General Questions (and Answers) About Catholic Marriage and Annulment

Factual Questions
1

In a MPSIMS thread, a GQ was about to break out:

No, it’s certainly more than a tautological assertion, although cynical observers might claim that it amounts to the same thing in many places today. But in point of fact, the church does refuse annulments.

In seeking an annulment, in fact, the burden is on the putatively married person to show that there was no marriage; the validity of the marriage is to be presumed.

But there are a number of gorunds which may exist to successfully challenge that presumption.

For example, the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law, Can. 1095, provides:

Any of these conditions might exist at the time of the marriage, but not be known to the other party – or, indeed, known to the person so afflicted by the condition. If you were unable to competently judge or evaluate the decision to marry or the ability to create a true marital relationship after the marriage, you were not capable of contracting marriage. The annulment proceeding allows the other spouse to present evidence of this lack, and, if it’s believed by the tribunal, can recieve a decree of nullity.

Can. 1101 ß2 provides that if either (or both) of the parties does not intend to honor the essential elements of marriage, or any essential property of marriage, that party contracts invalidly. So infidelity during marriage is not grounds for annulment, for exmaple, but someone who married intending never to conform to marital fidelity does not actually enter into marriage.

And so on. There are perhaps twenty different general categories of flaws that someone could point to to prove that the seemingly valid marriage they were in wasn’t valid at all. It’s not a formality to prove by any means. It requires an actual hearing, with a church-appointed canon lawyer whose job it is to argue for validity – the Defender of the Bond – and your canon lawyer, or you, presenting evidence in favor of your position.

2

Thanks, Bricker!

3

Sort of an omnibus “Ask the Catholic Lawyer Who Knows Canon Law About Catholic Marriages and Annulments” thread? FWIW, I approve. As an example of those 20 or so impediments, in Catholicism procreation is a primary purpose of marriage – it’s spelled out in the liturgy, the catechism, and canon law, and it’s the reason why artificial birth control is generally sinful for Catholics. So if two people marry, one intending to have children and the other not, and the intent of the partner not wanting children is not disclosed to the other one, there was no “meeting of the minds”, no intent to contract a Catholic marriage, between them, even though they went through all the proper vows, consummated the marriage, lived together, etc. The analogy I’ve used for a civil annulment, which also does exist, is to imagine two mature-looking 16-year-olds eloping in a state that requires you to be 18 to marry without judge’s or parental consent. Even though they lied about their ages, got a marriage license, said their vows before a J.P., and set up housekeeping together, they’re not legally married – they’re underage. And the parents can have the marriage annulled. It shouldn’t be too hard to see how this same sort of reasoning carries over into what the Catholic Church thinks about a marriage.

Not to start a GD topic but hopefully fend one off, there was a time in the not-too-distant past when a rich Catholic wanting to change wives could get a civil divorce, make major contributions to the Church, and voilà, his marriage magically became voidable. This abuse has since been corrected, and you might, Bricker, deal bgriefly with that.

Finally, I know that the Catholic Church believes that Protestants, Muslims, atheists, even kids who eat Armour hot dogs, can enter into a contractual marriage, but only Catholics (and arguably Orthodox) can enter into a sacramental marriage. However, other than that the latter is always done in church and involves a bishop or priest pronouncing the church’s blessing on the couple, I’ve never been clear what the distinction is. Perhaps you could also address that – it doesn’t seem too far off topic.

Thanks.

4

Nitpick: It doesn’t matter whether the partner not wanting children discloses their intention to the other partner; the mere fact that one partner is not open to ever having children means that the relationship embarked upon is not a marriage.

Actually, I think in the Catholic perspective any two baptised Christians can contract a valid sacramental marriage. No priest is needed; the ministers of the sacrament are the couple themselves. Non-Christians can contract a valid natural marriage, and this is just as indissoluble as a sacramental marriage.

Catholics are required to marry in a Catholic liturgy, or obtain a dispensation from doing so, if there marriages are to be valid, but no such requirement is imposed on non-Catholic Christians.

This can cause a problem if two non-Catholics marry in, say, a civil ceremony, and later divorce, and then one of them contracts a second marriage and later wishes to enter the Catholic church. The first marriage is presumptively valid, and needs to be annulled if the second marriage is to be validated, which must be done before the convert can be received. The fact that the first marriage wasn’t celebrated in a church, or before a priest or minister, or with a religious ceremony of any kind, is not in itself a ground for annulment, since neither of the spouses were Catholics at the time. Understandably, this can cause a degree of surprise and resentment when prospective converts are faced with the problem.

5

What kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs?

6

(A quick google suggests that) 78% of annulments in the US are granted, which implies that a very high percentage, possibly up to 78% of all Catholic marriages were never effective in the first place.

What is the Church doing to rectify this absolutely abysmal record of having the skills to create what most Churches spend their weekend attempting (but usually not succeeding) in doing?

7

Tough kids, sissy kids, even unbaptized babies in limbo

8

No, it doesn’t. You’re overlooking several points:

  1. A nitpick, but worth it. For the reasons given in my earlier post, by no means all of the marriages which are considered under the Catholic church’s annulment procedures are “Catholic marriages”, in the sense either of marriages between Catholics, or marriages celebrated by the Catholic church. I don’t have any figures, but I’d suspect quite a large chunk are not.

  2. A bigger point; you are assuming that, as regards the factors which make for nullity, the marriages which come before the tribunals are representative of Catholic marriages as a whole. But a moment’s thought shows that this is unlikely to be so. It is only marriages which break down which come before the tribunals. Most annulments are granted for things like lack of psychological or emotional capacity. You’d expect marriages entered into by people who lack the necessary psychological or emotional capacity to be rather more likely to break down, and so come before the tribunals. If 78% of marriages which come before the tribunal are found to have been entered into by people who were psychologically or emotionally unready, that does not provide any grounds for assuming that any particular percentage of marriages which don’t come before the tribunal share that characteristic.

(OK, it’s not the case that the entire 78% is accounted for by emotional or psychological incapacity, but you get the point.)

  1. You’re also overlooking the point that a number of marriages which break down never come before the tribunals because the spouses are advised that there is no prospect of success, i.e. there are no likely grounds for nullity. I have no idea how many marriages this may apply to.

It’s not the business of the churches to create marriages. Couples create marriages; churches merely witness them.

In fairness to the Catholic church, they do a certain amount by, e.g. requiring compulsory marriage preparation courses for those who marry in a Catholic liturgy. But, theologically, Christians have a right to the sacraments, including the sacrament of marriage, and you can’t turn people away merely because you doubt their wisdom or maturity. It’s only where their incapacity has been established by events that such a judgment can be made - and then, normally, only when at least one of the spouses requests it.

9

Effective at what?

In order to sin you must know that what you are doing is wrong and then to do it anyway. This is why anyone who’s had a marriage annulled is not guilty of fornication. They didn’t know their marriage was a fake at the time and so no sin is accrued. Likewise, a happy, loving couple who remains unaware of their marriage’s invalidity are not guilty of sin as well.

10

Actually, I came into this thread because I’m interested about this very issue.
For some reason, I always assumed that an annulment was a rare event, and that to get one, spouses had to have hard rock solid reasons, very unlikely to be occur in most marriages. Also, I’ve never heard personnaly of anybody getting (or even trying to get) an annulment (that said, I don’t exactly live surrounded by hard-stance catholics). However, reading the SDMB, it seemed like in the USA, getting an annulment was barely more than a mere formality. In the case of the thread that prompted this OP, a poster’s mother got two annulments in a row, which seem quite a lot to me.
So, what is it? Is it trivially easy to find a canonically valid reason that will be deemed suficient for an annulment nowadays?

Do most catholics who divorce manage to somehow get their religious marriage annuled?

If it’s so, is it a recent evolution?

Is it a regional thing (that is, common in the USA, but not necessarily elsewhere)?

What are the most common grounds for an annulment? (I was tempted to write the best excuse)

How comes the clergy, or even Rome, isn’t irritated by such a deluge of annulments?

Is it a deliberate policy to grant easily annulments (so that the religious marital status of Catholics wouldn’t be too often at odds with their legal status in a society where divorce has become commonplace, for instance)?

11

All excellent questions!

Annulments used to be extremely rare, and were said to be hard to get. Some time ago - I think thirty to fifty years ago - they started to be granted much more readily. So far as I know there was little or no substantive change in the rules, but there was a significant shift in understanding and application. This is generally ascribed to a much greater engagement by the church authorities with the insights into human behaviour and human freedom offered by psychology.

In the US at any rate, most who seek an annulment seem to get it. But many do not seek an annulment. It’s impossible to know to what extent that’s because they don’t feel the need for one - i.e. they don’t wish to remarry, or they don’t care about the canonical irregularity of their second marriage - and to what extent it is because, in their particular circumstances, they are advised that they won’t get an annulment.

In other words, the high annulment rate could be because annulments are very easily given, or it could be because annulment decisions are relatively predictable.

It’s certainly not a trivial procedure. Anyone I know who has been through it found it quite intensive. Some resented it, and found it intrusive, but some found it helpful in coming to terms with what had happened in their failed marriages, and in understanding why. None of them found it trivial.

It’s not just the US, but I think the phenomenon is most pronounced in the US.

I don’t have any figures on this, but I suspect the commonest grounds for annulment are:

(a) Lack of canonical form - a Catholic marries in a civil or non-Catholic religious service without obtaining the required dispensation.

(b) Lack of “due discretion”: this is a broad ground which embraces the lack the maturity needed either to understand what is involved in the marriage commitment, or to make a free decision to enter into it.

They may well be irritated by it. What makes you think they aren’t?

That’s often suggested, and there may be some truth in it. But it’s easy to be too cynical. In the first place, even with this approach to annulment, the religious marital status of Catholics very often is at odds with their legal status - as when Catholics marry in non-Catholic services without a dispensation, which happens often - and the church seems to bear the misfortune. In the second place, exactly the same development has been observed in at least some countries in the civil courts. This can’t be accounted for by reference to the pragmatic needs of the church, but it is consistent with the view that this change is driven by psychological insights.

12

My favorite Catholic annulment story is Ted Kennedy getting his marriage of 24 years and three kids annulled… wait for it… because his wife was an alcoholic. Hilarious.

Teddy’s nephew, Joseph, recently had his annulment overturned. According to this Boston Globe article, Catholic b.s. annulments seem to be a disproportionately American phenomenon. I’m sure it has nothing to do with keeping wealthy parishioners happy.

13

True, although this applies to baptized non-Catholics only. If either party was not baptized at the time – say, for example, we’re talking about a Jewish wedding, or a civil ceremony in which one or both parties was Jewish, then canon law provides procedures where the marriage can actually be dissolved (not annulled!) If both parties were not baptized, the Pauline Privilege applies. This derives from St Paul’s letters, I Corinthian 7:15, following a discussing on believers married to unbelievers:

If one party was baptized, a similar rationale, called the Peterine Privilege, applies.

14

Part of it is disappointingly tautological: Can. 842 ß1 provides:

That lets out Muslims, Jews, and any other non-baptized folks from entering into a sacramental marriage.

Correct.

15

This makes me wonder. In theory, what percentage of marriages in the Catholic Church are actually null and void?

“No, I don’t want to even try to get married, I hear that the Church’s rules are such that half of all couples end up with void marriages.”

16

And untrue.

17

That’s virtually impossible to answer, especially because even if a defect exists, once the other spouse becomes aware of the defect and its cured, the spouse can ratify the marriage. By continuing the marriage, the defect – which could have served as the basis for annulment – is instead accepted and the marriage is considered valid from the beginning. It’s almost a Schroedinger’s Cat issue – the marriage is presumed valid as long as no one tests the proposition.

18

Can you enlighten me then? What exactly made their lengthy and procreative marriage null and void?

19

I went through it almost twenty years ago. And it certainly WASN’T trivial. I had to have witnesses that my ex had not been in a state to enter a sacramental marriage. Three friends wrote letters to that effect. I was interviewed several times - and I can’t say its pleasant to be interviewed over a failed marriage when the case you are making is “he’s a cheater, he was a cheater, he’ll always be a cheater - and I was so stupid I thought he’d change.”

I didn’t NEED to do it…within a few years I’d left the Church completely. But it seemed like if I had gotten married within the RCC, I needed to be honest enough to get “unmarried” within the RCC. And while I left the Church, the annulment process - the seriousness with which they took it and the internal consistency of what and why - gave me a lot of respect for them (it also opened up a lot of the reasons I left - I discovered I didn’t agree with some of the whats and whys)

20

No, but perhaps I can clear up a few misconceptions. The fact that their marriage was procreative certainly removes one possible ground: impotence. But that’s all it does. The fact that a putative marriage lasted for a long time and produced children is not proof of initial validity.

I don’t know the specific grounds of Ted Kennedy’s anullment. But it was not his wife’s claimed alcoholism, because that’s not a recognized ground for annulment.

This being GQ, I wonder what evidence you relied upon in making the initial assertion?