Annulment Defendants Need to Know

Today’s Gospel included Mark 9:42: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”  In my correspondence with separated-faithful, one common cause of angst is when Church personnel aid and abet marital abandonment by granting annulments to virtually every petitioner.  A faithful spouse often feels like Church personnel are causing the little one (the other spouse) to sin, because the Church personnel are silent bystanders at the time of abandonment and no-fault divorce.

When those tasked with teaching morality are silent in the face of marital abandonment, I fear they are tacitly condoning sin.  Thereafter, Church personnel (who grant annulments to virtually every petitioner) make any possibility of pastoral correction or reconciliation practically impossible.  It would be very, very unlikely that a marital abandoner would reconcile if the Church tribunal told him “Oh, you were never really married in the first place. You are free to marry someone different.”

Over the years, I’ve seen some of the methods used by tribunals which grant virtually all petitioners’ annulments. One practice is for the judge to start a case without a real petition. Instead of requiring what the law demands, the judge just collects a lengthy document that has two parts; one is like a diary of the petitioner, and the other is the petitioner’s biography of the respondent-spouse.  The petitioner submits this along with some pre-printed form seeking a decree of invalidity of marriage.

On Mary’s Advocates website, I’ve complied information about the nullity procedure that is helpful to respondents defending the validity of their marriage.  This week, I recorded a video that explains how the process is supposed to start and I explain how respondents can ask for their rights to be upheld if their tribunal started the case with no proper petition.  Please forgive that we had technical issues affecting audio quality.

Part 1 of 2

Part  2 of 2