Annulments, Divorce, Remarriage: We’ve Got it All Backwards

The Synod for the Family is coming up, and one of the vexing problems it hopes to address is the situation of Catholic bigamists and polygamists.

Vocabulary review:

• Digamy is the act of marrying again after one’s spouse has died, and is a topic that comes up among the early Church Fathers with respect to clergy marriage.  It’s a non-issue for the laity (us normal people who aren’t ordained), but it’s fun to say out loud, so everyone should know what it means.
• Bigamy is the act of marrying a second person while you are still married to the first.  It’s right out, and always has been, for all Christians.
• Polygamy is bigamy’s ambitious kinsman, the act of marrying not just two but three or more people at once.  It’s a pastoral problem of noted significance among converts in certain parts of the world, and of unrecognized significance among the rest of us.

Here in the Americas, the troubles among Catholic polygamists are not (yet) the Big Love type; those are problems for other continents.  We also don’t have deep pastoral concerns about the traveling salesman’s dilemma. If you’ve got an active second marriage in another state, should the situation come to light your pastor won’t be too very shy about pointing out that you’re only allowed one spouse at a time.

Our pastoral difficulty is rooted, rather, in a massive disagreement about the states of our affairs: Joe Pewsitter is entirely convinced that he’s married to one woman and one only, and Fr. Rectifier keeps insisting otherwise, or insisting that because Joe is still married to the first Mrs. Pewsitter, the woman currently calling herself Mrs. P is in fact just a very lovely concubine.

Nasty words ensue.  Or no words ensue.

The Nevermind Solution

In an effort to set matters straight, Fr. R tries to talk Joe into seeking an annulment for his first marriage.

Why an annulment?  The trouble with Christians is that our marriages aren’t merely the obvious and time-proven way for a man and woman to join together to rear any children that may be the fruit of their union; our marriages are sacraments.  Our marriages are literally a participation in the life of God.  Us-n-God, doing something big together, working on a joint mission for the salvation of human souls.

Like most joint missions involving the Creator of the Universe, there’s a decent chance things  won’t always stay pretty.  It works out in the end, but the middle can be a real gut-wrencher.

There are two erroneous views of annulments, and both of them are rooted in a misunderstanding of the nature of the announcement:

Erroneous Reaction #1: I want my Catholic divorce, please.  An annulment is not an undoing of a marriage.  There is no undoing of a Christian marriage.  Once formed, the union lasts until death.  (And no, if you murder your spouse you are not allowed to remarry. Yes, I had a kid ask that in class once.)

Erroneous Reaction #2: How dare you call me a fornicator! Those who pick up on the bit about how an annulment is a declaration that your marriage never existed can be tempted to interpret the announcement as a condemnation.  It’s hubris in pious wrapping: The great unwashed might make those horrid mistakes, or commit those despicable sins, but not me.

Both of these reactions are rooted in a desire for approval: I want my situation to be acceptable. I want what I have done, and what I am doing, to be the laudable thing.

Annulments are not about approval or disapproval.  They are not about sin or lack of sin.  The annulment process has a single goal, and that is to answer an objective question: To whom, if anyone, am I currently married?

Faithfulness Means Forsaking All Others

The Christian answers to the results of an annulment proceeding are simple, but often not easy.

• If I am married to someone, I am bound by my very vows to God to remain faithful to that person.  Faithfulness takes many guises, and there is a legitimate place for civil divorce in certain extreme circumstances; the call to lifelong fidelity remains, but at times it may need to be fidelity at a distance.
• If I am not to married someone, it’s up to me to decide what to do next.

If I’m currently, say, living with a person with whom I have a civil marriage, we might want to get that civil marriage convalidated — that is, turned into a sacramental marriage.  If I’m living with a person with whom I have no civil marriage, I might decide it’s time to separate, or we might decide that marriage is our next best step.

If my intended and I are both baptized Christians, there is no “non-sacramental” marriage option.  It’s either death do us part or nothing at all.  If one or both of us are not baptized, the marriage automatically becomes a sacrament when we are both baptized.

Christianity Rots, Except that it Doesn’t

This is not an easy teaching.  The disciples noticed, and our Lord agreed.  Make that double-hard if your particular path through life involves above-average suffering.

There’s a tendency to think of annulments as the Catholic Get Out of Jail Free card: Gosh, I screwed up, and now here comes the Church to my rescue to make everything all right.

Well, sometimes when we screw up, things can be smoothed over pretty easily.  Other times, no such luck.

There’s nothing wrong with seeing if things can’t be fixed up all neat and tidy.  We have marriage tribunals precisely because the Church doesn’t want anyone suffering unnecessarily.  An annulment is something like a Roman Centurion shouting, “Hey, John, back away from that Cross, we have something else for you later!”  By the grace of God and work of busy angels, some of us get ourselves into binds that turn out not to be binds at all.  We can brush ourselves off and move on to our proper calling.

There’s nothing wrong with hanging on the cross.  Well, yes, it hurts so bad that you earn the right to intone with Our Lord the opening lines of Psalm 22.  Painful? Lonely unto death? Surrounded on all sides with torment and despair?  Par for the course, not your imagination.

But the fact that you are hanging out there with your guts dragging and the bulls of Bashan encircling you doesn’t mean you’re guilty of some greater sin than the guy who got his annulment and went on to marry Mrs. Wonderful.   He’ll get his cross, don’t worry, it’s just that his doesn’t look like yours.

The pastoral response to divorce and remarriage is right there in the psalm:

Then I will proclaim your name to my brethren;

in the assembly I will praise you:

“You who fear the LORD, give praise!

All descendants of Jacob, give honor;

show reverence, all descendants of Israel!

For he has not spurned or disdained

the misery of this poor wretch,

Did not turn away  from me,

but heard me when I cried out.

I will offer praise in the great assembly;

my vows I will fulfill before those who fear him.

Interesting Links:

• Fr. Brian Van Hove on Clergy Marriage. Lots of history and church discipline info, and some canon law chit-chat. Who doesn’t like that?
• A whole slew of Synod for the Family posts.

Enjoy!

Image: Giotto [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons