Читать книгу Mending the Heart - Lisa Duffy - Страница 10

Chapter One

“A Time to Tear, and a Time to Sew”

What the Annulment Process Really Is and Why It Matters

It happened on a Sunday afternoon.

I was walking my dog at the local park that sunny summer day in 1993, trying to think positive thoughts — but my heart was filled with dread, and I knew something bad was coming. As I made my way back to the house, I saw my husband’s black Toyota Celica come racing down the street. I went inside and waited for him. He had been gone for several days without a phone call or an explanation, and as he walked into the kitchen, he announced he was leaving me and filing for divorce.

My life was completely torn apart. I pleaded with him to reconsider his decision, to at least explain why he was leaving, but the most I could get out of him was that we had grown apart, and that now he wanted different things out of life than he had when we got married.

Of course, I was devastated. I did not want to get divorced, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make the marriage work. Not only had I married for life, but I was Catholic, and I knew that Catholics are not supposed to get divorced. This is because the Catholic Church upholds Christ’s teaching that marriage was created to be a permanent union — so really, no one is supposed to get divorced, but Catholics are bound by that teaching.

But my husband would not change his mind. My life changed dramatically from that day forward. The life I had worked so hard to build during the years we were married began being dismantled piece by piece as we went through the legal process of separation and divorce. I would now have to figure out what kind of future was in store for me. I would need to figure out how to put the pieces back together, how to mend my life.

Finding My Way Back to the Future

Like anyone who gets divorced, I had to find a way to start again and forge a new future for myself. The hard part was knowing where to begin. Of course, I had a lot of questions, many of them about how I would reconcile the fact that I was now both divorced and Catholic: Could I still receive the sacraments? Was I still welcome at church? Was God ashamed of me?

Little by little, I received answers from the priest who was counseling me during that time. And after getting myself through those first horrible months of overwhelming pain — pain so intense that it felt as though I should have died because of it, I began to wonder about the annulment process and whether or not it was right for me. I was thirty years old at the time, and although my preference was to reconcile with my husband and remain married, that option had been declined by my ex-spouse. Looking ahead to the future, the idea of being alone for the rest of my life seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. I was confident my vocation in life was to marriage, and I was distraught at the idea of facing the future by myself.

I really didn’t know anything about the annulment process, just that it was an option for Catholics in my position. Yet every time I entertained the idea of “getting an annulment” — as I had heard it put so many times — I had this nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

How could it be that I stood before God, family, and friends the day we got married and pledged my life to my husband, for better or for worse, but suddenly the State of California could step in and declare my marriage was over? It was supposed to be a permanent relationship. How does that happen? Before the ink had barely dried on the divorce papers, my ex-spouse was calling someone else his wife. According to just about everyone else, that was it. Our marriage was over. But I was convinced there had to be more to it than that. It seemed so easy — too easy — for something that was supposed to last forever to be suddenly over at the crack of a gavel. Something was very wrong and unsettling about that.

There was a lot I needed to do before I could consider the possibility of going through the annulment process. I had so many questions, and it was a bit overwhelming. Many people I talked to about it had varying opinions — sometimes polar opposites — and I ended up not really knowing what to think.

Your circumstances may be altogether different from mine. Maybe you were not abandoned by your spouse but were pushed to the point of making the choice to divorce because of some sort of abuse. There are many scenarios that could bring you to this point. But no matter what your situation is, you probably also feel that there has to be more to the annulment process than receiving a simple, albeit expensive, piece of paper. I’d like to walk down this path with you and help you sort through this complex situation. If there is a time to tear, and in this sense I refer to the shredding of a marriage contract, then there definitely is a time to mend, a time to heal. And from my perspective, the annulment process truly is a time for mending and healing.

My goal in this chapter is to start with the basic premise of the annulment process and discuss in simple terms what it actually is, and why it can be important to go through it.

Our Unfortunate Reality

God designed marriage to be a permanent, exclusive, lifelong relationship that is open to new life. Strong marriages and families are the building blocks of society. Our unfortunate reality, however, is that divorce has become commonplace, even expected, and many Catholics today find themselves divorced, whether intentionally or not. For some, divorce is an excuse to exit an unhappy marriage. For others, it is forced upon them, whether they are the abandoned spouse or are compelled to choose that option as a means of protection from an abusive relationship. This is not some bogus way of saying divorce is okay, because it’s not okay. But it is the reality we live in, and it is a crisis we need to deal with on a realistic level.

So the Catholic Church offers us an effective tool for clarification and healing in the annulment process. You might think of it as the Church’s way of helping people set the record straight and move forward in life with certainty when a state’s government has ruled that a marriage contract ceases to exist. Because we, as Catholics, don’t believe marriage is just a simple legal contract but an actual institution and sacrament, there are far more ramifications than just dividing property and parting ways.

The annulment process can seem intimidating and overwhelming if you are standing on the outside looking in. Many people who consider starting this process wonder whether or not it is worthwhile to spend their time and energy rehashing the past and all its painful memories. This aspect of the process is deeply sobering and can be quite intimidating. The whole thing can also sound like a lot of legal hassle — filling out forms and selecting witnesses for testimony, in-person depositions with canon lawyers, etc. If you’ve just gone through a court battle for a civil divorce, going through yet another legal procedure for the Church probably doesn’t seem very palatable.

A good friend of mine, Dan Flaherty, shares his perspective:

My view of the annulment process going in was that it was just “Catholic divorce” — not so much in theory, where I understood the teaching of the Church, but in terms of the way it was actually practiced. I believed that the tribunals simply processed the applications like bureaucrats.

My one-on-one interview with a tribunal representative was different. The person questioning me was compassionate and non-judgmental, yet still looking for information. In contrast to the divorce courts, which only asked how assets were to be divided, the tribunal rep was asking questions about conditions prior to the marriage, in terms of both the relationship and with me as an individual.

I still recall at one point recounting something in particular and shuddering. A nerve was hit. Deep down, I knew that the marriage had been doomed from the start, and everything about the process — from the personal interview to the questionnaire — confirmed me in that belief.

One thing I would also say to anyone entering the annulment process is that you get out of it what you put into it. I chose to treat it as a time when I was in a spiritual hospital, as it were. I began seeing a Catholic therapist. It’s certainly possible to go through the process and get only minimal benefit — the number of times I actually spoke to the tribunal or wrote a document couldn’t have been more than two–three times over the course of a year-plus. But if you take the wounds that are exposed during those handfuls of times and work on them outside the annulment process, you get the most this healing time can offer.

I can’t say the sense of guilt over the failure of the marriage has gone away, but today it is manageable. It wasn’t when I began the process.

You might read Dan’s story and know exactly what he is describing. Stories like his are common among people entertaining the idea of going through the annulment process.

So let’s unpack all of this and try to get to a basic understanding of it.

A Simple Breakdown of the Annulment Process

Simply put, the annulment process is a tool. Using the details you provide about your marriage relationship, the people involved in the annulment process — you, your ex-spouse, the case assistant (someone appointed by a parish to help walk you through the process), and the canon lawyers — can create a “big picture” scenario to determine whether or not a valid marriage was brought into being on the day of your wedding. Just as a doctor uses tools to detect what might be ailing you — a stethoscope, an X-ray machine, an electrocardiogram — the information you provide and the testimony of your witnesses are tools that assist the tribunal in being able to see what caused your marriage to fail. More importantly, this information helps them determine whether or not you had a valid marriage bond to begin with. This brings us to a very important theme that goes along with the impact of the annulment process: whether or not you had a valid marriage.

For my part, this assertion that I may not have had a valid marriage was one of the most difficult aspects I wrestled with when I was contemplating whether or not to go through the annulment process. The mere idea sounded insulting because I knew without a doubt that I had taken my vows seriously, and to consider the possibility that the marriage never was valid to begin with felt like a hit below the belt. But once I understood what it all really 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 Up?

The real purpose of the Catholic annulment process is to determine whether or not a valid marriage bond was brought into being on the day of your wedding. As we discussed before, not all marriages have a valid bond. Some marriages have the appearance of being valid but do not have a valid bond. We know that a valid marriage is one that takes place between a man and a woman who come to the altar with the desire to create a permanent union with an openness to having children. (Note: This would include couples who are unable to have children but still marry with the desire to create a lifelong, permanent relationship and an openness to new life if God chooses to bless them with that gift. A couple can still have a valid marriage even if they are not able to have children.) As previously mentioned, the Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a sacrament. So, in addition to the unitive and procreative aspects needed to form a valid union, it takes two baptized Christians to form a sacramental marriage.

But some marriages only appear to be valid when they actually are not. How does that happen? Well, think of it this way. For a sacrament to take place, two things must be present: matter and form. To understand what these two elements are, take a look at the Mass. A priest can pray the words of Eucharistic consecration (the form) over an Oreo cookie, but it cannot be changed into the Body of Christ because that is not the proper matter. The host must be unleavened wheat bread. Likewise, even if the proper host is on the altar, I cannot pray the words of consecration over it: only an ordained Catholic priest can. To take another example, look at Baptism. If you try to baptize someone with Coca-Cola, there is no valid baptism. You must use water (matter) and say the appropriate blessing (form) during the pouring of the water.

The same is true for a marriage. All the right things must be in place for a marriage to be valid. The form of the Sacrament of Matrimony is the vows themselves, while the matter is the couple’s mutual consent and the consummation of the marriage. Often, it appears that a couple has everything they need for a valid marriage — they can check off the usual boxes, the service at the church, the dress, tux, rings, certificate, etc. But if the two people exchanging their vows do not fully intend the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage, a valid bond cannot be created.

In my own experience, anyone who attended my wedding back in 1990 probably would not have questioned the validity of our marriage based upon what they saw. He and I were both Catholic, and we got married in a beautiful Catholic church with a full Mass. We had the dress, the tux, the rings, a handsome bridal party, and flowers. We had all the right things in all the right places except for the most critical aspect: intentions. My then-spouse later admitted many disturbing things about that day and the days leading up to the wedding. The most unfortunate thing, in my opinion, was that he never had any intention of remaining faithful or remaining married. He knew going into it that at some point he would leave. This is an example of how a couple can appear to have a valid marriage when they really don’t.

Permanent Ain’t So Permanent After All

Situations such as mine are more and more common these days, especially caused by the attitudes and perspectives of society. Many generations of divorce have diluted the notion that marriage is permanent, and the rise in cohabitation contributes to the idea that family relationships are interchangeable. There are untold numbers of couples getting married today who do not have any understanding of what marriage is supposed to be.

Terry describes what it was like to come to this realization as he went through the annulment process. He was married to his wife, Allison, for about six years before he filed for divorce, and he shares part of his experience:

I never dreamed I would ever do such a thing. When we got married, I thought the rest of our lives would be great, but Allison’s constant, unrepentant infidelity made me realize I had no other option. Our five-year-old son was being neglected and negatively affected by seeing his mother with other men. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Now he and I are just trying to live as normal lives as possible.

Reading through the annulment questionnaire was difficult at first, but ultimately, it opened my eyes to what had really happened. I recognized things I couldn’t see when Allison and I were first dating and in love. Growing up, Allison’s family had many struggles with abuse, which she rarely talked about because it upset her. After discussing it once with me, she would change the subject whenever I brought up the issue. It never occurred to me that this was something that could pose a problem; I just thought she wanted me to respect her privacy.

I was always amazed that Allison said yes when I asked her to marry me because she was such a popular girl. We got married shortly after college, but in hindsight, I don’t think she ever was really interested in being a mom or a wife; she just wanted a different life than what she had. When she got tired of me, she ran to someone else for gratification. This was the hard truth I had to come to terms with.

Subconsciously, I know I was not willing to admit this before, but in having to write it all down, it really helped me to accept this about us and find peace. I felt like I could begin to move forward.

Terry’s case is not that unusual, and it illustrates how a couple can have the appearance of a valid marriage on the outside but not truly have one. Allison did not come to the altar with the intention of marrying for life. She also had emotional issues that, left unaddressed, became an obstacle to her being able to fully commit herself as a spouse. This brings us to the next, natural question: What kinds of situations would make a couple incapable of having a valid marriage?

The Obstacles

Situations that can prevent a couple from bringing a valid marriage into being on the day of their wedding are called “obstacles,” and they can arise in many different areas:

• First, the bride and the groom must have complete freedom to give themselves to each other. When might this not be the case? There could be pressure from parents to get married, or maybe the bride is pregnant. Maybe the marriage is taking place only to secure citizenship in a particular country. These are examples of circumstances that would constitute a deficiency and would prohibit the bride and groom from creating a valid bond.

• Moreover, the bride and the groom must come to the altar with the intention of creating a lifelong marriage relationship and accepting children as God gives them (the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage). If either of these intentions is absent from the bride’s or the groom’s perspective, a valid marriage cannot take place.

• Next, both the bride and the groom must have complete understanding of the vows they are taking, and they need to possess the emotional and psychological ability to live them.

• Finally, the marriage must be consummated. If a couple has the wedding, but they never consummate the marriage, their union is not indissoluble. This is a special case, and such marriages would require a special dispensation from the pope to be dissolved.

Going through the annulment process and finding that an impediment existed to making a valid bond between you and your former spouse can be very difficult. This is especially hard to accept if you stood at the altar with full freedom and love, with full understanding and the proper intentions, but you come to realize that your ex-spouse may not have had the same intentions, understanding, or freedom. And it may also be that something about your intention or understanding was where the impediment lay. In chapter 4, author and annulment consultant Rose Sweet will offer an example of this for us in the story she shares.

Don’t despair. With God’s grace, coming to recognize the truth about your relationship can have a cleansing effect that will help you deal with the breakdown of your marriage as you go through this process.

A Little Encouragement