Rev Prof Michael Mullaney, President at Ireland's national seminary, St Patrick's College Maynooth and a leading Canon Lawyer said the couple party to such a marriage "must-have capacity (ie the requisite freedom and knowledge to give such matrimonial consent), be free from any impediment in canon law and marry according to canonical form."

This latter stipulation means they must marry before "the local Ordinary (usually refers to a bishop), priest, deacon and two witnesses" or a suitably Church-appointed layperson and two witnesses.

The "necessary pre-marriage preparations and catechesis are also required although not for validity," he said.

Impediments to valid marriage in canon law include age. Both parties must be old enough to marry and usually, this is in accord with the relevant civil law.

Another impediment would be a previous marriage, whether conducted in the Catholic Church, in another church, or by the State and not yet declared null and void.

Other impediments include where one of the parties is a priest or deacon; impotence; where there is a blood relationship between the parties, or where abduction/other crime is involved.

Fr Gary Dench, a canonist with Brentwood Cathedral in Essex, pointed out that marriages "in registry offices, hotels, non-Catholic Churches, beaches, (before) Elvis impersonators" and such, "do not require a formal annulment procedure" in the Catholic Church as such marriages involving baptised Catholics "are invalid" in the eyes of the Church.

In a Twitter thread, he said that under canon law once you are baptised Catholic you remain a Catholic and that defection from the Church was no longer recognised as possible "following ‘Omnium in Mentem' (For the Attention of All) in 2009, promulgated by (Pope) Benedict XVI."

On this issue, Rev Prof Mullaney said "the term ‘formal defection' from the Catholic Church was introduced in the Code (of Canon Law) in 1983 but it was removed from the Code by the motu proprio ‘Omnium in Mentem' (October 26th, 2009)."

This, he said was because experience "showed that this new (1983) law gave rise to numerous pastoral problems. Continue reading

Hartman's path to the cloth is one he loosely calls his resurrection story.

It's not a resurrection of mortal death, but the ending of one path and beginning of another he'd always felt called to.

He married young.

After five years, he and his wife had two children and a change of heart.

Hartman speaks about that difficult time with love and respect for himself and his former spouse and with a clarity of hindsight only time can yield.

Their relationship began in the early 1990s, and he started working full-time at the family grocery store in Milbank. At that time it was called Bill's Super Value. It now goes by Hartman's Family Foods.

"I was just out of high school thinking I knew everything. I got married to the girlfriend, Becky Johnson. Five years later it ended in divorce," Hartman told the Aberdeen News by phone.

"In that time I realized I didn't know everything. I really just came back to my faith."

Now 48, Hartman is the priest for both St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Groton and St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Turton.

He will also be sacramental minister at the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center at Northern State University.

The student center has moved away from having a full-time priest to having someone in a part-time ministerial role provide sacraments to the Catholic students.

Hartman, in his decision to divorce, never lost his faith.

He'd tell you the opposite happened - it was strengthened.

"There was just a moment in my life before the divorce that I felt it was better to suffer with God than to suffer without him. When the time came I knew I was going to cling to my faith," he said.

Hartman continued to contemplate romantic love as he worked at his family's grocery store.

"Basically through those years, as I was dating a little bit, I realized my heart wasn't called to be with one person, it was called to serve more," Hartman said. "My heart was a priestly heart."

So Hartman put his focus on raising his children, and he and his former wife had their marriage annulled in the Catholic faith.

It's a necessary process for a person to have the freedom to enter into another vocation in the eyes of the Catholic Church. For him, it meant the beginning of his path to the priesthood.

The annulment process looks at the beginning of a relationship and how two people came to be married.

In Hartman's case, he and his wife were "really pretty young and stupid," he said. Continue reading

The label "divorced" does not define a person.

It's an event that happened—terrible as it is—but it in no way is the sum total of who a person is.

You may feel like you're walking around with a big "scarlet ‘D'" on your forehead for all to judge you by, but what you need to focus on is how God sees you.

He sees you as his beloved with all the gifts, talents and potential he gave you, especially the specific purpose in life you have to fulfill.

It's the love of God that will carry you through this difficult time.

Another extremely important lesson is that forgiving those who have hurt you is essential if you want to heal from divorce.

There are no shortcuts, no half-measures when it comes to this.

It can seem impossible to forgive someone for causing such devastation; however, you'll never move forward if you don't find a way to forgive.

You will always be a victim.

The key is to ask God for the grace to forgive because we cannot do it on our own.

Last but definitely not least, the cross of divorce can change a person for the better.

This cross is an immense opportunity to grow emotionally and spiritually and to become a stronger, wiser person in the end.

How do you explain the difference between divorce and annulment to people?

A civil divorce decree and a declaration of invalidity (annulment) are apples and oranges, to be certain.

A civil divorce decree means the government has terminated your marriage contract, which applies purely on a legal basis.

The annulment process, however, does not terminate, dissolve or invalidate anything contrary to what many people believe.

It determines whether or not a valid marriage was brought into being on the day of the wedding.

If it is determined there was not a valid marriage, the tribunal issues a decree of invalidity stating such.

What are some common misunderstandings Catholics have about divorce and annulment?

One misunderstanding I'd like to address right up front is the myth that receiving a decree of invalidity means your marriage never existed and your children are considered illegitimate.

If you want to get someone angry, tell him or her exactly that, but I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.

Receiving a decree of invalidity does not mean your marriage relationship never existed. The church recognizes that you lived in society under the assumption that your marriage was valid.

The technical term for this in Canon Law is "putative" (from the Latin for "supposed") marriage.

You had a real relationship that was witnessed by society, and nothing can make that untrue.

The decree of invalidity declares that the bond was not valid, meaning that, although you lived together as husband and wife, your marriage was not an unbreakable covenant between you, your spouse and God.

The list of misunderstandings goes on, such as an annulment is just a "get-out-of-jail-free" card, or it's just a money maker for the church.

Many people believe the process places undue burdens on witnesses and that it takes years and years to get through.

I tackle all these and more in my book. But the important thing for anyone to remember is the annulment process is a tool.

It's a valid tool whose purpose is to determine the truth and set healing in motion. Continue reading

• Lisa Duffy is a Catholic lay writer and speaker with 24 years of personal and professional experience in healing from divorce. Ms. Duffy suffered through the pain of an unwanted divorce in the early 1990s. Her newest book is Mending the Heart: A Catholic Annulment Companion.
• Image: Amazon

As part of the reform, Pope Francis repealed aspects of a motu proprio from Pope Pius XI that set up regional tribunals in Italy.

In the wake of Francis's reforms, the Roman Rota required that 220 diocesan tribunals in Italy be established as soon as possible.

But the Apostolic Signatura, the Church's supreme tribunal, has maintained that the regional tribunals continue to function.

Many Italian bishops favour the continuation of the regional tribunals, which allows dioceses to share resources.

Continue reading

At issue is the annulment of the previous marriage of actor Angélica Rivera, who became Enrique Peña Nieto's wife 19 months before he was elected president.

The Guardian reported documents obtained by investigative reporters appear to show the annulment was fast tracked.

Mr Peña Nieto's first wife, Mónica Pretelini, died in 2007 after suffering an epileptic seizure.

Ms Rivera, a popular soap opera star, was married to TV producer José Alberto Castro from 2004 to 2008.

They have three daughters together, including two who were born out of wedlock.

The archdiocese of Mexico City annulled their marriage in 2009.

The archdiocese noted that the ceremony had taken place on a beach in Acapulco and exhibited "defects of canonical form".

But the newly revealed church documents cast doubt on the archdiocese's story.

A copy of Castro and Rivera's Catholic marriage certificate appears to show a proper church ceremony took place in a Mexico City parish in December, 2004.

This was before the Acapulco beach service and in contradiction of archdiocesan claims that it did not take place in an authorised house of worship.

Archdiocese documents cited Ms Rivera and three witnesses - all her sisters - who claimed they did not "understand" they were signing a church marriage certificate at the ceremony in Mexico City.

The archdiocesan tribunal held that the priest who performed the Acapulco ceremony had tricked Ms Rivera into marrying at a church without her knowledge, with another priest officiating, and then pretended the ceremony at the beach was the real thing, when it wasn't.

A spokesman for Mexico City archdiocese, Fr Hugo Valdemar, denied there had been any irregularities in the annulment and told the Guardian the annulment "followed the proper process".

He added that the original marriage in the Mexico City parish was celebrated with the intention that it would be repeated in Acapulco by a priest lacking the proper permission to perform it.

Fr Valdemar also denied any political motives for granting the annulment.

In 2012, the Roman Rota absolved the priest who presided at the Acapulco wedding of any ecclesiastical wrongdoing in Ms Rivera's marriage.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Crux
• Image: CNN Mexico

Since Pope Francis announced the dramatic changes to the tribunal system for handling marriage nullity cases in September, the Church's legal community has been frantically trying to prepare itself for the day the changes would take effect, and make no mistake, there has been much to do.

The reforms of Mitis Iudex have been criticised, in some quarters, as an unwarranted and dangerous liberalisation of the process for examining cases of nullity which could seriously jeopardize, even if unintentionally, the indissolubility of marriage, in practice if not in theory.

Some of the concerns about Mitis Iudex were sincere and well founded, others were the product of misunderstanding, and some came from what seemed at times to be deliberate misrepresentations of the content of the reforms and their intent.

As the reforms take effect, it is worth recapping what they are, what concerns have been raised since they were announced, and what steps have already been taken to put them into solid practice.

There were three key procedural changes brought in by Mitis Iudex: the introduction of an abbreviated process for some cases; the abolition of the requirement for a mandatory appeal and a double confirming sentence for all affirmative decisions; and changes to the kind of grounds under which cases could be considered and the standards of proof used in their consideration.

Each of the these three major changes raised a number of serious legal questions, and the last few weeks have been a seemingly endless round of canonical conferences, articles, and letters of clarification from Rome.

But the good news is that some of the major points of confusion, you could even say conflict, have been resolved. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald — the article is by Edward Condon, a canon lawyer working for tribunals in a number of dioceses.
• Image: Vassallomalta

Except for the just payment of Marriage Tribunal staff, the reforms make the annulment process free and remove the need of a second review that the marriage was invalid.

Pope Francis has also sped up the process leading to annulment in situations where the evidence appears clear.

Announced, Wednesday, the changes came in two motu proprio (at the Pope's own initiative), Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus ("The Lord Jesus, Clement Judge"), and Mitis et Misericors Iesus ("Clement and Merciful Jesus").

In the introduction Pope Francis stressed the adjustments "do not favour the nullifying of marriages, but the promptness of the processes."

While the changes do not alter the Church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, they represent significant change; shifting delegated power from the Church's centre to local bishops.

The Pope says he is motivated by the desire to help Catholics who "are too often separated from the legal structures of the Church due to physical or moral distance".

For many years Catholics around the world have complained that it takes too long an annulment, if they can get one at all and that they are too costly; in some instances reaching into the hundreds or thousands of dollars for legal and tribunal fees.

Without the annulment, currently, divorced Catholics who remarry are forbidden from receiving Communion.

The two motu proprio are dated August 15 (Feast of the Assumption) were unveiled on September 8 (Birthday of Blessed Virgin Mary) and come into effect on December 8, 2015, (Feast of the Immaculate Conception) and the beginning of the Year of Mercy.

They are available on the Vatican website. Currently they are only in Latin and Italian.

On May 29, 2015, the New Zealand Bishops' Conference announced that the Marriage Tribunal will no longer charge fees.

Sources:

• NCR
• Catholic Culture
• Vatican Radio
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Blogspot

Catholic annulments look to many to be a simple Catholic divorce. Divorce says that the reality of marriage was there in the beginning and that now the reality is broken.

"Annulment" means a ruling by a Church court that a union between a man and a woman, even if it began with a Church wedding, is not a valid marriage because it fails one of the traditional tests, such as a lack of genuine consent or a psychological incapacity to undertake the obligations, or unwillingness of one of the spouses to have children.

Prior to this point, the procedure required annulments to be issued by one court and confirmed by another. Many have rightly said that this process was fraught with unnecessary delays and difficulties and added to the pain and suffering of those involved in separation, divorce and re-marriage outside the Church community.

At this morning's press conference at the Vatican, Pope Francis issued two Apostolic Letters motu proprio (on his own authority) by which he introduced reforms to the legal structures of the Church dealing with questions of marital nullity.

Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus and Mitis et misericors Iesus are the names in Latin of the two decrees respectively. The first one translates to "The Gentle Judge, The Lord Jesus." The second is translated "The Meek and Merciful Jesus."

These new rulings make it faster, easier, and less expensive to obtain a marriage annulment. Both documents were signed by Pope Francis on August 15, 2015. They will take effect December 8, 2015, the first day of the Holy Year of Mercy. Continue reading

Sources

• Vassallomalta, from an analysis written by Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB.
• Image: The Dead Philosophers Society

The letter is part of about 1500 documents written by women throughout history which are going under the auctioneer's hammer next week.

Catherine's letter is addressed to Cardinal Francisco de Quiñones of Santa Cruz and is worth an estimated NZ$55,000-$65,000.

She insists she has been cast aside "without cause, except, as I sincerely believe, at the instigation of an enemy completely without scruples [Thomas Cromwell] who has abused the king, my lord; the case, if examined without passion, will clearly show, I hope, that truth and justice are on my side. . . ."

She appeals for Pope Clement to investigate and judge her case because: "I am completely innocent".

She also warns: "I can assure you with certainty that here [in England] there is no decision that can be made that will not bring a great evil in the future."

Continue reading

More than 4300 people from around the world completed a questionnaire on www.thetablet.co.uk between 3 and 14 October about what they'd like to see from the synod on the family.

Nearly 85 per cent of respondents were from the United States or the United Kingdom.

Men respondents outnumbered women by a two to one ratio.

In the US, the survey was highlighted on conservative blogs.

Of the divorced and civilly remarried (without an annulment) survey respondents who receive Communion, ten per cent do so with the permission of a priest.

Catholics in Britain and Ireland in such circumstances were almost twice as likely as US Catholics to receive Communion without having sought priestly permission (29 per cent to 17 per cent).

Of the priests who responded, more than a third said the ban on artificial contraception could be ignored in good conscience and that cohabitation could be an acceptable stage en route to marriage.

Respondents said the best way for the Church to support marriage and family life was to run courses for married couples, while also clearly setting out its teaching on sexual matters.

Practising Catholics said the chief threats to marriage and family life were: artificial contraception; gay marriage and adoption; pressure caused by long working hours, money worries and unemployment; and the proliferation of pornography.

Almost three-quarters of practising Catholics welcomed the presence of lay people at the synod, with one-quarter saying they wished more had been invited to attend and to be involved in decision-making.

Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center survey in the United States has found that 85 per cent of Catholics aged between 18 and 29 feel that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Among church-going Catholics of all ages who attend Mass at least once a week, twice as many say homosexuality should be accepted (60 per cent) as say it should be discouraged (31 per cent).

Sources

• The Tablet
• The Tablet
• Pew Research Center
• Image: Catholic Herald

This could be one of the positive fruits of the synod, he said, but it would not be approved until the second synod in 2015.

Cardinal Francis Coccopalmerio (Italy) said this at a Vatican press briefing for the media on Oct. 9.

His words carry particular weight since, on the eve of the synod, Pope Francis appointed him as a member of the commission that he set up to study the annulment process and to come up with proposals for revision and improvement in this important area.

Significantly he is the only cardinal on that body, and he is also President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

The cardinal outlined three ways in which the annulments process can be streamlined and improved.

But to avoid misunderstanding, he began by clarifying that in the case of an annulment one is not dealing with what the church considers as a valid marriage in the eyes of God, which by its nature is indissoluble.

By declaring a marriage null the church is stating that in fact this was never a valid marriage to begin with, "no indissoluble bond was attached."

There can be a number of grounds for this declaration, he said, such as when one or both parties enter marriage but do not accept it as indissoluble, or when one of the parties excludes having children.

He revealed that there have been many calls at the synod to speed up the annulment process, and synod fathers have made a number of proposals for doing so. Based on what was said and on his own expert knowledge of the subject, he identified three ways in which this could be done.

The first way is by removing the appeal process and requiring only one judicial decision in the church's tribunal.

The current code of canon law requires the double confirming sentence by church tribunals before the marriage can be declared null.

Today, after the first judicial sentence has been issued declaring the marriage is null, there is an automatic judicial appeal. The church cannot declare the annulment of a marriage until the appeal process has confirmed the first decision.

A second way is by not requiring a collegial judicial decision in cases of annulment.

Today it is necessary to have three judges to declare the nullity of a marriage, whereas it would be sufficient to have only one judge for this purpose.

The third way is what many synod fathers described as "an administrative procedure" by which the local bishop can declare the annulment of a marriage "for grave and urgent reasons."

This could happen even in the absence of external evidence or witnesses, when the bishop considers the couple as "credible witnesses" to what was the actual situation in their marriage.

"I am very favorable to this third solution; it is often the only way forward," Cardinal Coccopalmerio stated.

"We must adopt the hermeneutics of the pope; we must adopt the procedure to the concrete situation of individuals for grave and urgent reasons."

He cited the example of what Jesus said in the Gospel regarding the man whose ox had fallen into the well on a Sabbath; he said Jesus did not abolish the law of the Sabbath which prohibited people from working on that day, rather he indicates that action had to be taken here for grave and urgent reasons. Continue reading

Image: Divorce Attorney

But Archbishop Gerhard L. Muller acknowledged that many Catholics' first marriages might be invalid, and thus eligible for annulment, if spouses had been influenced by prevailing contemporary conceptions of marriage and did not fully understand it as a permanent, binding union.

"Today's mentality is largely opposed to the Christian understanding of marriage, with regard to its indissolubility and its openness to children," he wrote.

"Because many Christians are influenced by this, marriages nowadays are probably invalid more often than they were previously, because there is a lack of desire for marriage in accordance with Catholic teaching, and there is too little socialisation within an environment of faith.

"Therefore assessment of the validity of marriage is important and can help to solve problems," he wrote.

Speculation about a change in practice has grown since Pope Francis told reporters on his plane back from Rio de Janeiro in July that the next Synod of Bishops would consider the eligibility of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.

In a 4600-word statement published in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Archbishop Muller described the pastoral care for Catholics who are divorced and remarried as a matter of urgent pastoral priority.

But he ruled out the argument that "remarried divorcees should be allowed to decide for themselves, according to their conscience, whether or not to present themselves for holy Communion".

"If remarried divorcees are subjectively convinced in their conscience that a previous marriage was invalid, this must be proven objectively by the competent marriage tribunals," the archbishop wrote.

Catholics in such unions who try to understand Catholic teaching and abstain from Communion "provide their own testimony to the indissolubility of marriage", he said.

His article also addressed the Eastern Orthodox practice of allowing second or third marriages, on the grounds of "pastoral leniency", even when the first is sacramentally valid.

However, he said this practice "cannot be reconciled with God's will" and "represents an ecumenical problem that is not to be underestimated".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Catholic News Agency

L'Osservatore Romano

Image: Father Julian's Blog

So, she was stunned when telephoned "out of the blue" by a Catholic priest a month ago and told her former husband had applied to a church marriage tribunal in the US to have their marriage annulled.

If the annulment is granted, her marriage would be considered by the church to have never existed.

"It's ridiculous. My husband and I were not Catholics and our marriage was nothing to do with the Catholic Church ...

Continue Reading

Historically the church has interpreted the capacity for consent fairly narrowly - requiring only a fitting age, freedom of choice and being of sound mental health. However some feel that a pastoral desire to help people has led to an overly loose interpretation of the canon. Otherwise those whose marriages have failed find themselves unable to marry again if they wish to continue to receive the sacraments.

Sheila Ranch Kennedy successfully had her annulment overturned which had been granted to her husband, U.S. Congressman Joseph Kennedy. She claims the American marriage tribunals allow canon 1095 to cover "almost anything ... from personality traits such as self-centeredness, moodiness or being eager to please, to unproven ‘disorders'."

Polish Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz, dean of the Roman Rota, the Vatican court that handles most marriage cases, told the Roman conference that interpretation of canon 1095 must avoid an "anthropological pessimism" that would hold that "it's almost impossible to get married, in view of the current cultural situation."

"We must reaffirm the innate human capacity to marry," Stankiewicz told the group.

The session during which Stankiewicz spoke was presided over by American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who heads the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's equivalent of the Supreme Court.

Stankiewicz argued that Christian doctrine insists upon a "natural disposition to marriage" because the "gift of Christ is not exhausted in the celebration of the wedding. It extends to all of married life, supporting the spiritual growth of the spouses in the necessary virtues, duties and commitments of marriage."

His conclusion was that church courts should not be quick to presume an inability to give consent.

"We can't equate incapacity with a lack of moral virtue," he said. "Otherwise we would be saying that only saints can have valid marriages."

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