FrancisAnnulments Are Just the Softening Up

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If that marriage is invalid, let's make this one valid. Call it a merciful 'renullment' or something.

If that marriage is invalid, let’s make this one valid. Call it a merciful ‘renullment’ or something.

The Eye-Witness blog has some rare truth about FrancisAnnulments, but it’s only common sense, really.

This is a dangerous business.

I am not alone in being concerned that the Pope’s new instant annulment process is just a part of the stage-management that has been going on by the movers and shakers of the upcoming Synod. It seems clear enough – especially by the timing – that this is a maneuver to both win some hearts and minds – uncritical hearts and minds, that is – while at the same time greasing the skids for the more radical moves that are intended for October.

Even Cardinal Burke, who is more than a little familiar with the annulment process and was active in that arena in its liberalized state, is uneasy about this, calling the easing of the annulment process “sentimentalism and false compassion.”  What His Eminence did not say is that it was already far too easy to get one, and even on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Sentimentalism.  That’s what’s Islamicizing Europe right now.  We are truly a debased, de-natured people.

Let us face some cold, hard facts.  The annulment process in recent decades has been an absolute farce.  In America especially.  It is so farcical that critics of the Church have rightly called it “Catholic divorce”.  A good example: a man and a woman (known to this writer) married seventeen years and the parents of seven children were granted an annulment.  No wife-beating was involved.  The husband was far from perfect but the wife had had enough of him.  So their marriage was declared to have “never existed in the first place”.

Whether the husband was a bounder or not, they were still sacramentally married.

Many of us in the active Catholic community have such stories.

That is one story among thousands.  The number of annulments granted in recent decades is by any standard ridiculous; in the past 2,000 years there were probably 82 annulments given by the Church.  Now they give out 82 per day.  It is as if the Marx Brothers were put in charge of marriage tribunals.

But the Eye-Witness sees something even more sinister at work than the destruction of society through this institutional malpractice.

The cheers from Catholics anxious to dump their spouses is deafening.  The cheers from supine clergymen supporting this new Francis edict are also deafening.  Fence-sitting Catholics, always willing to give the benefit of the doubt, are cautiously optimistic by this.  But all of these souls are falling into a booby-trap which will explode next month.  By their cheers of support they are providing a faux consesus for a Pope who it seems wants to show a false mercy towards divorced and remarried people and, far worse, homosexual cohabitation. If the Modernists can gain Catholic support for this new “merciful” annulment process the laid trap will be snapped in a few weeks.

The earmarks of Hollywood-style PR do seem to be all over this.  It reeks of contrivance.  Once again our emotions are being manipulated by clever men.  As far as the “merciful” aspect of this latest Francis move we remain sceptical.  Our common sense tells us that even more chaos is ahead, courtesy of the strange man who now occupies the Petrine Office.

‘Strange man.’ I see it.

If the entire faithful Catholic apparatus can look the other way at this latest atrocity, they’ll be demoralized enough to sign on to anything.

 

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.

 

 

Fr. Longenecker Finds That ‘Conservative’ Resistance to FrancisChurch

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conservative but not resistant

Conservative but not Resistant

Patheos writer Fr. Dwight Longenecker is the latest to respond to the Wapo accusations of ‘conservative’ resistance, but he sure isn’t very nice about it or very conservative either.

The Post lists nothing specific from which they draw their conclusions.  They mention Cardinal Burke, who seems to have been sidelined fairly well these days, but little else.  Longenecker sees this as proof that there actually is no ‘conservative’ resistance to the Francis agenda among Catholics.

This article from the Washington Post gives a typical progressive slant on Catholic news.

The headline suggests that “Conservative Dissent is Brewing Inside the Vatican.” Ho  hum.

You can guess the tired narrative: Pope Francis is the great reformer who wants to clean up the corrupt Vatican Bank, open communion to divorced and re-married people, lift the ban on artificial contraception, give the nod to abortion, make way for women priests and green light same sex marriage.

Except of course that he’s spoken out clearly against all those things.

Talk is cheap, but the UN’s Paris global warming agreement is expensive.  “Does Francis care about the pro-death agenda of his policy partners,” a conservative might ask?

Nevertheless, he’s a subtle worker don’t you know, and he’s moving things along slowly but surely. Here a clever liberal appointment and there a back room deal. Here a little wink and nudge to journalists and there a promotion of one of his liberal buddies and a demotion of one the bad guys. In other words, the Vatican is working just like Washington DC and any powerful organization–it’s a network of crafty cardinals, manipulative monsignors and corrupt curial officials.

This kind of not-funny sarcasm is a liberal trademark.  You’re supposed to feel stupid.   At least in Washington they don’t pretend to be Catholic.

Of course there will always be politicking in any organization and the Vatican is no exception. Furthermore, there will always be disagreement and dissent within an organization.

Of course, but there’s no dissent in the Church Militant. The heresy is all on the outside – or is Father still talking about Washington?

Is there “dissent” amongst some conservative American Catholics? There is certainly some genuine ugliness rumbling in a few extreme traditionalist blogs, but must we take seriously flat earth bloggers who rant about the pope being a communist antiChrist, modernist, Jew loving, infiltrator who is ushering in the New World Order of Illuminati/Freemasons? Probbly not.

I think we’ve just crossed some of that resistance the Post laments.  You can tell by where Father chooses to bring down his hammer.  If we Catholics weren’t faithful, sincere, and effective, FrancisPriests like Fr. Longenecker wouldn’t smear us.

And if you can’t tell the difference between a destructive pro-communist Pope and a conservative, you belong at Patheos, not among the faithful ‘resistance.’  There’s more to it than a goatee and a gun.