What God Has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism

About this book

The recent controversy over Joe Kennedys annulment gave only a glimpse of American Catholicisms open secret: that contrary to official Catholic doctrine American churches grant annulments wholesale freely declaring marriages nonexistent so that one or both partners can remarry in the church. The United States is home to only 6% of the worlds Catholics Robert Vasoli points out but it now accounts for 75% of all Church annulments two-thirds of which are granted on ostensibly psychological grounds. The real scandal though is not simply the numbers but that Church marriage courts annul thousands of marriages that are actually valid according to Catholic teaching. Drawing on considerable research the author details precisely how these courts let divorced Catholics--and many non-Catholics as well--bypass Catholic teaching and law. He shows for instance how they often help petitioners manufacture grounds for annulment which are justified with specious psychological reasoning that are counter to the letter and spirit of canon law. Indeed it may even be alleged that "lack of emotional maturity" at the time of the wedding can invalidate marriages that have lasted 30 years. The result has been a tidal wave: in 1968 the American church granted fewer than 600 annulments; today it hands out more than 60 000 a year. But Rome has not smiled on the performance of U.S. tribunals: of those psychological annulments appealed to the Roman Rota (the Vaticans highest marriage tribunal) more than 90% are overturned. This revealing look at annulment weaves painstaking analysis with a wealth of evidence as it illuminates the degree to which the U.S. Church has gone its own way since Vatican II on what constitutes valid marriage.