Correspondence Of annulments and divorce, dissent and orthodoxy, and how to organize the church
HAAS, RICHARD & FITZGERALD, GEORGE R. & HACKL, EDDA H. & IMWALLE, HELEN & Crowe, Marian E. & McMENAMIN, ELIZABETH & ARRICALE, FRANK C.
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Get organized The Quinn/O'Connor feud could be solved with agreement on a "table of organization": Quinn's objective Tope bishops curia As O'Connor sees...
...My own proposed title was "A Plea for Honesty about Annulments...
...Obviously, any marriage that fits the criteria for sacramental marriage (two fully mature, free people, after due discretion, forming an intimate, loving communion) never would be dissolved...
...In his response Cardinal O'Connor said this was news to him and other English-speaking cardinals to whom he has spoken...
...The archbishop also states that contraception and the ordination of women should be discussed...
...GEORGE R. FITZGERALD, C.S.P...
...I am pleased by Crowe's recognition that the annulment process can be "healing, clarifying, and therapeutic," but I wish she had chosen to refute rather than reinforce the negative misconceptions that too many have toward this most important service offered by the church to divorced Catholics...
...If the judges of the tribunal were to accept cases with a high probability of failure, they would be doing both the petitioners and themselves a disservice...
...helen imwalle Cincinnati, Ohio The editors reply: In fairness to readers (and ourselves) we note (1) that Catholic New York, which published Cardinal O'Connor's lengthy reply to Archbishop Quinn, did not print the lengthy text of the Quinn lecture...
...I have priest friends who in many cases do not even bother with the annulment procedure...
...An unsound complaint (II) Jay Miller's complaint [Correspondence, August 16] about Archbishop Quinn's complaint about the Vatican's rejection of the original translation of The Catechism of the Catholic Church is itself unsound...
...This fact does not of itself show that the process is being administered in a manner inconsistent with the church's position on the permanence of the marriage bond...
...Catholics naturally want to be married in a Catholic church with the blessing of the priest and the liturgy they love...
...EDDA H. HACKL, M.D...
...True, the church's explanation of the process makes little sense to one who does not accept the key distinction between marriage as a civil institution and marriage as a sacrament...
...Despite Crowe's contention that the use of certain terms, among them "sacramental," serves to "obfuscate" the issue for most people, the sacramental-civil distinction has always played a key role in the church's theology of marriage...
...I am tired of doing theological and canonical gymnastics to justify the procedure...
...The biggest stumbling block to allowing divorce and remarriage is, of course, Jesus' prohibition of it in the Gospels...
...I myself used to argue that the word man has two meanings...
...I haven't reached that stage but I am more and more frustrated with being part of a canonical system for which I have little respect...
...Nevertheless, I spend much time meeting with people who see the process as their only chance of remarrying in the church...
...The petitioner sets forth his or her complete argument in favor of the annulment during the first phase...
...Your editorial of July 12 ["An Archbishop Speaks Up"] makes clear that in your view Archbishop John R. Quinn was truthful and fair-minded in his Oxford lecture...
...As for Crowe's claim that the current teaching on annulments holds the participants in the sacrament of matrimony to a higher standard of psychological awareness than is the case with other sacraments, she solves her own problem when she notes that the "proper intention" of "minister and recipient" is important for all sacraments...
...It seems to me ludicrous to be able to witness the marriage of a Catholic who has had three marriages and divorces "outside the church" and can easily remarry within the church while a devout Catholic, validly married once and now divorced, must go through this procedure...
...It's not a game As a fellow alumnus of the process, I agree with Marian E. Crowe ["The Annulment Game," September 13] that the church's current teaching on annulments challenges "the common understanding" of marriage, fails to satisfy the "popular mind," and is particularly difficult to explain to one's children...
...Many walked away when they could not accept Jesus' teachings...
...RICHARD HAAS Iselin, N.J...
...For example, I no longer try to persuade myself that a marriage of more than thirty years with seven children was not, in fact, a valid Catholic marriage...
...A marriage is a marriage...
...Archbishop Quinn stated that the English-speaking cardinals of the world supported the use of inclusive language in the English version of The Catechism of the Catholic Church...
...Big Bang as metaphor John Polkinghorne's article ["So Finely Tuned a Universe," August 16] was so good it's a shame he had to say of big bang cosmology that "theologically it is insignificant...
...His divorce sayings are pretty explicit and unambiguous...
...I pray that all believers will be enlightened and unite in peace...
...Boulder, Colo...
...The church's new willingness to consider psychological and emotional impediments to a valid marriage flows directly from the renewed theology of marriage since Vatican II, which emphasizes the way a man and woman administer the sacrament to each other through their acts of commitment...
...Such an understanding would make matrimony more like the other sacraments...
...and (2) that interested readers can find the cardinal's column in the August 29 issue of Origins, the documentary service of the Catholic News Service, which had earlier (July 18) published Archbishop Quinn's full text...
...Looking pensive, the archbishop asked me, "What do you think about this annulment business...
...The title the editors preferred conveys a cynical and trivializing tone that I did not intend...
...The orthodox Roman Catholic assents to the magisterium of the church and the pronouncements of the Vicar of Christ on earth, John Paul II...
...getting the case accepted for review is...
...Another consideration: Rome is eager for communion betweeen the Western and Eastern churches...
...Crowe indicates, the search for pre-existing psychological conditions to justify an annulment will not be pushed to the point of incredulity...
...Most do not agree with the process but put up with it as the only avenue for them...
...The point is that as lived experience, for most married people, the distinction seems artificial and false...
...The church is no stranger to dissent...
...ELIZABETH MCMENAMIN Scranton, Pa...
...The church already grants divorces—not annulments—in valid nonsacramental marriages under the scripturally based Pauline Privilege and also in sacramental but noncon-summated marriages...
...MARIAN E. CROWE Use those keys Marian Crowe's very sensitive article on the annulment process points up what is becoming a serious problem, despite the caring work of diocesan marriage tribunals...
...In my thirty-one years as a priest, there has been no area of pastoral concern to which I have less commitment than participation in the annulment process...
...The rising number of annulment cases should press the church to grant divorces to couples in sacramental, consummated marriages that have failed...
...Thus, the primary test of a valid sacramental marriage is the presence of a freely rendered commitment...
...From the editors: This is catching...
...This course was publicly urged some years ago by a number of national conferences of bishops, including the hierarchies of Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands...
...I may not be offended by its use to include both genders, but I have come to understand that others are, and what does offend me is the dismissal of their concerns and feelings as "silly pretensions...
...arranged marriages, for example, could now be annulled on grounds of lack of due discretion...
...In this respect, consider that according to the current requirements for a canonically valid sacramental marriage, a great many couples throughout history would not be considered sacramentally married...
...But I cannot agree when she concludes from these communications difficulties that the church has often forced participants "to act disingenuously" in a "dishonest" annulment process...
...These two questions are infallibly settled in Humanae vitae and the pope's definitive statement on the ordination of women...
...I do not criticize the annulment process on the ground that "it fails to satisfy the popular mind...
...My reply was less than candid...
...Your statement that fair-minded Christians and others may disagree on contraception, homosexuality, celibacy, and even the nature of papal infallibility is true, but doesn't this lead to dissent and finally rejection...
...Maybe you have to be a wife and mother to realize this, but I thank the cosmologists for this insight into God's powerful love...
...If we can allow divorced people to remarry and stay in full communion with the church without abandoning our fidelity to Jesus, then I would beg theologians to develop and articulate an explanation more convincing than the current rationale...
...The civil marriage/sacramental marriage distinction basically ends up saying that only a good (sacramental) marriage is indissoluble...
...I can only believe that Jesus was referring to anyone married according to Jewish law...
...We need a better way Marian Crowe's article reminded me of a time about fifteen years ago when I was sitting with an archbishop in a cathedral sacristy as we prepared to celebrate a Mass for divorced Catholics...
...Chicago, III...
...It is difficult to read these sayings and think, "He had in mind only sacramental marriages—only those that were entered into with maturity, awareness, full and free consent of the will, and a clear and unambiguous intention to form a communion of intimacy...
...I believe that in fairness to your readers you should print Cardinal John O'Connor's reply in its entirety...
...Shouldn't a translation be made by those who actually live in a language...
...There is no more perfect metaphor for God's loving ejaculation of the universe, a "fathering forth" in ecstasy...
...The reason that the attentive-ness of bride and bridegroom is far more critical than the attentiveness of an infant being baptized or a teenager being confirmed is that the couple are functioning as both ministers and recipients in the rite...
...Rome's "loosening" in this respect can be a step in "binding" us to our separated Eastern co-religionists...
...But I am embarrassed by language which seems to me dishonest...
...In it he asserts that his interpretations of certain situations were exactly opposite those of the archbishop...
...With respect to the meaning of orthodoxy and of dissent, the gap between our correspondent's views and ours is too wide to be bridged in a brief comment...
...his response was blunt: "We've gotten ourselves in a legalistic mess...
...Reciting the marriage vows with crossed fingers (literally or figuratively) is not allowed...
...To be faithful to our tradition, we must take account of the Gospels' prohibition of divorce...
...But to reserve sacramentality only for marriages that meet all the mental, psychological, and emotional criteria enumerated in the literature on annulment—criteria that are practically impossible to pin down, even for the participants themselves—makes matrimony a very strange sacrament indeed...
...An annulment can be a source of tremendous consolation to those coping with the pain of divorce, for it indicates that though the failed marriage was not blessed, a subsequent marriage can be...
...The archbishop was right: There's gotte be a better way...
...No one would argue that Kevin Kane, author of the companion article, was not married before he met Monsignor Thomas Leonard outside Holy Trinity Church...
...Since Crowe has participated in the annulment process, a two-step proceeding, she should not be so surprised that a very high percentage of annulment cases accepted by diocesan tribunals are settled in favor of the petitioner...
...With apologies to Mary Douglas (see her article, June 14), we offer another model: POPE BISHOPS CURIA WOMEN'S COMMISSION However, a fully developed table of organization would have to find places for the synod, a third Vatican Council, diocesan and parish pastoral councils, the major religious orders, Lou Holtz, and, of course, Commonweal...
...The writer replies: First, I concur in Mr...
...A high rejection rate for accepted cases would be a much more troubling sign of church (Continued on page 4) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) mismanagement...
...CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors Get organized The Quinn/O'Connor feud could be solved with agreement on a "table of organization": Quinn's objective Tope bishops curia As O'Connor sees it pope curia BISHOPS The solution pope BISHOPS CURIA "We Are the Church" LAITY BISHOPS CURIA POPE EDWARD F. HALPIN Park Ridge, Ill...
...18:18) to valid, sacramental, consummated marriages...
...Before the case is accepted, the petitioner must establish the canon law equivalent of probable cause...
...So if there is a big difference for Catholics between "getting married" and "getting married in the church," why is it not proper for the church to define "canonically" just what the latter phrase means...
...But: (1) We happily join in her prayer for enlightenment and peace among all believers...
...Although those of us working in parishes and in adult religious education appreciate the careful work of many diocesan tribunals in dealing with annulments, I believe the time has come to institute an equally prudent, sensitive, and scripturally based divorce procedure so that, as Ms...
...Getting one's case approved is not the hard part of the annulment process...
...The annulment process offers a way for divorced Catholics—that is, those whose marriages have been dissolved in the eyes of the state—to determine whether their sacramental marriages were, in fact, valid—or "not fruitful," as Crowe prefers...
...If only Henry VIII had known...
...Regarding Kevin Kane: I am not surprised that he felt different after being married in the church...
...FRANK C. ARRICALE Queens, N.Y...
...English has a particular problem, since it lacks a separate word to refer to both men and women—unlike Latin, for instance, which has mulier for a woman, vir for a man, and homo for a human being...
...Why is such a process considered dishonest, or only a game...
...What's to discuss...
...if anything, I wish the church were more countercultural...
...A re-ductio ad absurduml It sounds as if the church is trying to find a loophole whereby it can be pastorally humane and not condemn divorced Catholics to a life of celibacy, without appearing to contradict its previous teaching...
...On substance: Indeed, "the distinction between civil marriage and marriage as a sacrament" is the crux of the misunderstanding surrounding this issue...
...Over the past thousand years, with the probable exception of divorces granted to African slaves separated from their spouses by the Portuguese, and possibly also to similarly situated Irish indentured expatriates, the church has not granted divorces in sacramental, consummated marriages...
...I do not look to the secular world for approval of this process...
...Eastern churches grant divorces with the right of remarriage in the church...
...2) we suggest that Catholics who argue with the church ought not be identified with people who, rejecting Jesus' teachings, walked away and stayed away.be identified with people who, rejecting Jesus' teachings, walked away and stayed away...
...there's gotta be a better way...
...So much better than the potter with his clay, the magician with his wand, or the architect at his drawing board...
...When you try to explain this distinction to others, you elicit only looks of stupefaction...
...But if he had already participated in the sacrament of marriage, what's the point of his story...
...Haas's objection to the term "annulment game" in the title of my article as published...
...Despite this history, I would argue—with some backing from respectable sources—that nothing pre-(Continued on page 29) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) vents the church from granting divorces using the power of the keys (Matt...
...16:18 and Matt...
...My argument is that that procedure confers the sacrament...
...it has been defended as well by theologians in good standing...
...If the annulment process is correct and faithful, it should be possible to explain it in a way that does not strain the credulity of Catholics and non-Catholics alike...
Vol. 123 • October 1996 • No. 17
