Mending the Heart. Lisa Duffy

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