When I first began as a lawyer in the the 80's, about half my cases fell in this type of domestic relations practice. Even if all the players in the system dislike it, no one knows what else to do about a situation when one spouse wants to end a marriage. All the participants feel that there is no alternative because (i) it is worse, they think, for any kids to be in a bad marriage than to have divorced parents, and (ii) if one party wants to end the marriage, then it is ended; the other one cannot save it. Mandatory waiting periods were tried for a short time in a few states if one party claimed that the marriage was actually not broken, but to my knowledge, invoking such a cooling-off period did not save more than a miniscule number of marriages.
Before the present no-fault system, there was a lot of perjury in divorce courts about the "causes" for decreeing that a marriage had ended. You know, testimony about the amount of abuse or whatever other preferred "cause" was required to qualify for divorce. The no-fault system, it was felt, would end the perjury.
The presuppositions of our culture lead almost inexorably to this type of divorce environment. The Church does not help; its handling of annulments in this country de facto guarantees, in my opinion, that the culture's views on the failure of marriages will prevail among Catholics.
To change the system would require that people accept the notion of binding commitments that simply cannot be terminated. If divorce is not an option, then most people will figure out how to make a bad situation tolerable--in other words, they will grow up. But if the Church will not hold to this notion in its actual handling of annulments (as opposed to its stated doctrine), how can we ever inculcate it among the wider culture?
Jim Cole
Jim:
Two points.
1. The no-fault system, it was felt, would end the perjury.
Well, it didn't. Nowadays, unsubstantiated allegations of domestic violence and/or sexual abuse are often used to gain leverage in decisions about child custody and property. If you didn't know that already, Baskerville will convince you. Once a man has a restraining order imposed on him, he can pretty much kiss his house and his kids goodbye. And such orders are ridiculously easy to get in most places now.
2. But if the Church will not hold to this notion in its actual handling of annulments (as opposed to its stated doctrine), how can we ever inculcate it among the wider culture?
I'm not sure whether you mean that the criteria for nullity in the current canon law are too broad in themselves, or whether you mean only that tribunals in the Anglosphere interpret them too liberally. If the latter, I agree; if the former, I do not.
I see myself as part of the problem. I divorced my first wife and got the marriage annulled by the Church. The marriage was certainly null according to prevailing standards of canonical jurisprudence, but I now think those standards are too loose. If they had been what I now believe they should be, I would not have got the annulment.
Is that the sort of case you have in mind?
Best,
Mike
Mike: The situation described in your post sounds horrific indeed. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be separated from my kids, to have limited visitation or none at all. What a cruel system! What has brought us to such a pass?
Re annulments: I have been reading up on this (just the tiniest bit). A friend is trying to persuade me to become an advocate with the diocesan Tribunal. The training classes start in '08. They require a huge time commitment, though, so I don't see how I can do it. (OTOH, we keep hearing rumors of upcoming layoffs--the second round this year at my company--so perhaps I'll end up having all the time in the world. /Black Humor Off.)
Anyway, I am learning about the traditional "bona" of marriage which define validity...and about the proposed fourth bonum, bonum coniugum, which (IMHO) would open up the proverbial Pandora's box if ever incorporated into Canon Law.
In the case of the bonum coniugum--and esp. WRT Lawrence Wrenn's claim that love constitutes this bonum--I feel the dangers are manifold. The criteria for determining validity then become hopelessly subjective (what is love? how does one determine whether it was present at the time of the marriage? what degree of love is required for validity? what degree of lack thereof is required for nullity?). The result would almost certainly be that annulments would be granted in every case--in short, an even worse mess than we're in already. And so much for the Christian ideal of sacrifice, of redemptive suffering, of "offering it up."
Anyway....
Can you elaborate on the overly broad criteria for nullity to which you object? I have a feeling I would have the same objections. 
Thanks...
Diane
Diane:
Limited or no visitation for non-custodial parents, mostly fathers, is a serious problem indeed; but it's inevitable given the way the system works. See what the judge said: "These women want me to..." etc. The visitation problem is only one among many. As Jim Cole pointed out, the way things are in family law is itself inevitable given prevailing social attitudes and values. It is those which have to be changed, and it can't be done by legislation.
As for the question of grounds for nullity, it would make no sense to nullify marriages just because they do not embody the bona conjugii in a manner satisfactory to the parties. Otherwise involuntary sterility or separation could be grounds for nullity, which they are not; and what you say about "love" is also right. See Msgr. Cormac Burke's article at http://www.cormacburke.or.ke/node/400.
Actually, all the stuff at his site is worthwhile.
Best,
Mike
Dear Mike,
I appreciated your topic of this important feast day, Christ the King, I only wish that you would have expounded more on that topic ...."Jesus Christ is so intrinisically king that the title "King" jas actually become His name. By calling ourselves Christians, we label ourselves as followers of the King...God didn't intend Israel to have a kingom. The kingdom was a result of Israel's rebellion against God. The law was to be Israel's king, and through the law, God himself yielded to Israel's obstatinacy and so devised a new kind of kingship for them. Yje King is Jesus; in him God entere humanity and espouse it to himself. This is the usual form of divine activity inrelation to mankind. God does have a fixed plan that he must carry out; on the conytrary, hr has many dufferent ways of finding man and even of turning his wrongs ways into right ways. The feast of Christ the King is therefore not a feast of those who are subjugated, but a feast of those who who know that they are in the hands of the one who writes straight on crooked lines."
This a quote from Pope Benedict XVI
As for the topic you went to I belive as most that divorce is made to easy now. Years ago when I got my divorce (1964) there was no such thing as "no-fault) and it was a 1,2,3 thing. I one person did not the divorce they were both made to go through two months of reconciliation court with a minister, social worker and a counselor. It was their determination whether there anything to savage. In my case there was only a three month old child and that was determined that it would too much a responsibilty for a child to keep a marriage that obviously dead before it even began to keep together. I worked the Separated, Divorced and Remarried Catholic in Greensbor and new Jersey for nearly 2 1/2 years and thankfully was able to help several people in getting annulments. The Catholic Tribunal knew that the Catholic Church had made it too easy for couples to get married in those days and changed the criteria to what it is now.
I do agree with you Mike that men have suffere financially and as far as visitation of their children. But, that is our legal system. And until that is changed I don't believe there is any hope for those fathers in that situation. Knowing you, I have prayed continously for the softing of your ex=wife but as I have said I don't believe it is her to changed in any way . So, I pray that you could accept this and try to get on with your life. This may not be easy but you can only hit that brick wall just some many times.
God Bless as always.
Barbara
Dear Barbara,
We are much more than followers of the King.
In Him, and through Him and with Him, we become, priest, prophet, king, to the honor and glory of the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Mary
Mike:
You are dead-on in respect to how the perjury has been shifted to false claims, which are now being made by men as well as women, of abuse and/or stalking and the like. The adult abuse laws seem to have become a standard tool in the divorce lawyer's toolbox. I have not missed for a minute this type of practice since I was able to leave it.
On the question of annulments, I was thinking more about Pope John Paul II's criticism of the U. S. tribunals' churning out too many annulments than the content of the relevant canons themselves. I don't think the numbers have changed significantly since the Holy Father's criticism, but I have not researched the data, either. And I hope nothing I said in my first comment was taken to reflect on anyone's personal case; I was speaking of the divorce cases I had seen and annulments taken generally. If I have caused offense to you or any reader, I apologize.
Jim Cole
Jim:
You have not offended me in the least. I was just wondering what you thought the Church's complicity in the divorce culture consisted in.
I do not believe that the absolute number of annulments in the US is "too high." I think there are many more broken AND invalid marriages that never come before a tribunal than are annulled by tribunals. That fact itself reflects our culture, and the sad state of Catholic catechesis, more than it reflects on the tribunals.
What I do believe is that some of the formal (as distinct from "lack of form") annulments granted by US tribunals can be sustained only by overly broad interpretations of Canon 1095's criteria for nullity. Perhaps that's what JP2 meant. If so, he was right.
Best,
Mike
Hey Barbara:
Since you moved I don't have any contact info for you. Please e-mail it to me, if you would. My e-mail address is linked just below my profile.
Best,
Mike
As a person who has formally defected from the faith due to divorce and annulment issues with the Catholic Church and who successfully defended a valid marriage before the Roma Rota twice, I state, without reservation, that the American Catholic Church is entirely corrupt from top to bottom with respect to its pastoral approach to marriage/divorce/annulment/adultery and annulment.
With "clever' interpretation of the already existing laws regarding nullity, there is not a marriage which cannot be intimated to have been null from the beginning.
Every single one of the American Bishops have abdicated their responsibilities to guarantee that their tribunals reflect the jurisprudential guidance and standards used and practiced in the Roman Rota.
Karl
I meant "remarriage" rather than "annulment", at the end of my first paragraph.
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