Bishops have Incompetent and Unfair Staff Managing Tribunals

Bishops have Incompetent and Unfair Staff Managing Tribunals

  • Posted by Mary's Advocates
  • On May 22, 2018
  • 0 Comments

Cardinal Raymond Burke very politely says that some bishops have incompetent and unfair staff managing the tribunals.

Cardinal Raymond Burke gave a talk in Bratislava, Slovakia at the “Hanus Days” event, posted on YouTube this month. His subject was the indissolubility of marriage.   Besides speaking about natural law and the new evangelization, he discussed his work at the Supreme Tribunal of the Signatura (the highness appellate Church court in the world). He served as the Defender of the Bond from 1989 to 1995, and was back as the Prefect from 2008 to 2014. As the Defender of the Bond, he was responsible to point out anything that upholds the validity of a marriage.

In talking about the marriage nullity process, he expressed that there was no need to streamline the process. Pope Francis changed the process to cut corners in some cases.  Cardinal Burke believes leaving something, as important as a marriage nullity decision, to a single judge is a bad idea.  Furthermore, he very politely said that some bishops have incompetent and unfair staff managing the tribunals.

“With sadness, many times I have seen that the diocesan bishop has not sufficiently taken care to prepare well the necessary personnel for his tribunal. In other words, it is not the process that has need of modifications, but the practice of some bishops who do not provide well-prepared and just workers for their tribunals” (33 min. 43 sec.). 
 

watch him say this below

In my work at Mary’s Advocates, I have corresponded with defendants in nullity of marriage cases. A pattern at the beginning of cases about which I’ve heard complaints is the tribunals’ practice of keeping secret from the defendant the facts and proofs, in a general way, that the petitioner is alleging support his accusation against the validity of the marriage. This would be like asking a party to prepare a defense for oneself against the accusation of stealing a car, but not being told the make and model of the stolen car,  the date, or time of the alleged theft. One explanation for this unfair practice would be that the Petitioner omitted describing, in a general way, the alleged facts upon which he is relying to demonstrate nullity of his marriage; instead, the petitioner only answered a questionnaire about his upbringing, courtship, marriage, and breakup. 

In Cardinal Burke’s conclusion, he said

“We live in a time when the fundamental truth of marriage is under a ferocious, indeed, I do not hesitate to say, a diabolical attack, which seeks to obscure and sully the supreme beauty, the sublime beauty of the marriage state as God intended it from the creation.  Divorce is a common place in society as is the pretension to remove from the conjugal union, by mechanical or chemical means, its procreative essence…” (54 min. 27 sec.) 

He points out there are even those in the Church who deny the truths of the faith in the name of so-called mercy and tolerance.  The 30 minute Q & A after his presentation are worth watching. To this question: 

Do you think that the civil authorities should prohibit divorce, and synchronize the civil law possibly with the church’s law or canon law? 

Watch his answer and read text below.

Actually, the idea was contained in canon law. What happened in the past was, at least in the United States, people could not obtain a divorce without a serious reason.  That would have been, more or less, what we call in the Church a separation, where parties were …   For instance, if in a marriage, the man is constantly going with other women, or carrying on a relationship with other women, to the collapse of the family life and the scandal of children, that they be permitted to separate. But what happened in the United States was this idea of no-fault divorce. All you needed to do was to say, “I don’t want to be married anymore.” And that goes against the moral law, because marriage is, by its very nature, faithful and indissoluble. So, the state ought to insist that people are not allowed to separate without very serious reasons.

While we are waiting for the state to catch up, and do the right thing, Mary’s Advocates publicizes the canon law to which Cardinal Burke was referring. We show an abandoned spouse how to ask the Church to implement the canon law on separation and divorce.  For more information, see here.

 

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