly that if "either or both of the parties should by a positive act of will exclude marriage itself or any essential element of marriage or any essential property, such party contracts invalidly" (1101) and "A marriage subject to a condition about the future cannot be contracted validly" (1102)
Earlier this year Pope Benedict told the Tribunal of the Roman Rota that the requirement for a valid marriage "as a necessary minimal condition, is the intention to do what the Church does". He quoted Pope John Paul II who said (almost ten years ago) "an attitude on the part of those getting married that does not take into account the supernatural dimension of marriage can render it null and void..."
Archbishop Müller is saying nothing new. He is shoulder to shoulder with Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Francis. It is highly misleading to suggest that any "door to reform" is going to be opened "via annulments".
What does need to change is the attitude one finds in some parts of the Church that annulments are a way of cheating. That they ought to be as difficult to attain as possible because otherwise marriage will be undermined. That's nonsense. That's like saying cars would be less safe if it was easier to fail an MOT.
An annulment acknowledges the reality that there was no marriage. Popes John Paul II, Benedict and Francis (as well as Archbishop Müller) are talking only about the need for annulment tribunals to be aware that in modern times, not every Catholic couple actually has the foggiest idea about what the Church teaches regarding marriage and to properly apply existing canon law on that basis.
It's not a sneaky way to "reform" "Communion for the remarried" "via annulments".
Communion for the remarried: Vatican opens door to reform via annulmentsLet's charitable assume that Austen Ivereigh isn't doing this on purpose. That he is trying to be clear and only failing by accident. Now pretend you're a busy newspaper editor who has no idea what an annulment is.
An important statement by the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, the CDF, has reaffirmed existing church teaching on not admitting to the Eucharist Catholics who have remarried without first annulling their marriage.
But in the article in the Vatican’s official newspaper, Osservatore Romano, Archbishop Gerhard Müller also opens the door to widening the grant of annulments in acknowledging that many couples nowadays enter marriage without a proper understanding of it as a permanent, binding union.
[http://cvcomment.org/2013/10/23/communion-for-the-remarried-vatican-opens-door-to-reform-via-annulments/]
Let's read that headline again... "Communion for the remarried: Vatican opens door blah blah blah". Nice one.
Then we have the ludicrous suggestion that the prefect of the CDF "opens the door" to anything. The fact is that Archbishop Müller's article changes nothing. No doors have been opened. Acknowledging that many couples nowadays enter marriage without a proper understanding of it as a permanent, binding union makes no difference.
Canon Law already states clearly that if "either or both of the parties should by a positive act of will exclude marriage itself or any essential element of marriage or any essential property, such party contracts invalidly" (1101) and "A marriage subject to a condition about the future cannot be contracted validly" (1102)
Earlier this year Pope Benedict told the Tribunal of the Roman Rota that the requirement for a valid marriage "as a necessary minimal condition, is the intention to do what the Church does". He quoted Pope John Paul II who said (almost ten years ago) "an attitude on the part of those getting married that does not take into account the supernatural dimension of marriage can render it null and void..."
Archbishop Müller is saying nothing new. He is shoulder to shoulder with Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Francis. It is highly misleading to suggest that any "door to reform" is going to be opened "via annulments".
What does need to change is the attitude one finds in some parts of the Church that annulments are a way of cheating. That they ought to be as difficult to attain as possible because otherwise marriage will be undermined. That's nonsense. That's like saying cars would be less safe if it was easier to fail an MOT.
An annulment acknowledges the reality that there was no marriage. Popes John Paul II, Benedict and Francis (as well as Archbishop Müller) are talking only about the need for annulment tribunals to be aware that in modern times, not every Catholic couple actually has the foggiest idea about what the Church teaches regarding marriage and to properly apply existing canon law on that basis.
It's not a sneaky way to "reform" "Communion for the remarried" "via annulments".
Reader Comments
Catholic Mother said...
I was thinking about this the other day. Where would young Catholics get good information from?Here are resources I have found particularly of note:
1)Engaged to Be Married by Joanna Bogle, esp the first chapter by Fr Ronald Walls, 'Do you freely and Deliberately'
2)Josephine Robinson's Gift and Marriage.
3) John Kipley Marriage is for keeps-Wedding Edition
4)Archbishop Fulton Sheen Three to get Married.
5)Pope John Paul II Love and Responsibility.
6)Fr Robert Barron on youtube on Love and Marriage.
7)Dr John Billings The Gift of Life and Love.
8)Dietrich von Hildebrand The mystery of Faithful Love.
9)Generosity in the Family E Willey- a CTS pamphlet.
Vincent said...
You can ignore canon 1102 for these purposes; the canonical requirements to prove this ground of invalidity are so unlikely to occur in practice that it is almost never used by Tribunals. 1101 (simulation) requires "a positive act of the will;" it is not sufficient that Bob is vaguely unsure about the unsure about children, permanence or fidelity in his marriage to Sue, but for invalidity he but deliberately and consciously exclude one of these things or the totality of marriage itself. You can't just take random paragraphs out of the Code of Canon Law and assume they apply more broadly than they do.Taking these two quotations together with a face-value reading of the canons quoted by you in the previous two paragraphs, it would be possible to misinterpret them to mean that an inadequate catechesis on marriage could lead to invalidity of marriage by simulation (1101) or condition (1102). This would not be correct. The "intention to do what the Church does" mentioned by Benedict cannot be taken as a new ground of invalidity; it must be interpreted in light of canon law and centuries of jurisprudence. With this in mind, he means that the parties cannot deliberately exclude the minimal requirements of fidelity, permanence and children; he does not mean that they must positively reach some intellectual understanding of a certain list of paragraphs from the Catechism. Your quotation of Benedict quoting JP2 is so selective that it completely changes the meaning. The full quote, with emphasis added, is: It is clear from the full sentence that JP2 is speaking against the idea that lack of supernatural belief can invalidate marriage; he says that this can only take place if the marriage is also undermined on the natural level.
[Let us remember that there are two kinds of marriage; natural and sacramental. Because marriage is written into man's nature by God, it is not limited only to Christians. Any unmarried man or woman can enter into an intrinsically indissoluble marital union. Where both parties are baptised, the marriage is "raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament" (CCC 1601). We must be careful not to require such a specific understanding of marriage that it would be impossible for non-Christians to enter into it.]
Therefore, what JP2 is saying is that, yes, belief in the supernatural nature of marriage is important, but lack thereof only invalidates if it also removes the natural basis for marriage, for example by deliberately excluding permanence.
I think you misunderstand the position of those whom you say need to change. Firstly, we need to separate the process from the application of the law. Procedurally, I don't think anyone is suggesting that it ought to be made difficult. There are many parts of the world which don't really have a functioning Tribunal system, or where it is deliberately obscure, or the population is too illiterate to access it, or where Tribunal officials (allegedly) demand money from those who cannot afford it as a precondition for accepting a case. Nobody is arguing that this situation, where is exists, is right. The uneasiness you rightly detect amongst some towards Tribunals is more based on a feeling that they do not apply the law. Where they do not follow the law, marriage is undermined. As JP2 said in his 2002 Address to the Rota, "an unjust declaration of nullity, opposed to the truth of the normative principles or of the facts, is particularly serious, because given its official relation with the Church, it favours the spread of attitudes in which the indissolubility is affirmed in word, but obscured in life." He reminds us that the stability of marriage is essential to society, and anything which undermines that is a threat. To use your MOT analogy, it is not difficult to see how a stricter MOT could, in fact lead to less safe cars. An MOT is compulsory and annual, while a petition for declaration of invalidity is made at a time of one's choosing, when the relationship has already broken down. So we ought to imagine a slightly different test that a car owner could put his car through if he wanted to get it scrapped. If the test were so strict that any applicant knew he could easily get a declaration that his car was broken, and therefore permission to buy a new one, where is the incentive to take care of the car that he has got? Most scandalous of all would be the situation where the owner has been eying up a younger, sportier model even before trying to get rid of his old one. Gradually, as more an more people drive around in rusty cars that they can't be bothered to take care of, knowing that a car is disposable, the young and easily influenced forget that they ought to take care of cars at all. Before long, many of the cars on the road are unsafe – which is a danger to everyone. Isn’t it the same with marriage? The more marriage is denigrated and ignored, the worse it becomes for everyone in society.
You need to look at the whole context, not just take a few sentences. Much of the teaching of JP2 and B16 on this matter was encouraging Tribunals to apply existing canon law against the background of many of them being too willing to declare a marriage invalid. See, for example, paragraph 7 of JP2's 1987 address to the Rota. These sections are certainly aimed at the Western world. These are balanced by parts encouraging other parts of the world to be more open to (1) receiving petitions and (2) judging them fairly. We can see the comments of Pope Francis on the place back from Brazil in this context: "And also the judicial problem of the nullity of marriages, this must be reviewed, because the Ecclesiastical Tribunals are not enough for this." My hunch is that any change we might expect from Francis in this area would be of opening up Tribunals internationally to Western levels of accessibility, without (necessarily) encouraging them to adopt western-style jurisprudence. As for your references to Catholic couples and awareness of Catholic teaching; this is not the clinching factor it may appear to be at first glance. Many of the marriages judged by ecclesiastical tribunals are not between Catholics; it could be of a person who became Catholic later, or even who has no intention of becoming Catholic but now wants to marry one. All of the grounds used with any frequency in Tribunals are applicable equally to Catholics and non-Catholics. A valid marriage does not require awareness of what the Church teaches; it doesn’t even require knowledge that the Catholic Church exists. Poor catechesis can, sometimes, have a certain influence on some of the grounds, but only if it is reinforced by malign influence from society.
http://daisychainsblog.wordpress.com/ said...
I read with interest about the whole debate on how to deal with broken marriages.I understand that these days Catholics may enter marriage with a secular understanding of it and so more marriages may be invalid today than in yesteryears.
However, this begs another question....if this is the case and we recognise it, then at the same time as making annulments easier to obtain, then surely we should be making marriage itself more difficult to obtain, to sort out this problem. We should be doing better checks on couples who wish to marry, to ensure we have less invalid marriages.
buckle said...
This is a backhanded way of saying that the Church has 'lost' the majority of its members to the World. At some point someone has got to declare the end of the post-conciliar period and in so doing bring an end to this chaos - a bit like declaring bankcruptcy. In the short term, we have these bail outs.http://daisychainsblog.wordpress.com/ said...
Buckle, I think you should read Evangelical Catholicism by George Weigel. It is all about responding to the current problems.DJB said...
I've known two protestants who have torn themselves to shreds with guilt for having divorced when they would get an annulment in the Catholic church in a New York minute.I think Canon law is very sympathetic on this issue, but yes you would think good marriage formation sessions would avert the massive case load of the annulment courts? or maybe we are human and our capacity for self delusion is limitless? :-S
Catherine said...
Sandro Magister makes this interesting observation"Archbishop Müller is one of the few heads of the curia whom Francis has confirmed in his role. A man, therefore, who has his complete trust. To whom he has not hesitated to entrust also the task - in the same article - of dispelling the interpretive ambiguities born from some of the formulations concerning "mercy" and "conscience" used by the pope himself in his public conversation.
The inauguration of this twofold communicative register - in this case, of the pope and of his guardian of doctrine - almost entirely escaped the notice of the media, still dazzled by the presumed "openness" of the former. But it is likely to be repeated with other issues.
And perhaps it will permit the untying of an interpretive knot of the current pontificate: that of the apparent distancing of pope Bergoglio from his predecessors in confronting the "anthropological challenge."
bernadette said...
Yes. Another Catholic Voices statement dripping with ambiguity. If Catholics want a voice in the public square they need to stand up, speak out, pick the phone up, e-mail and write to the media to make the teaching clear. It's really not that hard. Explain to the media outlet you are speaking to that CVs does not represent mainstream Catholic views. The last straw was when they kept wheeling out one CV after another during the conclave. Never have so many spoken such utter drivel in the name of so few.Come on Catholics of England and Wales. Share your faith with abject clarity and enthusiasm - we deserve better !
DJB said...
http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/vatican-asks-parish-level-input-synod-documentThis is important, and around and about the subject matter.
The Catholic Church of England and Wales have set up an online survey on the subject of the family in Catholic life:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=28hu/J2JI4/LljHhhQ%2B7btPhJ7Sl5dGuwh4BDJBRJug%3D
Mention Catholic voices in it if you want too. :)
Catherine said...
the consultation on the 2014 Synod is all well and good but....Familiaris Consortio n5
'The "supernatural sense of faith" however does not consist solely or necessarily in the consensus of the faithful. Following Christ, the Church seeks the truth, which is not always the same as the majority opinion. ... The Church values sociological and statistical research, when it proves helpful in understanding the historical context in which pastoral action has to be developed and when it leads to a better understanding of the truth. Such research alone, however, is not to be considered in itself an expression of the sense of faith.'
Jonathan said...
Thanks for an interesting post. I would like to share the reasons why I do think that such a widespread use of annulments is cheating.The reason Austen and others favour annulments is that they think they will be a solution for large numbers of the divorced and remarried. They aren't excited that a handful of people who unwittingly marry their first cousins will be able to move on. They hope to apply this to the nearly 50% of Catholics who get divorced. In practice that amounts to abandoning Jesus' teaching on divorce.
Your analogy with the MoT misses the mark. The equivalent to the MoT is the marriage service; it amounts to a public test of the relationship. The promises are made verbally before the witnesses so we all know that this relationship is 'safe', it is a marriage and so we sanction their living together. Just as an MoT declares a car is safe enough to drive on the road. If 50% of marriages are actually null the analogy is as if half of cars that passed the MoT were unroadworthy. That would indeed make the roads more dangerous.
It destabilises all our marriages to declare nullity on the grounds that one party had their fingers crossed. Are you comfortable knowing that the Church is only 50% sure that your marriage is valid. It doesn't feel to me like a sure foundation for family life.
Would we accept half our ordinations being invalid, half our masses, half our confessions?
James said...
Let's hypothetically suppose that 50% of marriages recent are invalid.Are you saying that the institution of marriage would be strenghtened by pretending they are valid?
You want to strengthen marriage by lying to people?
DM said...
Traditionally, sacraments were presumed valid unless proven otherwise - presuming isn't the same as pretending. We don't pretend that a defendant is innocent, but we do presume he is. The claim is that there is a move afoot to reach a point where marriages are presumed to be invalid. I think that move exists and it may have an effect on the behaviour of husbands and wives. I know a lady, a close friend of the family, who was on the Westminster marriage tribunal as a lay representative, and she uses 'divorce' and 'annulment' synonymously.That said, I have seen an excellent argument by canonist Ed Peters defending the spike in annulments in America.
http://www.canonlaw.info/a_annulments.htm
The best argument he uses is that changes in civil marriage over the last 50 years have led to more marriages being automatically annulled by the Church because of canonical form, which has nothing to do with thorny psychological issues like consent. In other words, converts or reverts who have had a 'Las Vegas weddings' are being granted annulments in greater numbers because the form doesn't meet the Church's criteria. There have been years when these types of annulments alone dwarf the number of annulments in a given year from the 1960s.
This bit made be stop and think and feel stupid, so I felt the need to break it down and work out why it didn't make sense to me.
So yes, it makes sense to say that a vehicle would be more likely to be more safe than less safe if the MOT was easier to fail.
Making an annulment harder to get would mean that more people would remain in the state called marriage.
If we define "higher threshold of specific tests" as "harder to obtain", and "remaining in the state called marriage" as equating to "more safe" in the MOT analogy; and equate the term "annulment" as "MOT test"; and the term "marriage" with "vehicle", then, we can map the previous finding that a "higher threshold for the list of specific tests" in an "MOT test" results in a "more safe" "vehicle".
So, if you make the threshold of the list of specific tests easier, you get a less safe vehicle; this maps onto if you make "annulments" "easier to obtain", you get fewer "remaining in the state called marriage", which sounds equivalent to "undermining" it.
Your analogy appears to be the opposite of correct. (phew!)