Sunday, January 29, 2017

An Elephant In The Room : 50,000 Catholic marriages annulled annually in the USA alone



from Spirit Daily

An Elephant In The Room



In all the tohubohu over the papal document on remarried and the divorced (Amoris laetitia), no one seems to mention the issue of annulments.
It’s the elephant in the room.
And it may play in the back cerebral anterooms of those who want to revamp the Church’s approach, allowing more divorced Catholics who have remarried civilly to resume participation in the sacraments.
Why it may play in the back of their minds is the nature of the annulment system, which can seem inconsistent and even capricious.
Simply put, one diocese may have a “tribunal” that grants annulments more readily than the next diocese — making the system inherently unfair — depriving one couple the sacraments while another couple elsewhere, with similar circumstances, is allowed full participation (although the approval rate is said to be 95 percent — another point of contention).
Is the Holy Spirit at work infallibly in every such case, such that it isn’t man breaking marital bonds asunder but God? Does any human, of whatever position, have the authority to transcend what Christ said?
These are only questions. Perhaps they do not figure as major issues. But annulments are highly peculiar and often seem like sanctioned divorce. Some receive annulments not just for one but for two or even more previous marriages. Some receive annulments despite having children — which technically means, since the marriage was voided, that they were born out of wedlock.
Actually, the U.S. bishops deny this is the case.
“No,” they state in a question-and-answer on annulments. “A declaration of nullity has no effect on the legitimacy of children who were born of the union following the wedding day, since the child’s mother and father were presumed to be married at the time that the child was born. Parental obligations remain after a marriage may be declared null.
“It means that a marriage that was thought to be valid civilly and canonically was in fact not valid according to Church law. A declaration of nullity does not deny that a relationship existed. It simply states that the relationship was missing something that the Church requires for a valid marriage.”
This may be a bit befuddling. If a marriage is not a real marriage according to the Church, but only presumed, how was it a marriage in other ways? 
Ted Kennedy got an annulment after 23 years of marriage.
In 1995 Church tribunals in the nation’s 119 Catholic dioceses grant about 50,000 marriage annulments annually, said the Rev. Patrick Cogan, executive coordinator of the Canon Law Society of America, the professional body of church officials who deal with such questions. This number has increased about 100-fold since the early 1960’s, leading to accusations by some conservative Catholics in the United States and in the Vatican that American Catholic officials were undermining the Church’s teaching on marriage. 
It is especially popular in the U.S. Americans accounted for about half of the nearly 50,000 annulments granted in 2012, the latest year for which statistics are available: 24,010 cases, or 49 percent of annulment cases, were petitioned from the United States in 2012. That’s down sharply from the 72,308 cases introduced in the United States in 1990, but far more than in Poland, the country with the next highest number of petitions, accounting for six percent with fewer than 3,000 cases.
Most annulments are granted on psychological grounds, what is technically termed in church law “lack of due discretion.”
There certainly seem to be cases that justify the process — the existence — of annulments, as when a young couple gets married but parts ways within, say, a year or two. That clearly seems like a mistake. Or in any case where pressure and force were brought to bear, or deception.
But, before more argumentation over Amora, perhaps the Church needs to take a look at the process, explore how much it figures into the current debate, and ask itself if it is consistent and in keeping with the Holy Spirit.
http://spiritdaily.org/blog/commentary/an-elephant-in-the-room


________________________________________________







divorce.jpg

JANUARY 26, 2017





It amounts to 'Catholic divorce' and Mitis alone will destroy and is presently destroying the sanctity of the Sacrament of Matrimony - Anon

http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2017/01/it-amounts-to-catholic-and-mitis-alone.html








How can a non-existing person in 1949 be an exception to the Feeneyite interpretation of the dogma on exclusive salvation in the Church and all needing to be members?

IRRATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
How can some one in the past, allegedly saved with the baptism of desire (and without the baptism of water), be an exception to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus in 1949?
Image result for PHOTOS ITS IRRATIONAL
 How can someone who lived in the past and was allegedly saved without the baptism of water be an exception to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus,for the cardinals, who issued the Letter of the Holy Office from Rome ?
How can a non-existing person in 1949 be an exception to the Feeneyite interpretation of the dogma on exclusive salvation in the Church and all needing to be members? 
Secondly, who in the past could physically see someone saved in Heaven who was there without the baptism of water? 
How can it be said that St.Emerentina who died without the baptism of water in the Church in the fourth century, is an exception to the dogma extra ecclesiamn nulla salus (EENS) in 1949,1965 or 2017?
Image result for PHOTOS ITS IRRATIONAL
WHO,WHERE IS THE EXCEPTION IN 2017
The dogma says every one needs to be incorporated into the Church as a member for salvation.So if there is an exception;that is someone who does not need to be incorporated into the Church in 2017, then this person would have to be known.He or she would have to exist in 2017.
FOURTH CENTURY SAINT CANNOT BE AN EXCEPTION TODAY: NO LIVING EXCEPTIONS
I cannot say that every does not need to be a member of the Church in 2017 since there was an exception in the fourth century. Also who could have physically known if St Emerentiana was saved without the baptism of water? The legend has speculated with good will that she is in Heaven, without the baptism of water.Yes she is in Heaven however God could still have had her baptised after she died, as St. Francis Xavier observed in many cases.
Image result for PHOTOS ITS IRRATIONAL
MAJOR PHILOSOPHICAL ERROR
We have a major philosophical error which was used to get rid of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus.Someone in the past or the future; a hypothetical case,who cannot be seen or known physically - is inferred to be an exception in the  present times to the ecclesiocentrism of the past.
If being saved in invincible ignorance , without the baptism of desire is a possibility, in the future, it still cannot be an exception to the dogma on exclusive salvation in the Church in 2017.
This is an important point.Since now there can be two interpretations of Vatican Council II.
If the baptism of desire and being saved in invincible ignorance refers to hypothetical cases in the past or future then the dogma EENS is not contradicted in the present times.Then there is nothing in Vatican Council II to contradict EENS in the present times.Then Vatican Council II does not contradict Feeneyite EENS or the ecclesiocentrism of the past which Cardinal Ratzinger referred to in Redemptoris Missio.
Image result for PHOTOS ITS IRRATIONAL
'INVISIBLE-VISIBLE 'MISTAKE IN VATICAN COUNCIL CAN BE CORRECTED
The cardinals at Vatican Council II however assumed that the baptism of desire etc refer to cases in the past or future which were exceptions to EENS and this confusion is expressed in the Council.So Vatican Council II emerges as a break with EENS.However we can still assume that the baptism of desire etc are hypothetical and so they are not exceptions to EENS. Invisible cases cannot be exceptions to EENS.We can be rational and factual.So we can re-interpret Vatican Council II in harmony with EENS. I call this Vatican Council (Feeneyite).It does not consider possibilities in the past or future as being known realities in the present.It has the hermeneutic of continuity which Pope Benedict referred to while he was actually promoting a hermeneutic of rupture, with an irrational philosophy, upon which he based his new theology.-Lionel Andrades

NOSTRA  AETATE  DOLOROSA

Now, it needs to be interjected here that Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside the Church there is no salvation”) is more than a teaching of the Church.  It is a dogma of the Faith solemnized in definitions by three popes and one ecumenical council (Florence), infallibly reaffirmed by another council (Trent), and proclaimed by other popes, councils, church doctors and saints innumerable as a solemn teaching from Jesus Christ, handed down through sacred tradition from the Apostles.  The Jesuits’ renowned Scriptural commentator, Cornelius à Lapide, described it as “the all-important dogma”; Blessed Pius IX called it “the great dogma of our holy religion”; and 19th century Bishop George Hay said it is the very fence and barrier of the true religion.” Which is why the Church’s hidden enemies for centuries have brought their full contempt and rage to bear against this one dogma above all others as the primary obstacle to their subverting of Church teachings.  Thus, in the late 19thcentury, and again even more so in the mid-20thcentury, they mounted largescale campaigns to humiliate, stigmatize and defame two widely popular and respected Catholic theologians – the Redemptorist Father Michael Mueller and the Jesuit Father Leonard Feeney – who steadfastly defended the dogma.  The purpose was to make conspicuous examples of these priests as a warning to others who might dare to profess this solemn doctrine in like manner.
http://theeye-witness.blogspot.it/2016/01/nostra-aetate-dolorosa_24.html