Mending the Heart. Lisa Duffy

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СКАЧАТЬ meant, it actually brought a lot of clarity to the whole idea of taking this step.

       What Is a Valid Marriage Bond?

      People have different ideas about what marriage really is. Some people believe that every marriage is permanent and unbreakable, no matter who you are or under what circumstances you were married. From this perspective, it doesn’t matter if you were married in a church with a full Catholic Mass, on a beach with the local Unitarian minister presiding, or at a Vegas wedding chapel with Elvis as your witness. In each of these scenarios, so goes the logic, the couple took vows, so the marriage must be valid.

      On the other extreme, many people today believe a marriage is only permanent when both spouses mutually agree that it should be. From this perspective, regardless of how the marriage happened, if there comes a time where one or both spouses decide their relationship is not working, they can determine that their marriage is no longer valid. If they make that decision, then they are no longer bound to each other and can go their separate ways.

      Both of these perspectives are wrong.

      The truth is that some marriages are valid and some marriages are not. It has absolutely nothing to do with personal opinion. It has everything to do with understanding and intention upon entering the marriage. A valid marriage is a permanent and unbreakable bond in the eyes of God, and not every couple who says “I do” brings this valid bond into being. The difference has to do with what takes place on the day of the wedding and leading up to that point. It has little to do with what happens after the wedding day.

      If a couple wishes to bring a valid marriage into being on their wedding day, the following things must take place:

      • Both spouses must come to the wedding of their own free will.

      • Both spouses must intend to make a lifelong, exclusive commitment to each other.

      • Both spouses must be open to new life and bringing children into the world.

      • A Catholic priest or deacon must be present at the wedding.

      In other words, to bring a valid marriage into being, the couple needs to know what marriage is about, and they need to enter into it freely, with full intention. The first three of the points above are rooted in the “unitive” and “procreative” aspects of marriage — what the Catholic Church has defined as the two basic reasons for marriage: to unite the husband and wife to each other in love and to prepare a welcoming home for any children God may send. When these elements are present, a valid marriage bond is created.

       Valid vs. Sacramental

      Let’s clarify a few terms here that might be confusing. For the purposes of the annulment process, the terms “valid” and “sacramental” are apples and oranges. “Valid” refers to the fact that the couple stood in the right place, said the right things, and intended the right things. “Sacramental” refers to a valid marriage that has been contracted by spouses who are both baptized Christians.¹ So, a Catholic and a Catholic can have a sacramental marriage, as can a Baptist and a Lutheran, or a Catholic and an Episcopalian, etc. But, for a marriage to be sacramental, both spouses must be baptized. So a Catholic and a Hindu cannot create a sacramental marriage, nor a Lutheran and a Jew. Marriages that are not between two baptized Christians are referred to as “natural” marriages, meaning a marriage that is permanent, exclusive, open to children, and ordered to the good of the spouses, but one or both spouses are not baptized Christians.

      In the annulment process, the canon lawyers are trying to determine whether a marriage — regardless of its sacramental or non-sacramental nature — is actually valid or invalid.

       Our Goal as Catholics

      For a Catholic getting married to another baptized person, the goal is to bring a valid, sacramental marriage into being on the day of the wedding. (A Catholic who marries someone who is not baptized must first obtain a dispensation from the local bishop. If the marriage is permitted, a sacramental marriage is not possible, but a valid marriage definitely is possible.) This sacramental bond is an unbreakable covenant between God and the spouses, and the only thing that can dissolve it is death.

      Pope Francis describes this perfectly in his 2016 apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”):

      The sacrament of marriage is not a social convention, an empty ritual or merely the outward sign of a commitment. The sacrament is a gift given for the sanctification and salvation of the spouses, since “their mutual belonging is a real representation, through the sacramental sign, of the same relationship between Christ and the Church….”

      “In accepting each other, and with Christ’s grace, the engaged couple promise each other total self-giving, faithfulness and openness to new life. The couple recognizes these elements as constitutive of marriage, gifts offered to them by God, and take seriously their mutual commitment, in God’s name and in the presence of the Church.” (72–73)

       To Dissolve or Not to Dissolve

      Some years back, I was talking to a divorced woman, Sandy, who was feeling discouraged about her future after going through a divorce. She believed that now, because she was Catholic, she was just stuck being single for the rest of her life, and she was only thirty-nine. I asked her if she had been through the annulment process to see if she actually could remarry at some point, and she quickly replied, “Oh, I don’t believe in the annulment process. I don’t believe the Church can take away the vows I took.”

      Sandy is not alone in her misinterpretation of what the annulment process actually accomplishes. A common assumption is that the annulment process is simply a legal process to go through, a sort of “Catholic divorce.” Often, this confusion comes from the language used regarding the process. People say things like, “You need to get an annulment,” which makes it sound as if anyone can go down to some office, fill out a few papers, and receive some kind of legal document that declares the former marriage null and permits the divorcee to marry again. If you have a sense of what marriage ought to be, this should give you an uneasy feeling.

      Because marriage is supposed to be much more than an empty ritual or just an outward sign of commitment, the annulment process is also much more than an administrative process. It is a vehicle to help bring the wounded from the battlefield into the field hospital, where they can find healing, if I may paraphrase Pope Francis.

      Rest assured, receiving a decree of invalidity does not mean your marriage relationship never existed. This is a painful misconception that holds many people back from starting the annulment process. After putting in all that hard work, no one wants to be told their relationship was somehow not real. Nor is the annulment process just a sneaky way for the Church to allow spouses to get out of a bad marriage. The Church is not looking for a loophole or for some way to declare a marriage that is permanent in the eyes of God to be no longer valid.

      Perhaps the worst thing about these misconceptions is that they completely ignore the greater aspect of the annulment process: the opportunity to face the truth about what happened, make peace with the past and lay it to rest, and find spiritual and emotional healing from divorce.

      So the natural questions that arise are: If the purpose of the annulment process isn’t to dissolve a valid marriage bond, and it’s not some loophole in the moral law, then how can people get remarried after a divorce? Why must you go through the annulment process after a civil divorce has been obtained?

       Will the Real Annulment Process Please Stand СКАЧАТЬ