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I would like to discuss the 9/23 show on anullments. Msgr. Dominic Bottino fielded a question from a listener during the last 5 minutes of the show. The listener asked Msgr. Bottino to respond to the fact mentioned in Robert Vasoli's book on annulments that 90% of U.S. annulments based on psychological consent that go to the Roman Rota are overturned. Msgr. Bottino stated that he thought that this statistic was out of date and that he thought it would be mich lower now, now that the Roman Rota is understanding why the US tribunals are granting these annulments. Does anyone have a more recent statistic on the rate of US annulments being overturned by the Rota when they are reviewed for second or third instance? Was Msgr. Bottino giving the impression to listeners that the Roman Rota was learning how to apply Canon Law about psychological grounds for annulments from US tribunals and US psychologists? Isn't the Roman Rota the higher authority here? Also Msgr. Bottino mentioned that we now have new science to determine what it takes to be validly married? What is this new science, does this new radical breakthrough have a name? Can someone define it concretely and explain it to me?
The listener asked Msgr. Bottino to respond to the fact mentioned in Robert Vasoli's book on annulments that 90% of U.S. annulments based on psychological consent that go to the Roman Rota are overturned.
This is interesting in that it shows the bankruptcy of the American Catholic tribunal system of granting annulments.
However, one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people are really not going to go through the process of trying to overtuen the phony annulment granted by the US tribunal. Why so? Because, just think about it - Suppose you were to go through a process in which your spouse was unfaithful to the marriage and demanded a divorce and an annulment, and you were opposed to it. Now after all this time spent fighting your spouse, the divorce and the Church annulment has come through. Why woudn't you just give a sigh of relief that the hassle is over and that you can go about your business without the hassling and fighting and arguing with an unfaithful spouse who is shacking up with someone else? Most people, I think, would just want to forget about it as much as possible and just go along with the Church declaration that there was no marriage in the first place. But as Vasoli has pointed out, the fact remains that 90% of these annulments are phony ones which don't hold up at all in the Roman Rota. That's what the situation is and it is reflected in the statistics which show that in 1930, there were about 9 annulments granted in the USA, whereas in 1989 it exploded to about 61,416 annulments granted in the USA. However, it looks like there may be people who are trying to whitewash the true situation as it has existed since Vatican II with reference to the annulments crisis in the USA.
You'd think people would be more interested in the truth. You cannot truly love if you voluntarily choose to live a lie.
Msgr. mentioned the keys to the kingdom that St. Peter was given. God cannot ratify a lie. This is why we have papal infallibility. The pope is prevented from error in truth and morals. There is no doctrine of tribunal infallibility. From our US tribunals' records with the Roman Rota, they are VERY fallible, more often than not. Even though the Church permits remarriage after a decree of nullity has been granted in the first and second instance, I don't know how someone knowing these statistics could trust the outcome without sending it to the Rota for second instance review, instead of a local tribunal. This is an option and people should be aware of it. Maybe if more people did it, US tribunals would have to admit they are not exactly orthodox. It seems to me a lot of US canon lawyers just spout the party line, supporting the status quo. I believe there only two schools of canon law in the US. It is a bit of an isolated fishbowl where they learn to apply Canon Law as if it is applied differently in the US and develop an insolent attitude toward the Rota, as if the Rota needs to get with it and learn from us Americans.
Msgr. also mentioned he thought that annulments were granted 80% of the time. For every eight people you know that were granted an annulment do you know two that were denied? I sure don't. I have known of only one case personally of a an annulment that was either denied or the petition was not taken. It was for lack of witnesses in a case of a marriage that was probably contracted close to 40 years ago. The petitioner was actually encouraged to try to find witnesses who knew him then. Anyway, I have never met someone personally that has had a local tribunal investigate and rule for validity.
Tribunals spend a ton of money on processing annulments. It is too bad dioceses could not use these funds and energy to support spouses who are separated, instead of encouraging divorce. If one calls a diocese for help one is usually just told, contact us when you have your civil divorce and we'll help you with your annulment. Separation has always been an option in certain cases in the Church. Try calling a diocese and getting help with a separation decree or any kind of guidance or support. The separated are ignored and encouraged to "rectify" their situation with a civil divorce (which the Catechism states is a grave sin) and an annulment. Funny, all dioceses in the US require you commit a grave sin before they will even look at an annulment petition. This is nowhere in Canon Law, they made up this rule themeselves.
In 20 years of parish work in 4 dioceses, two rather liberal, two quite conservative, where I have worked with RCIA, marriage prep and other ministries tangentially involved in referal for annulment, I estimate that for every 10 cases of a marriage situation that needs to be addressed, 4 are easily taken care of through convalidation, 2 involve defect of form or are slam/dunk no valid 1st marriage existed and don't require full tribunal investigation, 4 are referred to the tribunal. Of those 4, I estimate 2 are granted within a year, one is hung up because of problems with the investigation, and 1 is denied. So I am betting 2 out of 4 petitions for annulment are granted. In all that time only 2 went passed the 2nd appeal and were appealed to Rome and the initial decision was upheld (that I know of). I add that I have nothing whatever to do with the annulment process, just taking care of paperwork, and knowing where candidates stand with regard to their valid marriage.
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Whatever the Lord pleases He does, on heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. Ps. 135
Funny, all dioceses in the US require you commit a grave sin before they will even look at an annulment petition. This is nowhere in Canon Law, they made up this rule themeselves.
Funny? I would say it is tragic and a disaster.
And the whole annulment situation is also a disaster for the RCC. Take a look at the figures of about 9 annulments in 1930, and compare that with about 61,416 in 1989!
Msgr. also mentioned he thought that annulments were granted 80% of the time..
This seems to be about right, according to what I have read elsewhere, except that it might be slightly more than that. for example, according to US Catholic magazine of April 1997 on page 7, of all those who apply for an annulment in the St. Paul Minneapolis area, 97% are approved, and declared invalid.
That would be a rejection rate of about 3%.
You'd think people would be more interested in the truth. You cannot truly love if you voluntarily choose to live a lie.
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But if the RCC has issued the annulment saying that there was never any marriage, based on what your spouse has provided? Then why would you say that the RCC is lying in this case? I would think that most people would breathe a sigh of relief and say that they are glad it is over and that they are rid of the hassle with their unfaithful spouse? You are forgetting the human element here. Its not that I disagree with you on what should be done. What I am saying is that most people are not going to see it as a lie, since the RCC has granted the annulment. I would guess that the attitude of most people will be, well the RCC has granted the annulment, the situation was a bad one anyway, so why fight it? Why not take the easy way out of this bad situation and go along with the Church declaration?
No, it is not funny. I also think the analogy on the program comparing the annulment process to the canonization process does not apply at all. Just look at the sheer numbers of annulments in the US. There were over 61,000 in 1989. If we really want to compare the process it would be like 61,000 saints being canonized from the US each year! And the canonization process would be decided by about three people at a diocesan tribunal! Canonization involves extensive testimony and evidence and that is the way the annulment process is intended to be but isn't done in the US. I have no idea how many saints are canonized a year but they aren't churned out like annulments. In an investigation to see if someone is a saint, they actually use experts and take the time to investigate.
I agree, most people don't want to fight their annulment. They don't give a rip. In most cases they are already civilly married (commiting adultery) with someone else or contemplating it (dating). Maybe they don't really believe in the permanence of marriage but want a church wedding anyway. Like one caller on the show, she thought she was off the hook from her husband because HE left her and divorced her. It doesn't matter. Jesus was pretty clear on this. Before I reverted to Catholicism I read the gospel when I was a teenager and I understood I would never date a divorced man. The bible is pretty clear on this. However, I do know of people who do care about the truth. Annulment is constantly being foisted as an option. I don't think people understand that they can demand from the beginning to have the mandatory second instance review go to the Rota instead of another local tribunal. In this case, they wouldn't be appealing to the Rota for the third instance. It is not appeal at all. Only one local tribunal has ruled in favor of nullity and a second tribunal is needed to ratify it. It generally is rubber stamped by another US tribunal, but if someone wants a REAL investigation, they can send it to the Rota. Even if you have an annulment and you are allowed to remarry in the Church, there is an ontological truth about whether the marriage is valid or invalid. You would think if people really cared about the sacramentality of marriage they would want a very thorough investigation and a credible one at that.
Well, I won't disagree that there have likely been real problems with the annulment process. And I would, further, concur that it would be desirable to see more emphasis on the part of dioceses placed towards reconciling marriages and helping people to live with realistic expectation about the difficulty which human marriage will entail. It seems that the Chucrh structures have gotten really good at running effective annulment machines and escorting Catholics through that process, but still has a lot of work to do on the front end in forming people about entering into and dealing with married life.
However, I don't think that we should necessarily just jump ship about all this and cry with arms flailing about what a scandal it is. I have heard some good and legitimate counter arguments about the state of annulments in the U.S. One is that perhaps the reason there is such a great granting of annulments here is partially because Catholics actually take this seriously enough to pursue the possibility of reconciling their new relationships and themselves with the faith. Whereas in some other places, people just don't care and will merely abandon their faith or possibly live as if it all doesn't matter. We also must realistically face the fact that many people truly are not well prepared for responsibly taking on these commitments due to a general immaturity which has become normative of the culture.
I also think that we need to recognize that maybe only some of the worst or most contentious cases end up making it to be appealed at the level of the Rota. If the great majority were appealed, perhaps Rome would uphold the declaration of nullity in a much greater percentage. Further, considering what someone earlier noted on this thread in that no tribunal is infallible, isn't it quite possible that even the Roman Rota could err in their judgements?
It is, further, the testament of not a few that the annulment process had, indeed, been for them a healing (though painful) experience of growth and maturity; helping them to recognize where they had very real problems in their own life and what went wrong in the first place such that they really didn't belong in those relationships.
The editor of National Catholic Reporter, Tom Hoopes, had an interesting article on Catholics, divorce, and annulment in Crisis magazine last year:
I wanted to address the issue about why there are more annulments in the US. One of the reasons I think more are granted here is that our tribunalists don't have the credentials they are supposed to have. I'm going to quote from Vasoli's book. It is a few paragraphs so I apoligize it is long. I'll post my other points later. It starts on pg. 150 on What God Has Joined Together:
"Besides recourse to annulment statistics, the performance of tribunalists can be approached by examining their credentials. Credentials signify qualifications which in turn are improtant determinants of behavior. Well-trained lawyers and jurists should practice and apply the law more effectively than lawyers and jurists with less formal legal education. The new code incorporates this common-sense principle by specifying the credentials tribunalists are to bring to their work. Lists of diocesan tribunalists along with their graduate degress are published annually in the Catholic Directory. Each Directory contains a wealth of information on the state of the Church during the preceding year. Thus, the 1993 edition shows the make-up of tribunal rosters for 1992. The rosters show that American tribunals have not hastened to staff themselves in accordance with teh new code. Their inabillity or refusal to do so has not gone unnoticed in Rome. Less than two years after the revised code took effect, the Apostolic Signatura wrote to several American bishops about academic requirements, the Signatura pointedly noted that tribunalists lacking the requisite degrees had no acquired right to tribunal positions simply because they had held them before the new code became effective. The Signatura was especially troubled by the eleveth hour appointments of several individuals without degrees, apparently made so their presence on tribunals would be assured after the new code appeared. ....
There can be little doubt that the Signatura's insistence on tribunal staffing being up to code reflected the hope that stiffer credential requirements would help staunch the flow of American annulments. But the American canonical community showed little enthusiasm for applying such a curial tourniquet. Shunning bylines, a group of unnamed canonists publicly responded to the Signatura in CLSA's newsletter. Conceding that the letter was not the first expression of the Signatura's displeasure with American tribunals, they cosigned it to the realm of "advice". While the Signatura was within its competence in dispatching the letter, its content they held was technically classifiable as a "private interpretation." Continued next post....
pg. 151 What God Has Joined Together Robert Vasoli:
"Continuing, the canonists proclaimed that it is not within the Signatura's purview to provide authentic interpretations of the code. Such interpretations are reserved to the Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of the Code. The Signatura had merely sided with one school of thought on tribunal staffing and appointments. "This is not an authentic interpretation, but an issue still being debated among canonists. Until the issue is resolved by an authentic interpretation, both opinions remain 'private'. " Having made their stand, the anonymous canonists suggested that American bishops take the issue under advisement. For all intents and purposes, this meant sustaining the status quo. In legal terms, the Signatura's position was in effect rendered obiter dictum, that is to say, a passing or incidental statement unrelated to the disposition of specific cases." Continued next post. . . .
"In simpler terms, the canonists were saying to the Church's supreme tribunal: "Hands off! You can tell us what to think, but we are not obliged to do your bidding. Until we hear from what we regard is a proper authority, we will staff our tribunals as we please." In view of the fact that Church law grants the Signatura competence to "oversee the proper administration of justice," the response of the American canonists came close to insolence. The canonists' position is analogous to that of theologians who do not regard papal directives as binding unless they are pronounce ex cathedra. In the meantime, their "private opinion," not that of the Signatura, continued to shape the staffing and operations of American tribunals. Among the incongruities marking this exchange is the sight of canonists, so often disposed to invoke the 'spirit of Vatican II" to avoid the curse of legalism, themselves resorting to the narrow legalism to thwart the will of the Signatura."
This post will compare a diocese in Italy to Chicago It deals with the productivity of American tribunals and again credentials.
The Regional Tribunal of Lazio has jurisdiction of 4.5 million Catholics in central Italy. pg. 159 Vasoli "In 1985 all twenty-one of the tribunal's judges, its four defenders, and six of its ten notaries had doctorates in canon law. During that year the tribunal's First Instance judges decided 147 cases, while Second Instance judges issued forty-five decrees of ratification and six sentences in cases tried by them. The tribunal complained of overwork and inability to start and finish cases within deadlines specified by canon law. That same year the Archdiocese of Chicago tribunal handed down sentences in 1,360 ordinary Process cases. Assuming the judicial vicar participated in trials, this output was accomplished by thirteen judges and nine defenders, with eight of the latter also serving as judges. The 1986 Catholic Directory shows that in 1985 Chicago's complement of judges and defenders included at least five members without degrees in canon law: a master of science in an unspecified area of study, a master of chancery affairs, a master of arts, and two holders of STDs. Thus Chicago's fourteen tribunalists, with jurisdiction over not much more than half as many Catholics as the Lazio tribunal, adjudicated more than nine times as many ordinary process cases as Lazio's twenty-five overworked tribunalists.
A comparison of the productivity of the two jurisdictions suggests a good deal about the judicial dimension of the celebrated efficiency of American tribunals. It is altogether improbable that Chicago's tribunalists work longer hours or are more adept at speed-reading than their counterparts in Lazio. The astonishing productivity differential is better explained in terms of willingness to accept petitions for trial, different criteria for determining validity, and the time and attention devoted to deliberating the fate of marriages. . .
The Chicago tribunalists in 1985 were slothful laggards, however compared to there counterparts in other dioceses. . . . Lansing, with no full-time professional and onl five part-timers, decided over twice as many cases as Lazio. It would be the height of hubris to suppose that the American tribunalists are so much more energetic and efficient than their counterparts in Italy. Even today there is no diocesan or metropolitan American tribunal with credentials comparable to those of Lazio in 1985. The explanation for the radical disparities lies elsewhere. The Lazio tribunal probably adhered more scrupulously than most American tribunals to the code's preference for collegiate panels. More important, it operated from a different set of premises on the nature of marriage and on what constitute viable grounds for incapacity."
Well, if that should be the case, I would find it interesting to see some statistics on annulments in American dioceses where the canonists were seen by Mr. Vasoli as better "qualified".
Yes, that was me who said that no tribunal is infallible. A case can be appealed even further to up to the Apostolic Signatura and even further to the Holy Father. It is my assertion, however, that the Roman Rota is more of an authority and does a better job at adjudicating these cases than any American tribunal. To give you an example of somoene who has served on the Rota, Cardinal Egan, actually helped write the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The ultimate interpretation of Canon Law is up to the Holy Father and JPII addressed the Roman Rota personally each year. JPII was critical of American tribunals handling of annulments. Also on September 17, 2004, there was a press release of Joaquin Llobel, a canon-law professor of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and a member of the tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura stating that marriage tribunals in some countries were abusing Church laws. This Vatican official did not specifically name the US but in the CWNews.com story it said "tribunal officials confirm that the Vatican is particularly concerned about American marriage courts, which frequently provide a finding of nullity on questionable grounds, such as evidence of "immaturity" of one or both partners in the union." This is a direct criticism of the argument that we have so many annulments in the US because our culture raises potential spouses to be immature and therefore incapable of having a valid marriage. If JPII didn't agree with how US tribunals were interpreting Canon Law in regard to marriage and immaturity (and he certainly was the highest authority) there is something seriously flawed about US tribunals' judgements on immaturity and validity of marriages.
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9/23 radio show on annulments
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