Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Fri, 31 Jul 1992 07:39:26 EDT
From:         Marty Helgesen <MNHCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Marriage, annulment, and divorce

This will be a composite reply to various questions on marriage,
divorce, and annulment.  Note that there can be a lot of technical
details, and I am not an expert on moral theology or canon law.  I am
not competent to discuss specific cases, just general principles:

The Catholic Church teaches that a valid, consummated, sacramental
marriage can be dissolved only by God.  "Sacramental" means a mar-
riage between Christians.  As Steve Creps has mentioned, the bride
and groom administer the sacrament to each other when they exchange
their vows.  The priest is present only as the Church's official
witness to the exchange of vows.  (He will bless the couple, etc. but
that is not an essential part of the sacrament.)  This means that the
Catholic Church considers Protestant marriages to be not only valid,
but sacramental.  A practical implication of this is that if two
Protestants marry and divorce, and one party later wants to marry a
Catholic that will not be possible unless the divorced spouse has
died or an annulment is obtained.

Consummation is not necessary for a marriage to be valid, but it does
make it indissoluble. A valid, sacramental marriage that has never
been consummated can be dissolved by the Church.

Divorce itself is not a sin.  Normally a husband and wife ought to
stay together, but for sufficient reason, such as abuse, it is per-
missible for a married Catholic to obtain a legal separation or even
a civil divorce.  However, a civil divorce, regardless of who seeks
it or for what reason, must be considered the same as a legal separa-
tion.  That is, assuming the marriage was valid and consummated it
remains in effect until one of the parties dies.  Neither party is
morally free to remarry.  Someone like Senator Kennedy, about whom
someone asked, is considered to be still married to his "first wife"
so that his current legal marriage is invalid.  He is living in an
adulterous relationship, although in the eyes of the state he is
validly married to his "second wife".

     The indissolubility of marriage can produce great hardship in
specific cases. If, for example, I were to marry and to consummate my
marriage, and the next day, my wife were to be hit by a car and made
a permanent quadriplegic, or even rendered comatose, I would be
married to her for life.  That would be true if I married at my
present age, or even if I had married at 18.  However, I would suffer
and my quadriplegic wife would also suffer.  She would suffer even if
had been hit by the car when she was still single.  The difference is
that I could pretend that I was not married, get a civil divorce, and
marry someone else in a civil ceremony or a non-Catholic religious
ceremony.  My wife could not pretend she was not paralyzed.  Some
people have very severe afflictions in this life.  We must sympathize
with them and help in appropriate ways, but pretense is not an appro-
priate way.  Some people would say it is callous for people who have
not experienced a serious problem themselves to comment on it when
someone else has it.  That would be true if the comments were based
on one's own opinions.  However, if one is stating God's law, com-
plaints should be addressed to God, not to the messenger.  (I am
talking about the content of the message, not the way it is deliv-
ered.  It is possible for someone to state the truth in a harsh or
callous manner, but while that affects the moral state of the person
who does so, it does not affect the truth itself.)

Divorce dissolves an existing marriage, to the extent that the body
that issues the divorce has authority to do so.  A civil divorce
dissolves the civil effects of a marriage.  The parties are free to
remarry without committing the criminal offense of bigamy, they can
no longer file joint income tax returns, etc.  However, if a couple
is married in the eyes of God a civil divorce cannot change that
fact.

Many Christians believe that divorce and remarriage are forbidden in
general, but that Jesus made an exception for cases involving adul-
tery in Matt 5:32 and 19:9.  The Catholic Church, taking other verses
into account, does not interpret those verses as permitting remar-
riage in cases involving adultery.  I will not digress with an expla-
nation here.

An annulment does not dissolve a marriage.  An annulment is an offi-
cial statement that a man and a woman who had gone through a marriage
ceremony and had lived together as man and wife were never really
married to each other because some condition in existence at the time
of the marriage prevented a true marriage from occurring.  Strictly
speaking the authority that issues an annulment does not annul the
marriage.  It states that the marriage was null, that is, that it
never occurred.  The reason for obtaining an annulment is so one can
marry (not remarry) someone else without being accused of bigamy.

The condition that precludes marriage must exist at the time of the
ceremony.  Nothing that happens after a marriage ceremony can affect
the validity of the marriage, although events after the ceremony,
even years after, may provide evidence of a condition that existed at
the time of the ceremony.

Annulments exist in civil law and in church law, although the grounds
for an annulment--the invalidating impediments as the Church terms
them--are not always the same.  I will not attempt to list all of
them.  Some impediments come from God.  Some are matters of Church
law.  The Church has the authority to grant dispensations from its
own laws, but not from God's laws.  A brother and sister, for exam-
ple, can never marry.  It is not that they ought not to marry, but
that they cannot marry.  If a brother and sister who were orphaned,
separated as small children, and raised separately were to meet as
adults, and, unaware of their blood relationship were to fall in love
and marry, it would not be a valid marriage.  If the fact of their
blood relationship were to become known they could no longer live
together as husband and wife.  An annulment would certify that de-
spite the existence legal records saying they had married each other
they were never really married to each other and were free to marry
other people.

Marriage requires a free consent on the part of both parties.  I've
read of an annulment involving socially prominent people in the 19th
or early 20th century in which it was proven that the bride had not
consented to the marriage but had gone through with it only because
she was bullied into it by her domineering mother.  In recent years
Church authorities have been giving greater weight than before to
claims that someone was not psychologically capable of understanding
the nature of the marriage commitment or of making such a commitment.
I do not know what evidence is used to establish this fact. Some
Catholics claim that some progressive priests abuse this approach to
approve annulments when they are not justified, which may or may not
be true.  My pastor, who is solidly orthodox, once mentioned, in a
different context, that a neighboring diocese (that was alleged to be
unduly lax in granting annulments) had a high rate of annulments
because a larger than usual number of priests were assigned to work
on processing applications for annulments..

Steve Creps has already mentioned that the administrative expenses of
conducting an investigation of a claim that a putative marriage was
invalid can be high, and that the party seeking an annulment must pay
those expenses, unless poverty makes that impossible, in which case
the Church will process the application without charge.

Marty Helgesen
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