www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Marriage and annulment

OK, if you say so.

But someone I know rather well and who is related just got an annulment after 20 years of marriage and two children.

Under what conditions could such a situation be considered worthy of an annulment (since the person in question won't tell me the grounds so I don't know)?

An annulment with two kids? The kids are very hurt about this as well.

Alex

On a pragmatic level, I don't really understand what the fuss is about, though I certainly understand the emotional element for those going through it.

After ceasing to apply the principle oikonomia, in its concern and solicitude for its children, the Western Church established the system generally known as annulment. It should rather be called “declaration of nullity”. It consists in a declaration that since one of the partners had entered a prospective marriage without fulfilling one of the basic conditions of indissolubility—full consent, freedom and understanding—the marriage actually had never existed, even after children had been born. Both partners are then free to remarry.

In some instances, this system has been extended by western Marriage Tribunals—rightfully or not, it is not for us to judge—to cases in which marriage were presently and actually dead, even though originally valid.

The Church of Rome uses its power over the sacrament of the priesthood, and releases some of its bishops and priests from the ministry of their priesthood. The bond of priesthood is no less sacred and no less eternal than the bond of matrimony. The Church of Rome allows bishops and priests to give up their life of ministry in the Church and marry, while still recognizing the eternal character of their priesthood. In fact, this same power is used [in the Byzantine Church] over the sacrament of marriage to help and heal a painful state of abandonment and solitude.

There are some unavoidable circumstances in which some people are totally unable to continue living with their original sacramental partner. If in such cases, a union is contracted with a different partner, this in fact honors the Gospel command making the human person more precious than the law of indissolubility. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Absolute enforcement would lead to cruel legalism.

Thank you everyone for your answers. I wonder how many of our EO brethren realize that declarations of annulment are given by their Church - I wonder because "annulment as Catholic divorce" seems to be a rather common criticism about annulment per se.

Not that I'm defending the "annulment as divorce" mentality, but from what I understand, annulments are never given unless a couple has already divorced. The annulment makes no statement about the love a couple had or may have had for those 20 years. It only determines something about what occurred at the specific time of marriage - whether it met the conditions to be considered a Sacrament (people certainly fall in love and never marry). On a pragmatic level, I don't really understand what the fuss is about, though I certainly understand the emotional element for those going through it.

Blessings

because it is a truthful criticism.

It is significant, however, that the locus of the abuse is the Catholic Church in the United States. In traditionally Catholic countries like Italy, France, or Spain, decrees of nullity are very rare, because people very rarely seek them. If a Catholic there divorces and wants to remarry, he simply does so in a civil ceremony and blithely ignores the Church thereafter. Even more people, after they divorce, simply follow the old European custom of cohabiting, again, simply ignoring the strictures of the Church that fail to take cognizance of reality.

On a pragmatic level, the casuistry involved in annulment process causes the faithful to develop a highly cynical attitude towards the authority of the Church, which is obviously trying to evade the consequences of its own doctrine concerning the indisoluability of marriage.

Were annulments rare, and if they only involved very narrow criteria, that would be one thing. But with more than 25,000 decrees granted in the United States (more than the rest of the world combined), and when many of these decrees involve marriages that existed for decades, one can be forgiven for calling this "Catholic divorce",

and the bitterness of the innocent party in a breakup at being told that a relationship of long standing, in which there was once love and which produced one or more children, "never existed".

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone among Greek Catholics in wishing we could return to the situation before 1917, when the Orthodox nomocanons on marriage also governed our own approach to marriage--including divorce and remarriage.

As Archbishop Joseph (Raya) of blessed memory wrote:

because it is a truthful criticism.

"determines" or "revises."

So what you seem to say here: the annulment system is not (so) abused in Europe because people rarely seek it. But perhaps it is the other way around: people relatively rarely seek it in Europe because it cannot (to the same degree) be abused in Europe.