Few topics in the Catholic Church are more misunderstood than annulments. In Annulments & the Catholic Church, canon and civil lawyer Edward N. Peters answers common questions on annulments including: ● How is an annulment different from a divorce? ● Are there too many annulments granted today? ● Does the length of a marriage affect an annulment case? ● How do people begin the annulment process? ● Does a wedding between a Catholic and a non-Catholic require an annulment? ● Is alcoholism or physical abuse grounds for an annulment? Many questions abound regarding annulments, which unfortunately touch the lives of many in the Church. Annulments & the Catholic Church provides concise answers from an expert on this difficult and misunderstood topic.
Explore the meaning of annulment to Catholics and the Church! This valuable book examines the use of annulment by the Catholic Church to grant divorced Catholics the right to remarry within the Church. Divorce, Annulments, and the Catholic Church: Healing or Hurtful? is the first published study on annulments with wide-scale usage of questionnaires and interviews comparing Catholics who have sought an annulment with divorced Catholics who have not sought an annulment as well as married Catholics. In addition to delivering a quantitative analysis of the responses to various questions (religious, social, or psychological), it explains in lay terms what annulments are and what the acceptable grounds are for annulment and takes you step-by-step through the process of obtaining one. This insightful book also contains case studies of individuals who have been hurt by annulments and offers suggestions on how people who want to contest an annulment should proceed. This well-referenced book: explores the factors that lead to divorce provides a theoretical perspective as to why people either support or oppose annulments examines the religious influence on divorce and remarriage discusses the social integration-related aspects of annulment and divorce for Catholics presents recommendations for petitioners, respondents, clerics, and the members of tribunals who act as advocates, defenders, and judges Divorce, Annulments, and the Catholic Church is an invaluable reference work for counselors dealing with the issue of divorce for Catholics, non-Catholics whose former spouses are seeking annulments, divorced Catholics who are contemplating an annulment, members of the clergy, and members of marriage tribunals and Family Life groups.
Many people believe that the Roman Catholic Church's teaching on marriage is clear and consistent: marriage is a sacrament, the marriage contract is indissoluble, divorce and remarriage are forbidden. In this book, theologians, historians, and sociologists overhaul the church's teaching and practice on divorce and remarriage, as well as personal testimonies from a number of persons who have gone through the annulment process.
Annulment. A perplexing word. To some, both Catholics and non-Catholics alike, it is synonymous with Catholic divorce. Many questions abound regarding this issue, one which unfortunately touches the lives of many in the Church today. In this helpful book, canon and civil lawyer Edward N. Peters clears up some of the confusion by answering the most commonly-asked annulment questions in a thorough yet-easy-to-understand style.
A Place to Belong: Letters from Catholic Women explores what it means to be a woman of faith today. Edited by Corynne Staresinic, the founder of the nonprofit The Catholic Woman, this stunning anthology of twenty-five deeply personal letters, wisdom from women saints, reflection questions, art, photography, and prayers will inspire you to live your femininity along your own unique life path as you find--and provide for others--a place to belong.
In 1993, Sheila Rauch Kennedy received a letter from the Boston Catholic Archdiocese announcing that her former husband, Congressman Joseph Kennedy, was seeking an annulment of their marriage. If the Church granted the annulment, the marriage, which had lasted twelve years, would be rendered nonexistent -- not simply ended, as was stated in the divorce decree, but invalid from the start. And their two sons would be regarded as children of an unsanctified union. Joseph Kennedy needed the annulment to remarry within the Church, and he encouraged his ex-wife to ignore the details. Stunned by the hypocrisy of the process and the betrayal of trust it involved, Sheila Rauch Kennedy was determined to defend the legitimacy of her former marriage. Shattered Faith is the fascinating chronicle of that struggle, and of what Kennedy uncovered about the uses and frequency of annulments in the United States. Interweaving her own experiences with those of other women whose trust in the Church was shattered by annulment, she tells a story that will surprise, anger, and move readers of every faith.
Marriage will always be a subject of law and of great interest to both legal scholars and sociologists alike because the anthropology that support marriage perceives justice to be a particular reality. With respect to realization of justice in marriage, the Catholic intellectual tradition has identified a legal category that does not exist anywhere else--namely, the consensual incapacity to marry. the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983 contains a juridical innovation (canon 1095), but this has not yet been fully digested by American canonists. Furthermore, its application reveals a vast disconnect with historical exegesis. In the last fifty years, American canonical practice in the sphere of marriage law has lost its foundation. The consequences of this include mechanisms of judgment that are rendered incoherent although not inactive--in other words, the application of law in the Catholic Church moves forward without a clear indication of its anthropological basis. Canon law, then, must either be oppressive or absolutely meaningless. There is one canon in particular that in its formula of consensual incapacity to marry is the center of the attempt to define and resolve this question: canon 1095. As of this moment, however, there is no comprehensive treatment of this canon in its current usage and how it developed into positive law after hundreds of years of implicit reference to the grounds for marriage nullity that it now indicates. professors of canon law, members of the Roman Curia and judicial bodies acknowledge that more than a general response to this crisis of law and marriage what might be needed most is a revision of this single canon. they furthermore acknowledge that American canonical practice is perhaps the most influential in the world. A profile of this canon in American jurisprudence is fundamental and demanded presently. There are over one hundred tribunals of varying functions, over two hundred seminaries and more than five thousand seminarians (each year), seventy million Catholics and tens of millions of these Catholics call their vocation marriage. The question of marriage validity is eternal--both with respect to its relation to an historical past as well as individual present day unions. the readership is vast and this book will be included in syllabi in seminaries, Catholic universities and other faculties of sociology, religion and law. It will be a reference guide in tribunals and studied in the course of legislative reform, but it will also be accessible to both scholars and laypersons. the question of consensual incapacity is asked tens of thousands of times each year anew and there is not yet a definitive study that provides answers and guidance for further development of this notion. Another example of the longevity of this work: the manual it will effectively replace was in print for twenty years with five editions (L. Wrenn, 1970, CuA).
"The question-and-answer format provides an overview of the marriage law of the [Catholic] church and its practical implications and makes difficult concepts understandable to the nonexpert."--Cover
The recent controversy over Joe Kennedy's annulment gave only a glimpse of American Catholicism's open secret: that contrary to official Catholic doctrine, American churches grant annulments wholesale, freely declaring marriages nonexistent so that one or both partners can remarry in the church. The United States is home to only 6% of the world's Catholics, Robert Vasoli points out, but it now accounts for 75% of all Church annulments, two-thirds of which are granted on ostensibly psychological grounds. The real scandal, though, is not simply the numbers, but that Church marriage courts annul thousands of marriages that are actually valid according to Catholic teaching. Drawing on considerable research, the author details precisely how these courts let divorced Catholics--and many non-Catholics as well--bypass Catholic teaching and law. He shows, for instance, how they often help petitioners manufacture grounds for annulment, which are justified with specious psychological reasoning that are counter to the letter and spirit of canon law. Indeed, it may even be alleged that "lack of emotional maturity" at the time of the wedding can invalidate marriages that have lasted 30 years. The result has been a tidal wave: in 1968, the American church granted fewer than 600 annulments; today it hands out more than 60,000 a year. But Rome has not smiled on the performance of U.S. tribunals: of those psychological annulments appealed to the Roman Rota (the Vatican's highest marriage tribunal), more than 90% are overturned. This revealing look at annulment weaves painstaking analysis with a wealth of evidence as it illuminates the degree to which the U.S. Church has gone its own way since Vatican II on what constitutes valid marriage.
