Before the discussions about marriage become stale, perhaps a question or two are in order.
John Allen, my favorite reporter on the Vatican, wrote that annulment reform was something that the Bishops who gathered in Rome wanted:
Recently, however, I got one thing right. On Sept. 15, I published a piece under the headline, “Annulment reform a smart bet at looming Synod of Bishops.”
The forecast was based on the idea that making annulments faster and simpler would offer a natural compromise between those wanting to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics back to Communion, and those opposed. It allows each group to address its core concern: defending the permanence of marriage, and showing compassion for those in broken relationships.
An annulment is a finding by a Church court that someone’s first union wasn’t a sacramental marriage, because it didn’t meet a test for validity such as psychological capacity to understand the requirements of marriage. If granted, an annulment allows someone to get married again in the Church.
But why is a reform necessary when it seems the Bishops already have a high degree of flexibility? Consider the case of Teddy Kennedy:
A statement that Senator Edward M. Kennedy had his second marriage blessed by the Roman Catholic Church after a 1982 divorce has revealed wide confusion among both Catholics and non-Catholics about the church’s policy on annulments.
Catholic teaching does not allow remarriage after divorce unless a spouse has died or the earlier marriage is annulled, meaning that it was found to have been invalid from the beginning.
The question of whether the Senator’s 23-year marriage to Joan Kennedy had been annulled was raised when he received Communion at the funeral of his mother, Rose Kennedy, on Tuesday, normally an indication that a person is in good standing with the church.
A spokesman for the Senator, a Massachusetts Democrat, told The Boston Globe that the Senator’s marriage last year to Victoria Reggie in a civil ceremony was eventually “blessed by the church,” which set off a flurry of inquiries into the church’s policy, Boston newspapers and church officials said.
Or, what about Nicole Kidman?
Nicole Kidman’s wedding to country singer Keith Urban in Sydney at the weekend drew plenty of media attention.
But some Catholics will have looked on perplexed at how the former bride of actor Tom Cruise managed to tie the knot for a second time, in a Catholic church.
It was widely reported in the run up to the weekend wedding that Ms Kidman had received an annulment for her previous marriage – the Catholic Church’s procedure for allowing a follower to wed again.
Father Paul Coleman, who conducted the latest nuptials, was said to have advised the Oscar-winning actress on the dissolution.
In fact, Kidman didn’t need an annulment for one simple reason: in the eyes of the Catholic Church her 10-year union with Tom Cruise, a renowned Scientologist, never happened.
I understand the need for transparency (and that’s what’s happening under Cardinal Pell with the Vatican Bank). But if you write procedures then you have less flexibility, right?
Old Life 