03/14/2005: "Question of the Week: Aren't annulments just "Catholic divorces"?"

The short answer to this question is "no".

An annulment is not a divorce. An annulment is a statement that a marriage never existed.

Catholics believe that there are two aspects to a marriage: Natural and Sacramental. the natural aspect is fairly similar to civil in that it is the human aspect of the marriage. However there is more to natural than just the civil aspect. In Massachusetts right now two men or two women can be civilly wed. This is not a natural marriage. A natural marriage still requires that the union be of one man and one woman and that they come together and live as one family.

The Sacramental aspect of a marriage is that binding together that Jesus speaks of in the Gospels:

"But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife),
and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate." (Mark 10:6-9)

A Sacramental marriage is a marriage in which God has joined two people together.

The Catholic Church takes this teaching of Jesus very seriously. Christ tells us "no human being must separate" a Sacramental marriage. As such, we will not grant a divorce of a sacramental marriage. We will not separate those two who are bound together by God.

The annulment process is the process of determining whether a Sacramental marriage existed (not a natural marriage). The Church has requirements as to what constitutes a Sacramental marriage. I won't go into what those requirements are, but if those requirements are broken, then no Sacramental marriage exists. All the annulment process does is determine if that is the case.

The process is very much like a court. The person requesting an annulment must present their case as to why a valid Sacramental marriage did not exist. They have a canon laywer to do this for them. There is also another canon laywer who is the defense. They are not the representative of the other partner in the marriage, but of the marriage itself. It doesn't matter if both parties want an annulment. The marriage is still defended. Finally there is a judge who will decide the matter.

If an annulment is granted, that means that in the Church's eyes, the Sacramental marriage never existed and that the two people who were married, were not Sacramentally married and as such were not bound together by God. Because they have never been Sacramentally married before, they are able to do so or as society would see it, get "re-married". This is a mis-statement because the person has never been, in fact, married before.

Ken Crawford :

That is one of the requirements for a valid marriage and what makes that one unique is that it is one of the few requirements that is common to both civil and sacramental marraiges.

For a civil marriage, and understand that I'm not an expert on marriage law, most of the requirements surround two things:

1. How brief the married relationship was.
2. How "intertwined" the two became during the relationship.

As such, if you haven't comsumated the marriage, it's clear that requirement #2 wasn't satisfied.

In a Sacramental marriage, both #1 and #2 are completely irrelevant. You could have been married for a day, not have seen each other since 15 minutes after the ceremony (I'll explain those 15 minutes "shortly", boy that's hilarious but only to me until I explain myself "shortly" ha! ha! ha!) and still have a valid sacramental marriage.

A sacramental marriage is valid from the moment it is created so it doesn't matter how short it is. However, one of the keys to creating a sacramental marriage is the consecration of it and that is done by consumating it. In fact, the term consumate has nothing to do with sex inherently, but really means "the act of finalizing it's validity".

So, that's why comsumating the relationship is so often remembered as a cause for an annulment because it is basically the only criteria that matters for both civil and sacramental marriage.

Finally, back to what was cracking me up, since "consumating" the marriage on the altar of the Catholic Church is desecrating the Church, that would in fact, invalidate the marriage, that means you need to have been together for at least 15 minutes after the ceremony to have an opportunity to consumate it. At least from my vantage point, that's a pretty "short" amount of time.

03.18.05 @ 09:24 AM PST

Ken's Brother :

Granted it's been a long time since I saw the School House Rock on Annulments and whatnot, but my perception was the only way you could get an annulment was if y'all hadn't consumated the relationship.

03.18.05 @ 03:16 AM PST [homepage]