There was no testimony. She didn’t get to give her side of the story.
As a result, after the divorce was final, she felt
unsatisfied. Added to the pain of the separation itself was the feeling
that something had been left unsaid.
Erickson wasn’t interested in remarrying yet, but she sought an annulment from the Catholic church anyway.
In court, “I didn’t have a chance to say what
happened,” Erickson said. “The annulment offered me a way to do that
and get past it. It was a form of healing.”
That healing was so profound for Erickson that the parish-center administrator at
now volunteers as one of 250 advocates whom the archdiocese has trained
to guide Catholics seeking annulments through the yearlong process.
“They’re sharing information that was so intimate in
their lives with people they’ve never met with, and that’s really
scary,” Erickson said. “You’re saying stuff you’ve never said to
anyone.”
American Catholics are seeking annulments — the
church’s declaration that a marriage was invalid — in large numbers.
Whether, like Erickson, they’re hoping it helps them heal after a
divorce, or allows them to get remarried in the church, annulments are
in demand, and the church in
The St. Louis Archdiocese granted nine out of 10
requests for an annulment last year. American Catholics make up about 6
percent of the global church, but according to the most recent
In a January speech to the Roman Rota,
emphasizing the need to balance “justice” and “charity.” He also
cautioned church tribunals against allowing the growing civil divorce
rate to dictate the number of annulments — called decrees of nullity,
in church parlance — they grant.
Even after a Catholic couple gets a divorce, the
church still considers the marriage valid. An annulment is a tribunal’s
declaration that a marriage was never valid to begin with, that there
was a hidden impediment or “defect of consent” that kept the marriage
from being legitimate.
That declaration only comes after a long and
involved investigation that asks people to examine, in sometimes
excruciating detail, the ups and downs of their marriage. The tribunal
may conduct interviews with both parties, ask for details from friends
and family members, search for documentary evidence of marital
wrongdoing and order psychiatric evaluations.
Most Catholics who seek an annulment do so in order
to remarry in the church. Divorced Catholics without an annulment who
remarry outside the church are barred from receiving Holy Communion
because the church considers that marriage irregular. In his January
speech, Benedict argued that the desire to be both remarried and able
to receive the Eucharist should not come at the cost of the sacrament
of marriage.
“Both justice and charity require love for truth,
and essentially involve the search for what is true,” Benedict said.
“Without truth, charity slides into sentimentalism. Love becomes an
empty shell to be filled arbitrarily. This is the fatal risk of love in
a culture without truth.”
Monsignor
heads the St. Louis Archdiocese’s tribunal, said Benedict was
“reminding tribunals not to fall prey to the direction of society.”
leads the world in divorces, according to the U.S. Census, which partly
explains why the Catholic church here leads the world in annulments.
“You can’t just (grant annulments) because you know
that’s what people want,” he explained. “That decision has to be based
on real understanding.”
A PASTORAL TOOL
The pope’s speech went to the heart of a pastoral
challenge for church leaders presented with faithful Catholics in
unhappy marriages: How to allow an individual Catholic another chance
at marriage in the church (charity), while upholding the church’s
belief in the permanence of marriage (justice).
The speech may have also served as a subtle warning to the world’s tribunals, especially those in
members’ time is spent investigating troubled marriages. Each tribunal
reports its annulment numbers annually to the Apostolic Signatura,
often called
If Benedict wanted the church to scale back on the
number of annulments it grants, for instance, that message could be
sent around the Catholic world through Burke’s office.
“It certainly could,” said the Rev.
Bishop
Canon lawyers also point out that the tribunal system in
actually works as it’s supposed to and American bishops pour a lot of
resources into marriage cases in the hopes of helping their flocks.
“We have more people working for the tribunal here in
The vast majority of a tribunal’s work is
investigating the validity of marriages. In 2009, about 350 people
petitioned the St. Louis Archdiocese’s tribunal for an annulment,
Shamleffer said. About 250 of those were granted, while the other 100
were either still being investigated, or were rejected.
Annulments take between eight months and a year, on average, to adjudicate, and cost about
According to the
Some divorced Catholics feel the church shuns them.
A group called Arise: St. Louis Divorced and Widowed Catholics numbers
nearly 400 people and has support groups in five counties around the
archdiocese.
But Schellert, who is a leader in the 30-year-old
Arise group, said the church “tries to force an annulment down people’s
throats too quick, while people are still dealing with the grief
process.”
“Younger priests especially feel people need to get
an annulment right away after a divorce so they can get it over with,”
Schellert continued. “And sometimes it’s too early.”
“The church upholds and trusts greatly in the
dignity of marriage, but what happens sometimes is the reality of
divorce,” Shamleffer said. “The church doesn’t recommend it, but knows
that reality happens.”
Annulment investigations are often brutal, entailing
a painful retelling of the story of a failed marriage and demanding
advocates who are combinations of legal guides and shoulders to cry on.
“That’s part of our ministry too,” said
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(c) 2010, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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