Dico autem vobis quia quicumque dimiserit uxorem suam, nisi ob fornicationem (πορνείᾳ) et aliam duxerit, moechatur. Et qui dimissam duxerit, moechatur.—Our Lord Jesus Christ in St. Matthew 19:9.
Before we look at the above translations of Sacred Scripture, we must look at some definitions and statistics. First of all, there are three tiers of marriage:
- Civil Marriage—this is any couple married in a fashion that is recognized by the country in which they live. Due to the rejection of the Natural Law in the United States, you can now “marry” another person of the opposite sex, the same sex, your pet, or even yourself. Some Western countries are even considering incestuous relationships as being legal and binding civil marriages. Thus, there’s an extremely low bar to effect a “civil marriage.”
- Natural Marriage—this happens when a man and a woman marry. This is a slightly higher bar in today’s dark culture. For example, a Muslim man marrying a Muslim woman effect a natural marriage, but this is not a sacramental marriage. The natural marriages which are registered with the state are also civil marriages.
- Sacramental Marriage—this is when a baptized man marries a baptized woman. Before Vatican II, this only included Catholics. Apparently, the new 1983 Code of Canon Law includes baptized Protestants marrying other baptized Protestants as being tantamount to a Catholic sacramental marriage. (I’m not weighing in on that debate in today’s article.)
In any case, two Catholics of the opposite sex marrying each other in a Catholic Church and signing the state paperwork after Mass in the sacristy effect all three of the above categories of marriage: 1) Civil (since they signed the state paperwork) 2) Natural (since it’s a man and a woman) and 3) Sacramental (since two baptized people said their vows before a priest.) Congratulations to you if you have effected marriage under all three descriptions.
Before mixing together the main dish, let’s put a few more pans on the back burner. Catholic World Report had an article in 2011 called Annulment Nation. I normally don’t like to quote three consecutive paragraphs from another site, but these three consecutive paragraphs (which I reproduce below in italics) set the background to my forthcoming Scriptural discussion:
Despite this decline, the United States, with 5.9 percent of the world’s Catholics, still accounts for 60 percent of the Church’s 58,322 declarations of nullity (2007 statistics in the Vatican Secretariat of State’s Statistical Yearbook of the Church). Of the 35,009 declarations of nullity granted in the US, 79 percent were granted through the ordinary process, while 21 percent were granted through the documentary process.
The documentary (administrative) process is used for relatively black-and-white cases, such as those involving defect of form (which occurs when a Catholic is married outside the Church), consanguinity, marriage below the legal age, marriage to a person validly married to another, marriage (under certain circumstances) to one’s abductor or the murderer of one’s spouse, or marriage to clerics or religious not dispensed from their vows. Of the 7,355 declarations of nullity granted in the US by the documentary process, 74 percent were granted for reasons of defect of form.
The ordinary process, on the other hand, entails a trial that determines whether a valid marriage took place. Questions over the validity of consent and over perpetual and antecedent impotence are adjudicated in the ordinary process. On occasion, disputes over defect of form and other impediments to marriage are dealt with in the ordinary process. Of the 27,654 declarations of nullity granted in the US by the ordinary process, 99.6 percent were granted for reasons of defect of consent—the most oft-criticized grounds for annulment.
Notice again that the Documentary or Administrative Process declarations of nullity usually refer to Catholics who did not get married in a Catholic Church. If I worked in a tribunal, even someone as hard-core as me would grant these declarations of nullity. However, if they had children in that civil marriage, before processing Catholic declaration of nullity paperwork, I would do everything pastorally possible to move that couple from approaching annulment to approaching convalidation. As most of you know, convalidation is moving a civil marriage of two Catholics who got married without the Church into a sacramental marriage where that same couple marries within the Church. (It’s frequently and erroneously called “blessing the marriage,” but that is silly because a priest can’t bless sin.)
On the other hand, the Ordinary Process to annulments normally includes the tedious investigation of two baptized Catholics who got married in a Catholic Church but now claim, for example, that one of them didn’t have freedom to approach the altar, even though they went through marriage prep and got married in the site of a priest, family and witnesses. Keep in mind that the Ordinary Process to annulments is not efficacious like a sacrament. It is only the “best guess” of the tribunal (who gets paid for all outcomes, therefore favoring the separation-based outcome.)
As we see in the Catholic World Report above, 79% of US annulments in 2011 came through the Ordinary Process. Of those Ordinary Process declarations of nullity, 99.6% of those Ordinary applications were granted for defect of consent, also called “lack of due discretion.”
To use the three “levels of marriage” definition that I put above, we could put declaration of nullity according to the Ordinary Process in these layman’s theological terms, admittedly a little choppy for the sake of brevity: An annulment is when a bishop (through his diocesan tribunal) says that while two baptized Catholics got naturally married, God Himself purposely refrained from galvanizing that natural marriage into a sacramental marriage that day of the wedding due to some lack of freedom in that couple prior to their wedding day (as in, during their engagement.) Thus, the tribunals say, even though it looked and sounded like a Catholic wedding, it was invalid due to invisible impediments no one could see in their hearts! This is why all those “remarried Catholics” out there frequently say “I was never divorced. I got an annulment meaning the diocese told me I never had a valid marriage.”
But wait a minute. How do the tribunals do all this mind-reading upon God Almighty? I suppose their trick might be a little believable if this happened three times a year coast-to-coast. But US tribunals combined grant about 50,000 a year since Vatican II. This is a total joke. None of these tribunals are reading God’s mind in eternity that these people can be declared retroactively “invalid” even upon the day of their full Catholic wedding for an emotional impediment and therefore “they were never married.” This is a farce and it is a sacrilege. It reveals that US annulments are nothing but “Catholic divorces” handed out like candy.
Like candy? Yes. According to the Catholic Almanac, US dioceses granted 63,900 annulments in 1991, comprising 79% of the world’s annulments (totaling 80,700) in that same year of 1991, despite the fact American Catholics only make up 6.2% of the world’s Catholics! Look at those numbers again to see the mockery made of the sacraments in this country.
Maybe a few of those annulments were valid when there truly was something forced during engagement, but not the majority of them. Most annulments come under “lack of due discretion” or “defect of consent.” But this is interpreted in a manner so broad that a woman could claim retroactively upon her engagement that she didn’t know her future husband was going to spend so much time working on his car in the garage. Or maybe a man might claim on the intake paperwork he didn’t know his future-wife was going to be on Instagram so much. These are only slight exaggerations if you saw the reasons people gave today on their annulment forms. Yes, if you can prove “defect of consent” for any circus of silly reasons, you can be well on your way to committing adultery with your bishop’s approval. But only if you pay him some money to ratify your conscience, of course.
Annulments in the United States cost between $50 and $300. However, the real price to an annulment is the destroyed lives of so many children. Your confused children will not be healed when a tribunal (that just pocketed $300) happens to label your Catholic-divorce a fancy term like “declaration of nullity.” These bishops overseeing the tribunals of destruction will answer to God for so many broken families and innovation to the sacraments. Ordinary Process of declarations of nullity has no precedent in Catholic Church history before the 1970s, except very rare cases of royalty, reserved to the Pope himself. That’s why if you google “History of Catholic Annulments” you will overload on exclusively Henry VIII, made famous by St. Thomas More and the martyr saint’s opposition to playing such games with marriage. Real saints stand against this garbage of making money on children’s psyches and souls being destroyed by divorce.
Now we get to the Scripture on all of this. I quoted the Latin Vulgate at the top of this article quoting Matthew 19:9.
The ESV reads: And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.
The DRB reads: And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.
The above Scripture is the only apologetic that modernists in tribunals use to justify their hundreds of thousands of annulments in the Ordinary Process done in tribunals coast-to-coast and even across the world. But what exactly is “sexual immorality” in the ESV or “fornication” in the DRB? The Greek word here is πορνείᾳ or in the Latin alphabet, porneia. How do the early Christians and Holy Fathers translate this word? Catholic World Report in Annulment Nation also quotes the Navarre Bible:
It is almost certain that the phrase refers to unions accepted as marriage among some pagan peoples, but prohibited as incestuous in the Mosaic Law and in rabbinical tradition. The reference, then, is to unions radically invalid because of some impediment.… They had never in fact been joined in true marriage.—Navarre Bible commentary.
So, look at that. The only Scriptural basis for an annulment is consanguinity (and occasional “lack of consent” in extreme cases.) If any reader could please demonstrate to me any other country or time in 2000 years of Church history (before our current crisis of faith) that granted thousands of annulments for dozens of reasons, I will happily add an addition at the end of this article with your submission. Just send me an email showing where annulments were common practice in any country before the 20th and 21st century and I’ll amend this article. (Trust me, no emails will be coming. I’ve searched through Church history for these “annulments” and found nearly none.)
Keep in mind that I too would grant annulments for those rare cases of “lack of consent” if I worked in a tribunal and there was significant evidence one of the two lovers had true lack of freedom in engagement. But I would only consider obvious examples, like the fiancé was high on cocaine during his vows at Mass. Something like this, however, doesn’t work for lack of due discretion: “I didn’t know she was going to be so bad a parallel parking.” (Again, only a slight exaggeration if you saw the ridiculous reasons granted for tens of thousands of annulments today in the United States.
Again, 99.6% of Ordinary applications in the USA were granted for “defect of consent” which can mean you had butterflies in your stomach the day of your wedding and now you deserve a new spouse.
To recap before the end of this article, keep in mind declarations of nullity coming from the Administrative Process are not as misused as the Ordinary Process. For example, imagine a non-practicing Catholic “married” another non-practicing Catholic on a beach one day with a justice of the peace, but without the dispensation by the local bishop, Then, two years later, they are still childless and one of them has a large reversion to true Catholicism. He wants to marry a good traditional Catholic woman, but this time in the Church. Because of lack of form, even I (if I were ever allowed to work in a chancery) even I would grant an annulment to a couple like this. Why? Because the original couple was Catholics literally getting married outside the Catholic Church. Easy “Documentary Process” of “lack of form” for them. (However, if they had children, I would try to talk them into a convalidation, not an annulment.)
But as far as the Ordinary Process, in the 1970s, the big corrupt business began of tribunals charging hundreds of dollars “to sunder what God has put together” against real Catholic marriages who just got tired of each other and wanted a new squeeze with the ratification of their broken consciences from their local bishop. Again, as we saw in the Catholic World Report above, 79% of US annulments in 2011 came through the Ordinary Process. Of those Ordinary Process declarations of nullity, 99.6% of those Ordinary applications were granted for defect of consent, also called “lack of due discretion.” This is such a crock of tampering with the sacraments, which is essentially making a mockery of Christ Himself.
I am not saying that all annulments are invalid, but most of them are. If at any point you become convinced your annulment was [most-likely] invalid, you need to live a life of continence (no sexual-contact.) This isn’t my idea. It’s that of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and He is clear your salvation depends on this: But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.—Mt 5:32
Please don’t write me with your past annulment cases. I have absolutely no authority to declare a marriage (or annulment) invalid (or valid.) Why, then, am I writing this article with such confidence? Simply to show readers that the current annulment system has no precedent in Catholic Church history before 1970. It certainly has no Scriptural precedent.
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Himself stood against common practice of these Ordinary Process tribunals. When Jesus Christ said you couldn’t leave your wife except reasons of “porneia,” he did not mean pornography (or even adultery.) The Church Fathers (all the way up to even the Navarre Bible run by Opus Dei—a group I hardly consider to be traditional Catholics) all hold that “porneia” means “consangunity.” In fact, even the famous Protestant John Piper (with over a million followers on Twitter) shows that Christ Himself did not hold that adultery was a good enough reason to leave one’s spouse (in either Mt 5 or Mt 19.) Piper wrote about that here, with studies of the Biblical Greek included.
This is why I can say with confidence that the tribunals and the bishops who rubber-stamp all these declarations of nullity are in danger of going to hell for destroying so many families. We really are only talking about “Catholic divorces” diabolically sanitized into the term “annulment.” These tribunals and their bishops are worse than Protestants, as proved in the previous paragraph.
And bishops, don’t tell me, “If we don’t give out all these annulments, people will leave the Church.” The truth is: It’s better for the laity to have a temper-tantrum at your fatherhood saying “No,” to something, leave the Church…repent, and then return to the true teachings of the Catholic Church… than it is for the uncatechized laity to be coddled and pacified at their modernist parish on their merry way to hell.
But the bishops aren’t going to listen to me, so I write to the laity this: Choose wisely if you are going listen to Jesus Christ and the Church Fathers or your local modernist tribunal on letting you get “remarried.” Or, if you’re reading this article and you’re not married yet, take my advice: Don’t marry someone with whom you are unequally yoked in matters of faith, liturgy, patriarchy, discipline, modesty or sex. You’ll be approaching a tribunal for a fake-invalidation of your marriage within about five years. For a few hundred bucks—I guarantee you’ll get your loins’ desire from nearly any diocese in the USA.