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February 18, 2022After reading an article from The Catholic World Report” titled, “St. Valentine’s Day and the Marital Mission” I had some thoughts on marriage, annulments, and divorce. The article highlights two markedly different views about marriage: the traditional Catholic belief and a secular view which often results in divorce.
Catholic teaching on marriage is that it is a sacred and lifelong union of husband and wife with the common mission of deepening their own mutual love, growing in self-knowledge and in virtues to become more Christ-like, raising children, and helping each other to attain eternal life. It is viewed as sacramental between a man and a woman with each one giving free consent to enter into matrimony. The couple has full knowledge of what marriage entails and God seals that bond.
The secular view on marriage focuses primarily on seeking one’s own happiness through a satisfying emotional relationship which is a fragile foundation that relies heavily on one’s feelings. The success of this relationship is dependent upon partners relying on each other with little or no recourse to God.
While Catholics profess that they believe that marriage is forever, real-life circumstances may require one of the spouses to seek a divorce. With that, you could argue that the Church still provides an “out” through an annulment. This misconception is a misunderstanding of sacramental marriage. While civil divorce ends a marriage that was an agreement between two people, an ecclesial annulment proclaims that a “sacramental marriage” never existed.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1640) teaches us that not only won't the Church grant divorces, but that she actually can’t: “Thus the marriage bond has been established by God himself in such a way that a marriage concluded and consummated between baptized persons can never be dissolved. This bond, which results from the free human act of the spouses and their consummation of the marriage, is a reality, henceforth irrevocable, and gives rise to a covenant guaranteed by God's fidelity. The Church does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom.”
An annulment is the recognition by the Church that a marriage never actually took place due to an impediment that existed at the time of the wedding. Even though the vows were said and witnessed, this does not always mean that a sacramental marriage took place.
Many times, annulments are based upon one of the spouse’s lack of true consent to commit to all that Catholic marriage entails. Whether that means they were not open to children, they never intended to be faithful or to be married until death. They were not freely consenting to a sacramental marriage.
Christ said, “What God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Mark 10:9). And while there are circumstances where a married couple may need to live apart, the Church cannot grant divorces. Rather, the Church will help Catholics through a process to discover whether or not a valid marriage took place or not. If it is determined that impediments existed at the time of the wedding, an annulment is given, recognizing that the marriage is null.
