Catholic Annulments: A Dehumanizing Process
Kelleher, Stephen J.
CATHOLIC ANNULMENTS: A DEHUMANIZING PROCESS STEPHEN ]. KEI .I .EHER T.i dng excommunication for divorce and remarriage is not enough On May 5, 1977, the Catholic bishops of the United...
...God, in creating man with free will, decided not to do this...
...It should be noted, too, that tribunals vary in their methods of collecting facts and in their determination of what facts are pertinent...
...Although all of this is true of this case, our statement goes further, and we think it is proved by the facts: the man is completely incapable of interpersonal communication, in other words, unable to incorporate into himself any of the feelings of his partner...
...It will not give divorced and remarried Catholics the right to receive Holy Communion...
...Don't play games with me...
...What is the Catholic Church doing, using this name-calling process...
...I need the Church to acknowledge that my marriage is dead, that I have a right to remarry and a right to continue to receive Holy Communion...
...In upholding the tribunal as the major vehicle whereby persons may seek freedom from intolerable marriages, the Church is inhumane and unChristian in accepting the policy evidenced in affirmative tribunal decisions that persons are personally or mutually incapable of marriage...
...It does not face the fact that some true marriages dissolve...
...If the tribunal is to continue in existence, psychiatrists and psychologists, women as well as men, should be designated in law as the tribunal judges...
...MONSIGNOR STEPHEN J. KELLEHER, author of Divorce and Remarriage for Catholics...
...The abolition of the tribunal may free millions of divorced persons to grapple openly with other institutions, religious and secular, which would stifle the human spirit...
...There is within the Church today a concern that the acknowledgment of the rights of persons to divorce and remarry will foster a divorce mentality so that couples entering marriages may be less committed to permanency and indissolubility in their initial marital vows...
...I find it difficult to conceive that a therapist can say in retrospect that he is sure either or both were simply and unequivocally unable to succeed in their marriage when they exchanged their marital vows...
...It is, in fact, an attempted static categorization of persons...
...The tribunal acknowledgment is neither humane nor Christian...
...He is a schizophrenic...
...They die...
...He was a confirmed alcoholic...
...In 1975, at least 120,000 civil divorces were granted to Catholics in the United States...
...Tribunal decisions do not involve crime...
...Moreover, when a tribunal seeks to buttress its decision with material taken from the jurisprudence of decisions of the Rota it is able to find Rotal decisions favoring a variety of interpretations, including contradictory interpretations, of the meaning of personal and mutual incapacity to marry...
...Fewer and fewer separated and divorced persons are willing to be a part of the process...
...This cultural variance is further aggravated by the fact that Rotal judges are only rarely in personal contact with persons from the United States whose marriages are being considered by the Rota for possible annulment...
...In therapy, these professionals try to help persons grow in maturity, have a substantive respect for themselves, and, within that framework, to try to live in peace with other persons...
...but there is no parity between tribunal decisions and most civil court attempts to determine capacity to commit crime or stand trial...
...In 1974, an annulment was granted by a United States tribunal for the reason that, on the day of the marriage, the parties were mutually and reciprocally incapable of marrying each other even though each of them may have been capable of marriage with a person other than the partner in this particular union...
...It presumes that they are normal in all other respects...
...This practice attempts to salvage the idea that every true marriage is indissoluble...
...There is a denial of hope in the possibility that there could be a charismatic renewal of the persons and of their marriage...
...Persons are not...
...There is a failure to acknowledge the existence of the ability of persons to call upon untapped natural and supernatural resources to remake themselves in marriage...
...That's ridiculous[ Maybe I should not have married but I did marry...
...The arguments advanced against affirmative annulment decisions based on the personal incapacity of one or both parties at the time of the marriage apply equally, if not more so, to decisions based solely on mutual and reciprocal incapacity...
...Help me...
...The exercise of this decisionmaking power has no foundation in theology or the priestly ministry...
...The lack of consistency in tribunal decisions is justified by proponents of the tribunal as a human factor which is present equally in civil courts...
...Part of our task is to overcome the already existing divorce mentality...
...CATHOLIC ANNULMENTS: A DEHUMANIZING PROCESS STEPHEN ]. KEI .I .EHER T.i dng excommunication for divorce and remarriage is not enough On May 5, 1977, the Catholic bishops of the United States voted 231-8 to abolish the penalty of excommunication for Catholics who have been divorced and remarried...
...An increased sensitivity to the possibility of annulment is personally and socially destructive because it is fatalistic, because it embodies the pessimistic view that some marriages are doomed to disaster...
...This task is not being accomplished by the tribunal...
...This is the reason for the annulment, that is why the annulment is granted...
...The worst aspect of the tribunal process is the name-calling...
...In this context, the Catholic Church would do well to be as warmly present at a second marriage as she is at a first marriage...
...It would be a clear-cut denial of their basic ability to make and to act on free choices to say that neither of them nor both of them together had been able, in the course of their marriage, to make choices which could have made their marriage a happy one...
...For most divorced persons, whether they be Catholic or other than Catholic or of no religious persuasion, the tribunal annulment process is ordinarily the only way they may be considered free to marry a second time with the approval of the* Catholic Church...
...It would be interesting to see what would happen if a person so described were to sue the Rota or a diocesan tribunal in a civil court for defamation of his person...
...There are, then, diverse ways of interpreting the law as well as diverse ways of applying it to particular cases...
...This is so because affirmative tribunal decisions deny the abilities of persons to exercise the fundamental right to marry and negative tribunal decisions deny the fundamental rights of persons to remarry...
...However, even given the same set of facts, one tribunal may give an affirmative decision, another tribunal a negative decision...
...It is not related to the mission or function of the Church...
...It is ordinarily applied to all presumably true marriages, including marriages in which one or both parties have not been baptized...
...It is the antithesis of Christian service...
...In at least eighty percent of tribunal cases in the United States, the alleged basis or reason for the annulment is that, on the day they married, one or both parties in the marriage were so emotionally, mentally and/or volitionally impaired that they were Commonweal: 363 simply incapable of marriage...
...On the other hand, there is a creative and strengthening tension in the conviction that a commitment to permanency surely exists and that the cessation of the commitment, divorce, is a healthy solution only when a marriage is irremediably and irrevocably intolerable, when the fulfillment of the commitment to permanency is beyond reach...
...He is a psychopath...
...It would remove a major obstacle to a clear view by the Catholic Church of the other issues being faced in neighborhoods and nations...
...The fact is that, even with the already vastly improved tribunal performance, the number of civil divorces among Catholics each year far surpasses the number of annulments being granted by tribunals...
...Catholic lawyers, legislators and judges would do well to encourage the enactment of such laws...
...In the granting of an annulment, a person is declared to have been incapable of marriage on the day he or she married...
...The secular community and the religious community in the United States would be well served by civil laws which would encourage couples thoughtfully and responsibly to commit themselves to permanent marriages, to be ready to make sacrifices to preserve this commitment, to learn from the events, mistakes and poor judgments which sometimes make the commitment impossible of fulfillment...
...And what about 1974 and the years beyond...
...Only in very, very rare instances is anyone-lay person or priest or psychiatrist--able to say with xareness that these persons were unable to do what they said they would do when they took each other as man and wife...
...The tribunal annulment process strips one or both parties in a marriage of their most basic human quality, the ability to decide freely and to act out what they decide...
...Therapy may lead a person to decide to marry or not to marry, to grow in marriage or to decide that his or her marriage is a meaningless, deadening experience...
...It would be unfortunate if, by reason of the improved application of the present laws concerning annulments, laws which are irremediably inadequate and unjust, we were lulled into diminishing our efforts to seek acknowledgment by the Church of the rights of persons to divorce and remarry...
...If their marriage ends in disaster, it is deterministic as ~Vell as inhumane and unchristian to conclude retrospectively that, on the day they married, the disaster was inevitable...
...The contradiction between this United States decision and the reasoning of this Rotal decision illustrates a conflict between Rotal i~ractice and the practice of United States tribunals...
...Is the divorced person who is not a Catholic aware that if he or she wishes to marry a Catholic with the approval of the Catholic Church it is necessary for him or her to subject himself or herself to the abovedescribed laws of the Church...
...When a marriage is annulled by the Church, at least one of the persons is called a name...
...Furthermore, all tribunal judges are priests, the vast majority of whom have no academic qualifications in psychiatry, psychology, or counseling, and very few of whom have had any disciplined supervision in evaluating personal or marital dynamics...
...Mutual and reciprocal incapacity strikes at the absence of a realizable marital relationship between a particular man and a particular woman...
...It is not related to marriage in its sacramental aspects...
...In present Church law, the only way most persons in irrevocably intolerable marriages may publicly enter into second marriages within the Church is by obtaining annulments of their first marriages...
...It is a paradox that today's Church, the self-proclaimed champion of personal responsibility and freedom, in an effort to help more and more divorced persons be free to remarry, is downgrading the responsibility and freedom of more and more persons in their initial decision to marry...
...The very risk of divorce highlights the value of the permanency of marriage...
...Although at least one thousand priests in the United States work fuR-time or part-time in the 166 Catholic Church diocesan tribunals which grant or deny annulments of marriages, the Canon Law Society of America has made it clear in its committee reports over the past three years that the tribunal will never be able to cope with the anguishing problem of the millions of separated and divorced Catholics who have been or who desire to be remarried, of the millions of single Catholics who have been married to, or who desire to marry, divorced persons...
...Only recently, the Roman authorities have become so concerned about the number of annulments being granted in the United States that they have insisted that the U.S...
...This should be explained in further detail...
...I know I was married...
...Almost invariably, the examining psychiatrist will say he is unable to conclude that the person is, at the time of the examination, incapable of marriage...
...My response is that I am speaking as a lawyer...
...If a man and woman know that their marriage was never truly alive, that they were never married at all, or that their once alive marriage is now dead, why does *.he Church force them to call each other names, to hurt each other, to reopen old wounds...
...hence, it is judged morally certain that his marriage consent was invalid...
...It is, in fact, a responsible and superable risk...
...Risk or no, prohibition or no, a sizable number of Catholic marriages end up in divorce...
...They submit to psychiatric examinations and psychological testing because they know that this is presently the only way they can be declared free to remarry in the Church...
...But, in the present law, it is stated unqualifiedly that the psychiatric and psychological experts are not the judges...
...He is not acknowledged to have even the sensitivity of an anita...
...There is a dehumanization, a depersonalization, of one or both parties to a marriage being considered for an annulment under existing substantive and procedural law...
...My specific point here is that the use of this professional knowledge and experience for the immediate and direct purpose of deciding that a marriage never existed, because of the incapacity of one or both parties to marry, is the opposite of therapeutic...
...At least we would have decisions by professionals rooted in the application of professional findings...
...Paradoxically, in a 1975 decision, the Roman Rota, while clearly upholding personal incapacity to marry as grounds for an annulment, stressed with equal clarity that mutual and reciprocal incapacity is not a basis or reason in Church law for the annulment of a marriage...
...In the aftermath of the vote, some bishops pointed out that marriage tribunals have improved a great deal in the past seven years and will continue to improve...
...In the common estimation of men and women when a man and a woman exchange marriage vows, when each says "I do", they mean it...
...When persons come to the tribunal they do not come for psychiatric or psychological therapy...
...These are reasons given for annulments, even though they are sometimes more delicately phrased...
...It seems to me that these decisions involving the alleged incapacity of a person to marry are a denial of the potential dynamics of the persons who married...
...There is little evidence, however, that many persons who obtain annulments are motivated to seek professional help...
...Psychiatrists and psychologists play a prominent role in the processing of tribunal annulment cases...
...However, given the increasing number of persons being alienated from the Church because of her present laws concerning divorce, it is a necessary risk...
...I know I'm not married now and I want to get married again...
...In the processing of annulment cases, the personnel of a few tribunals do try to help the parties to a marriage understand better their own deficiencies as well as the deficiencies of their former husbands or wives...
...It is my conviction that, because of its static appraisal of marriage, the tribunal, in fact, often grants divorces rather than annulments...
...In the long run, when priests make these decisions about the incapacity of persons to marry, it is like playing God with prophetic wisdom, past and future...
...In one way or another, he must claim that on the day of their marriage she was emotionally or mentally crippled, that she was unable to give or receive marital affection, that she was unable to be a loving wife or to receive him as a loving husband...
...As things now stand, in some tribunals, a good canon lawyer can obtain an annulment for any person whose marriage has broken down...
...The tribunal is coming to certain conclusions on the basis of facts which are often uncertain, incomplete or subject to a variety of interpretations, and on the basis of law which is also subject to a variety of interpretations...
...Can we truly talk about good Jewish-Catholic cooperation or ProtestantCatholic ecumenism, when we insist that divorced Jews and Protestants subject themselves to the indignities of the tribunal process in order that they may marry Catholics or have their marriages ~o Catholics acknowledged by the Church...
...The abolition of the tribunal would be an undisguised blessing...
...Such speculation is pervasively destructive of the commitment to permanency...
...It is unreal for tribunal judges to decide, with moral certitude as the present law puts it, that a husband or wife was so sick that he or she was unable to enter into a true marriage...
...There is...
...nor, since there are no women priests, do priest judges lO June 1977:364 have any knowledge of the feminine mystique...
...Conference of Catholic Bishops...
...They are married...
...It is the positive acknowledgment of the need and value of divorce when a marriage is or becomes meaningless, when the continuing relationship of husband and wife is destructive of them as persons...
...This conviction is reinforced by the fact that, in some tribunals, almost every annulment case which is introduced today results in an affirmative decision, the granting of an annulment...
...Neither tribunal judges in the United States nor Rotal judges are demonstrating that they are consistent in determining which persons were capable of marrying and which persons were incapable of marrying at the time they exchanged their vows...
...Usually, if such a person desires to remarry in the Catholic Church, he or she will be told that a psychiatric examination is mandatory before another marriage may take place...
...The tribunal is not concerned with property or with crime and punishment...
...The bleakness of the situation is not relieved by the May 5 vote or by the optimism of some bishops about the value and effectiveness of tribunals...
...She is a lesbian...
...What is happening now, in areas where annulments are now granted readily and quickly, is that an annulment mentality is being fostered...
...Aside from their specific tribunal role, these professionals are making great contributions to our knowledge of the meaning and values of marriage, of the dynamics which may make and keep a marriage alive or which may pave the way to its death...
...We began 1976 with a minimum backlog of 105,000 divorced couples from 1975...
...Discerning Catholics often reach the same conclusion...
...This article will concern itself principally with the fact that, in the processing of a very large majority of annulment cases, there is an intrinsic inhumaneness and an inherent lack of Christian compassion...
...In asserting the intrinsic merit of the tribunal process as well as its possibilities for expansion, the Church is using this process as a partial defense of its present teaching and law concerning the indissolubility and permanence of marriage...
...366 law and its application in particular cases will be either liberal or conservative depending upon the personality and temperament of the local bishop or the presiding judge of the tribunal...
...When two persons marry, it is a basic and undeniable fact that, as individuals and as a couple, they are possessed of unpredictable dynamic qualities...
...He would perhaps help the person come to a decision as to whether or not this is so and would then leave the person free to decide what, if anything, he or she can and will do about it...
...Priests have no existential personal experience of marriage, separation, divorce or remarriage...
...In another case, an affirmative decision given by the local tribunal was reversed by the first tribunal of appeal and this reversal was upheld by the Rota...
...This basis for annulment is different from the personal incapacity described above...
...Bishops and the Pope and in effect since July, 1970, which have led to a 20-fold increase in annulments...
...When a marriage is broken with finality, qualified persons such as psychologists and psychiatrists are sometimes unable to say with sureness whether a husband and wife are sick, whether one or the other is sick, whether one is making the other sick or whether they are simply sick of each other...
...Conference of Catholic Bishops establish in Washington a national board to review both all affirmative decisions as well as the reasons given by the officially designated defenders of the marriage bond for not appealing against these decisions to higher tribunals...
...In this area, there is simply no room for contradictory decisions because of diverse interpretations of the law or of the facts, because of the difference in the personality and character traits of the judges or because of the disparity of competence of the judges...
...Hence, he or she will be permitted to remarry...
...Doubleday, 1973), was a member of the Marriage Tribunal of the Archdiocese of New York from 1943 to 1968...
...The Church annulment decree may read in part: "She has a severe anxiety neurosis...
...They come to have the Church, through the tribunal, declare what they already know: that their marriage is dead, they are free to remarry and to continue to receive Holy Communion...
...The fact that it is not even a sure acknowledgment of the right or lack of right to remarry compounds its lack of humaneness, its lack of Christianity...
...Tribunal decisions involve only the capacity to marry...
...In practice, however, very rarely, if ever, is a person who is judged to have been incapable of marriage on the day of his or her marriage actually prohibited from remarrying...
...Recently, the Rota, in a negative decision, reversed affirmative decisions given by a local tribunal and the first tribunal of appeal...
...In tribunals in the United States, there are large areas of disagreement as to the meaning and limits of a personal incapacity to marry and the mutual incapacity of a particular couple to marry each other...
...This is Commonweal: $65 a fruitless procedure...
...It is my view that psychiatrists and psychologists are making a mistake in being part of the tribunal process because, when an annulment is granted, they are concurring in the conclusion that a marriage was never alive...
...It happens often, too, that the interpretation of the I0 June 1977...
...He served as chairman of the Committee of the Canon Law Society of America which authored "The American Procedural Norms," approved by the U.S...
...Moreover, even if this were true in the processing of all cases by the personnel of all tribunals, it would not justify the tribunal decision that their first marriage never in fact existed, that when a couple first took each other as husband and wife in marriage they were unequivocally unable to marry each other...
...Similarly, a woman seeking an annulment must describe her husband with name-calling words or phrases...
...In law, is there a humane and Christian alternative to the resolution of the problem of the irrevocably intolerable marriage...
...They could easily raise false hopes in the minds of divorced Catholics who have remarried or who desire or intend to remarry...
...They are saying: "I wasn't married...
...If persons in sick or dead marriages are guilt-ridden or are hurting themselves by burying past events, mistakes or poor judgments, they should work out these problems freely with qualified professional counselors...
...So, I reject the substantive and procedural law of the tribunal because, in great part, it bases its annulment decisions on the retropective conclusions and judgments of psychiatrists and psychologists...
...Discerning divorced persons who are not Catholic, if they get beyond the point of incredulity, will find this demeaning...
...Are Jews and Protestants who are divorced and remarried aware that the Catholic Church does not look upon their second marriages as true marriages...
...None of these terms should be equated with incapacity--incapacity to make a contract or commit a crime or to get married...
...An increased sensitivity to the possibility of divorce is a risk which tests the resourcefulness of persons and society and heightens the awareness of the values as well as the risks of freedom...
...A man seeking an annulment must say that his wife was unable to enter marriage because she was a schizophrenic, a chronic alcoholic, a lesbian, a psychopath, or because she was grossly immature, lacked due discretion or was highly neurotic...
...It is alien to the life-giving, faith-inspiring, hopesustaining message of Christ...
...This vote will be effective if and when it is approved by the Pope...
...In this milieu, some couples who suffer intolerable periods in their marriages, are beginning to speculate whether or not they are actually married...
...Many divorced persons have need of a sure, humane, Christian acknowledgment by the Catholic Church of their right to remarry...
...As a lawyer, I think a couple whose marriage ceases to be existentially alive should get a divorce and, if they so desire, marry again...
...In effect, tribunal decisions affirm or deny the fundamental rights of CathoLics in second marriages to receive the Eucharist...
...This contradiction highlights even more the inhumaneness and lack of Christianity of tribunal annulment decisions because it makes us aware that a case which is decided negatively before one tribunal would be decided affirmatively before another tribunal...
...It would be bad enough if psychiatrists and psychologists were the tribunal judges...
...Things may be static...
...This man may not be damned by God but he is clearly and officially damned, and possibly damaged beyond human repair, by the Church tribunal...
...I am convinced that the tribunal process is bad law...
...The abolition of the penalty of excommunication will not give divorced persons the fight to remarry...
...My marriage became meaningless, but I meant it when I married...
...The only alternative to annulment is divorce...
...Thus, in the event an annulment is granted, the parties may be able to be more knowledgeable, more mature, more aware of the meaning of a marital affection, and prepared to enter a second marriage with more hope of the fulfillment of a commitment to a happy, permanent marriage...
...This man is not considered a person...
...This is retrospective determinism...
...It does not effect anything substantive in the lives of divorced and remarried Catholics...
...I find it difficult to conceive that a therapist in private practice would find it of value to tell a person that he or she was never married...
...The fallacy of this policy is underscored by the fact that tribunal decisions are neither sure nor certain...
...More importantly, the tribunal is attempting to make a retroactive decision based partly on events subsequent to the marriage...
...If the psychiatrist concluded that the person is incapable, a request for another opinion would be in order...
...He has a personality disorder...
...10 Jun~ 1977:368...
...Here is an excerpt from a recent decision of the Roman Rota, the supreme court of Church tribunals, the substance of which is repeated over and over in tribunal decisions throughout the United States: "For it would not be enough to find (this man) unsuited for building a happy married way of life, or that he was a person for whom married life would not have been reasonably recommended, or even finally, that he is a person devoid of true feeling for his wife...
...The question may be asked whether, in their affirmative annulment decisions, tribunals make a judgment that the incapacity to marry is permanent or temporary...
...In the same year, there were at most 15,000 Church annulments...
...Certainly there is a risk...
...How absurd it would be for the tribunal to make a psychological evaluation of the capacity to marry at the time of marriage, even with the aid of experts, except perhaps in rare but obvious cases like an idiot or a gross psychotic...
...It is concerned only with the basic fights of persons to marry...
...In view of my conviction that the findings of religious and secular sciences today open the way for the Church to acknowledge in its teaching and its law the right of divorced persons to remarry, the reader may ask why I lay such stress upon the intrinsic lack of merit of the tribunal process...
...From 1967 to 1973 he was Consultor to the Ponti[icttl Commission for the revision o / t h e Code of Canon Law and adviser to the Canon Law Committee of the U.S...
...These statements of the bishops are clearly misleading...
...It is a paradox that, ten years ago, when there were perhaps three hundred, of a total of six hundred, annulments granted yearly in the United States on the basis of incapacity, the Church, which was considered far more rigid and restrictive than she is today, was more concerned with safeguarding the initial ability and freedom of persons to marry than she is today in granting thousands of annulments yearly...
...Why is the Church, in the name of Christ, throwing around like confetti terms which only psychiatrists and psychologists have a right to use and which they should use only with great reluctance, with medicall precision, with positive therapeutic measures in mind and with the utmost respect for the dignity, privacy and confidentiality of their patients...
...Some decisions concerning incapacity are so worded that they lead almost inescapably to the conclusion that the incapacity is permanent...
...It should be pointed out, too, that the cultural background of most of the Rotal judges is so vastly different from cultural conditions in the United States that this Rotal .jurisprudence is, in many instances, different from and inferior to the jurisprudence of weU-developed United States tribunals steeped in local life and customs...
...At best, the abolition of the penalty--which penalty exists only in the United States--is a gesture of compassion...
...It presents the same complexities and uncertainties...
...It is significant that in this consideration of tribunal annulment decisions asserting the incapacity o[ Commonweal: 367 persons to marry, we are not considering a procedure which the Catholic Church applies only with Catholics or to sacramental marriages, that is, marriages in which both parties have been baptized in the Christian faith...
...The Church is out of order in forcing persons to submit to psychiatric examinations or psychological tests under the threat of denying them the right to remarry and to continue to receive Holy Communion...
...In fact, the psychiatrists and psychologists are actually the judges since most priest judges accept the findings of the experts and base their decisions on their findings...
...These examinations and tests are made with a view to determining the capability of a person to enter into a marriage which has already failed beyond the point of no return...
Vol. 104 • June 1977 • No. 12
