Don’t cry. Mercy is on it’s way in just 45 days.
Canonist Dr. Peters has a devastating look at the new ‘Fast and Cheap’ FrancisAnnulments just announced.
A few bits:
If the older canonical tradition wrongly assumed that a respondent necessarily opposed an annulment, this new norm wrongly, I think, makes relevant a respondent’s “consent” to an annulment petition. While a respondent’s participation in the tribunal process is always sought and is usually helpful in adjudicating marriage cases, his or her consent to a nullity petition is never necessary for the Church to exercise jurisdiction over a case and, more to the point, it is not indicative of the merits of the petition. Making mutual agreement to a petition an element of hearing that petition quickly risks confusing two things that the Church has long sought to distinguish, namely, the parties’ laudable cooperation with the tribunal’s search for truth and their collusion with each other toward a specific outcome. Treating nullity petitions in which the parties agree radically differently from those wherein they disagree, sends a dubious message.
Both parties agreeing to it has nothing whatsoever to do with nullity.
The new speedy annulment process, however, allows (I would say, pressures) bishops who are not necessarily canon lawyers (Canon 378), to rely heavily on a report drafted by someone who need not be a canon lawyer (Mitis, Art. 3), after conferring with an assessor who need not be a canon lawyer (Canon 1424), to rule upon a marriage that, besides enjoying natural (‘intrinsic’) indissolubility, might be sacramentally (‘extrinsically’) indissoluble as well. And note, these new speedy annulment cases are not cases that can already, under some circumstances, be processed quickly by documents because they deal with lack of canonical form or lack of canonical capacity. Canon 1686 mox 1688. No, these fast-track annulment cases plainly turn on questions of consent to marriage—consent, long and by far the most complex topic in marriage canon law. True, a judicial vicar must provide certification that the petition proposed for speedy processing meets certain evidentiary criteria, and the defender of the bond is allowed to respond to the petition, but the judicial vicar is not making a judgment as to nullity when he verifies the presence of certain evidence, and the defender has drastically less time to work on a case slated for expedited processing than he or she has for a formal case. In sum, this general lack of awareness of the inescapably complex legal nature of marriage consent shown in these new rules is disturbing.
New FrancisAnnulments demonstrate an ignorance and disregard for canon law and its practice.
Next, on the excuses for ‘fast-track…’
Looking at the examples offered—and setting aside the incoherence of some phrasings such as “abortion procured to prevent procreation”—they confuse several complex aspects of consent law, they seem to treat some fact patterns as if they were quasi-impediments to marriage, and they introduce into consideration some matters that have little (perhaps no) jurisprudence behind them with which to assist bishops assessing their significance in a marriage case. Worse, in my opinion, the enunciation of these factors is going to create crises of conscience among faithful who live with one or more of these conditions in their past.
All the conditions for FrancisAnnulment make most marriages invalid! The married world must now either doubt Francis or their own lives. This is really ‘pastoral.’ Not only is it faithless in practice, but it completely lacks common sense. This must be that ‘New Evangelization’ everyone used to talk about.
The most confusing point about this list is that some of these factors, though presented as reasons for hearing a petition quickly, are actually grounds for nullity (e.g., simulation, force or fear); other factors, however, are most emphatically not grounds for annulment (e.g., brevity of married life); and others might, or might not, be suggestive of grounds for nullity (e.g., an extra-marital affair near the time of the wedding might show a grave lack of discretion of judgement or an inability to assume matrimonial rights and duties). Because traditional grounds of nullity have been mixed in among things that could be evidence for other grounds of nullity, and further mixed with things that are not grounds for nullity and often are not even evidence of grounds for nullity, confusion will—and already has, judging from questions I have already received from the faithful—erupt as to whether these factors are not just reasons to hear a case speedily, but are themselves proof of matrimonial nullity. Try to explain to non-canonists why one thing the pope listed (say, simulation) is grounds for an annulment but another thing he listed (say, pregnancy) is not grounds for an annulment.
There are grounds for annulment here which aren’t actually grounds for annulment. But since they were already abusing the ‘grounds’ they had, I have to agree with FrancisChurch that at this point it makes no difference. The end result is the ‘mercy,’ see?
Worse, many, many married couples have experienced one or more of these events in their lives. Unfortunately—again I say this has already started!—people with any of these factors in their lives are going to wonder, logically and sincerely, whether their marriage might be null. They will worry, for example, whether the fact that she was pregnant at the time of the wedding means their marriage is null. If not, why does it mean that an annulment case could be heard more quickly? Or, if he was not very active in the Faith when they married, did he just pretend for (technically, simulate) his wedding promises? Many of these questions are obviously highly dependent on fact analysis (e.g., what is “improper concealment” of infertility, what counts as “incarceration”?), and so one must ask, how are such cases reliably to be investigated, considered, and decided by a bishop (a man with about a hundred other things to do at any given time) in a matter of a few weeks?
Truly, a society seeded with false ‘catholic’ annulments is infected. Ram them through and welcome more of them. Hagen Lio!
