Vatican tightens code for annulments

[Phlegethon]

Vatican tightens code for annulments

Sophie Arie in Rome
Wednesday February 9, 2005
The Guardian

Facing an increasing number of marriage annulments, the Vatican yesterday made its first move in 70 years to try to ensure that Catholics do not win the Church's blessing to end their marriages for the wrong reasons.

"This code aims to help make it easier for the tribunals to ascertain the truth," said Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, presenting an updated book of legal guidelines called Dignitas Connubii (The Dignity of Marriage).

The Catholic church does not recognise divorce, and annulment is the only way for Catholics to remarry before the church. More than 500,000 annulments are granted by Roman Catholic diocesan tribunals each year, most of them in America.

Although civil divorces rule that a marriage has failed, church annulments require proof that a true marriage never existed.

Critics say that as divorce has become increasingly common, Catholics have made increasingly ingenious claims to annul their marriages. And church tribunals are increasingly willing to accept new interpretations.

"In the context of a divorce mentality, even canon processes of annulment cases can be easily misunderstood, as if they weren't anything more than ways to obtain a divorce with the blessing of the Church," said Cardinal Julian Herranz.

Acceptable reasons are that one person was tricked or forced into marriage or that a secret was withheld, such as impotence.

Recently published Vatican records show new reasons, previously unheard of, for breaking off a marriage. One annulment was granted in 2003 on the basis that the husband had an "exaggerated sense of supremacy" and warned the wife, before marriage, that if she was not up standard he reserved the right to divorce.

In another case, a man pleaded that he had been bullied into marrying. His parents sent a letter to their priests expressing their concerns the night before the marriage. The letter was used as evidence and the annulment granted.

The updated guidelines were requested by Pope John Paul II who recently complained that annulments are too easily obtained and that tribunals face the risk of corruption.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story...408899,00.html

[Ederico]

When were annulments introduced within Catholicism?