Annulments: FrancisMercy is Really Just Relieving People of the Burdens of Faith

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My annulment's ready already?!

My annulment’s finished already?!

In a followup to his excellent analysis of the new merciful FrancisAnnulment edicts released this week, canonist Dr. Peters has a telling revisit to the story of the Pope’s niece, Maria.

Pope Francis’ niece, María Inés Narvaja, thinks she understands her uncle’s interest in fast-track annulments. Yes, the lawyer in me cautions that Maria’s attributions of statements to her uncle, then-Abp. Bergoglio, are hearsay, but, we’re not in a courtroom, we’re in the blogosphere. Besides what Maria says about the future Francis is illuminating.

Maria recalls that she (or her intended?) applied for an annulment but was told by Argentine Church officials that her case would take four years. She reacted with a young-woman-in-love’s “pffft!” and announced that she would marry civilly. Per María, her uncle endorsed the idea. Maybe, maybe not, that’s not the question here. The question is whether Maria’s (or her intended’s) annulment case would really have taken four years (despite 1983 CIC 1453, setting 18 months as the norm). Personally, I believe her.

I once worked on a marriage case that (fascinating canon-law-of-jurisdiction details omitted) could have been heard in either America or Argentina. Both tribunals turned to Rome for guidance, with the Argentine tribunal asking that the case be heard in the USA! They said their cases take an average of, yes, four years to process. That delay was not necessarily the Argentine Church’s fault; they probably did not have the resources to hear marriage cases more quickly. But it lends support to Maria’s claim about long delays in Argentine tribunals and that in turn would help explain Francis’ impatience to fix an obvious pastoral problem.

Of course, what might well be a serious problem in one Church need not be a problem in another, and a cure for a problem—setting aside whether the cure itself is really a good one—imposed where a cure is not needed can actually cause even more problems. Still, it’s an interesting insight into Francis’ attitudes.

‘Attitude’ is the appropriate word here.  Uncle Bergoglio’s attitude is bigger than the Church and its guidance, bigger than her teaching.  It’s the attitude of a Protestant ‘reformer.’

I think it’s probably true that Maria’s uncle, our Francis, told her to just skip the annulment and get remarried.  Based upon all kinds of similar unconfirmed stories Pope Francis seems to have spent his entire career waiving Church teaching and rules.  He hates rules almost as much as he hates those Pharisees.  Rules are the opposite of mercy, see.  You have to have the right balance they say, as if these were in opposition.  So trim some of those rules!  Be nice! (Be liberal.)

But of course, hating rules doesn’t make you merciful.  It just makes you criminal and if those rules violate God’s laws, it makes you sinful.

It’s not mercy to enable heinous acts like marriage betrayal.  On the contrary it’s ruthless to those involved.  It’s an injustice to all the other family members and wound to society.  People underestimate the damage done because it rides beneath the surface, like abortion.  Even murder relieves pain and yields benefits…for the living.  For some people, murder is mercy.

How does a man like Francis maintain such a twisted view on life?  It’s a mystery.

This story demonstrates something else which is very timely.  It reveals that Francis believes annulments are really just the same as divorces.  He couldn’t care less about the procedure because he couldn’t care less about the grounds.  It certainly is cruel and bureaucratic to make people wait a long time for some useless procedure.  The only problem is, it’s not useless.  It has to do with whether people were actually married.  It concerns their souls, their abandoned spouses, and everyone else.

These new declarations are just ‘no fault’ annulments.  Any excuse will do, especially if they both want it and neither side actually cares.

 

 

Fast Cheap Annulments: All This FrancisMercy Sure Feels Like Hell

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Annulments: Vatican Rank and File Monsignor delivers the FrancisMercy news to the suffering peoples

Streamline annulments: Vatican monsignor delivers the gentle FrancisMercy news to the suffering peoples

The AP tells the world’s version of the new streamlined FrancisChurch annulments – one-stop family destruction, death of the Faith, and generations of Hell in just 45 quick days!  (Catch this frightening photo of the Vatican announcement.)

The modern ‘catholic’ annulment charade was already a terrible scandal, but there are very few people in the world who do not understand that ‘catholic’ annulments are also a fraud.  That’s why they all call them ‘catholic divorces.’  Because they are, and people know the emasculated Church is just lying about them.

These sacred unions the AmChurch keeps declaring ‘null’ were not null.  They were marriages.  To the Children they produced, they were parents.  You’re not too immature when you’re thirty-five.  You weren’t such a complete idiot that you didn’t know what you were doing.

In the FrancisGospel broken marriages are just mercy for women and children, so why not increase the mercy by making annulments simple formalities.  But these cheap annulments don’t actually declare anything true.  Once again they’re just using Christ’s Church to look the other way at sin and call it ‘mercy.’  That’s FrancisMercy, not God’s.  FrancisMercy hurts, a lot.

Pope Francis radically reformed the process for annulling marriages Tuesday, overhauling 300 years of church practice by creating a new fast-track annulment and doing away with an automatic appeal that often slowed the process down.

Three hundred years?  Try thousands.  It’s only in the past 50 years that they started handing out mass-produced fraudulent annulments.  Do you think God thinks that all these Church-wrecked marriages were never valid?  A good friend of mine got an annulment after fifteen years and five kids.  His wife was a notorious cheat, but they were a family once – a sad one.  Now they’re three or four sadder ones.  Thank you newChurch!  Problem solved.

Oh, but it’s complicated, and what about the abuse, the conflict, and neglect?  Marriage IS abuse, conflict, and neglect. That’s the point.

The move, which came a week after he said he was letting all rank-and-file priests grant absolution to women who have had abortions, was further evidence of his desire to make the church more responsive to the needs of ordinary faithful.

What was it responding to before, the Dalai Lama?

The new law on annulments goes into effect Dec. 8, the start of Francis’s Holy Year of Mercy, a yearlong jubilee during which the pope hopes to emphasize the merciful side of the church. It will speed up and simplify the annulment process by placing the onus squarely on bishops around the world to determine when a fundamental flaw has made a marriage invalid.

A Catholic needs a church annulment to remarry in the church, and a divorced Catholic who remarries civilly without one is considered an adulterer living in sin and is forbidden from receiving Communion.

The Communion issue is at the center of debate at the upcoming synod of bishops, a three-week meeting that gets underway in October. Progressive bishops favor a process by which these Catholics could eventually have access to the sacrament if they repent; conservatives say there can be no such wiggle room and that church teaching is clear that a marriage is indissoluble.

Catholics have long complained that it can take years to get an annulment, if they can get one at all. Costs can reach into the hundreds or thousands of dollars for legal and tribunal fees, though some dioceses have waived their fees.

“With this fundamental law, Francis has now launched the true start of his reform,” said Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, the head of the Roman Rota, the church’s marriage court. “He is putting the poor at the center — that is the divorced, remarried who have been held at arms’ length — and asking for bishops to have a true change of heart.”

Reasons for granting annulments vary, including that the couple never intended the marriage to last or that one spouse didn’t want children.

The new law also says that “lack of faith” can also be grounds for an annulment, conforming to the belief of Francis and Pope Benedict XVI before him that a sacramental marriage celebrated without the faith isn’t really a marriage at all.

Francis’ biggest reform involves the new fast-track procedure, which will be handled by the local bishop and can be used when both spouses request an annulment or don’t oppose it.

This is going to shred the procedure so that it’s now completely at the discretion of each bishop with a ‘wink wink’ from Rome.  Most bishops are weasels and the rest will be pressured to conform.  Goodbye marriage.  Thank you new Pope of the family.  He hasn’t even gotten to the October Synod yet.

Paul VI ruined the Church by suppressing the Ancient Mass and bending every Church law beyond recognition.  Now Francis has arrived to wreck what’s left and bulldozer the rubble.  Hey, it’s all for the people!