Mending the Heart. Lisa Duffy

       Valid vs. Sacramental

      Let’s clarify a few terms here that might be confusing. For the purposes of the annulment process, the terms “valid” and “sacramental” are apples and oranges. “Valid” refers to the fact that the couple stood in the right place, said the right things, and intended the right things. “Sacramental” refers to a valid marriage that has been contracted by spouses who are both baptized Christians.¹ So, a Catholic and a Catholic can have a sacramental marriage, as can a Baptist and a Lutheran, or a Catholic and an Episcopalian, etc. But, for a marriage to be sacramental, both spouses must be baptized. So a Catholic and a Hindu cannot create a sacramental marriage, nor a Lutheran and a Jew. Marriages that are not between two baptized Christians are referred to as “natural” marriages, meaning a marriage that is permanent, exclusive, open to children, and ordered to the good of the spouses, but one or both spouses are not baptized Christians.

      In the annulment process, the canon lawyers are trying to determine whether a marriage — regardless of its sacramental or non-sacramental nature — is actually valid or invalid.

       Our Goal as Catholics

      For a Catholic getting married to another baptized person, the goal is to bring a valid, sacramental marriage into being on the day of the wedding. (A Catholic who marries someone who is not baptized must first obtain a dispensation from the local bishop. If the marriage is permitted, a sacramental marriage is not possible, but a valid marriage definitely is possible.) This sacramental bond is an unbreakable covenant between God and the spouses, and the only thing that can dissolve it is death.

      Pope Francis describes this perfectly in his 2016 apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”):

      The sacrament of marriage is not a social convention, an empty ritual or merely the outward sign of a commitment. The sacrament is a gift given for the sanctification and salvation of the spouses, since “their mutual belonging is a real representation, through the sacramental sign, of the same relationship between Christ and the Church….”

      “In accepting each other, and with Christ’s grace, the engaged couple promise each other total self-giving, faithfulness and openness to new life. The couple recognizes these elements as constitutive of marriage, gifts offered to them by God, and take seriously their mutual commitment, in God’s name and in the presence of the Church.” (72–73)

       To Dissolve or Not to Dissolve

      Some years back, I was talking to a divorced woman, Sandy, who was feeling discouraged about her future after going through a divorce. She believed that now, because she was Catholic, she was just stuck being single for the rest of her life, and she was only thirty-nine. I asked her if she had been through the annulment process to see if she actually could remarry at some point, and she quickly replied, “Oh, I don’t believe in the annulment process. I don’t believe the Church can take away the vows I took.”

      Sandy is not alone in her misinterpretation of what the annulment process actually accomplishes. A common assumption is that the annulment process is simply a legal process to go through, a sort of “Catholic divorce.” Often, this confusion comes from the language used regarding the process. People say things like, “You need to get an annulment,” which makes it sound as if anyone can go down to some office, fill out a few papers, and receive some kind of legal document that declares the former marriage null and permits the divorcee to marry again. If you have a sense of what marriage ought to be, this should give you an uneasy feeling.

      Because marriage is supposed to be much more than an empty ritual or just an outward sign of commitment, the annulment process is also much more than an administrative process. It is a vehicle to help bring the wounded from the battlefield into the field hospital, where they can find healing, if I may paraphrase Pope Francis.

      Rest assured, receiving a decree of invalidity does not mean your marriage relationship never existed. This is a painful misconception that holds many people back from starting the annulment process. After putting in all that hard work, no one wants to be told their relationship was somehow not real. Nor is the annulment process just a sneaky way for the Church to allow spouses to get out of a bad marriage. The Church is not looking for a loophole or for some way to declare a marriage that is permanent in the eyes of God to be no longer valid.

      Perhaps the worst thing about these misconceptions is that they completely ignore the greater aspect of the annulment process: the opportunity to face the truth about what happened, make peace with the past and lay it to rest, and find spiritual and emotional healing from divorce.

      So the natural questions that arise are: If the purpose of the annulment process isn’t to dissolve a valid marriage bond, and it’s not some loophole in the moral law, then how can people get remarried after a divorce? Why must you go through the annulment process after a civil divorce has been obtained?

       Will the Real Annulment Process Please Stand Up?

      The real purpose of the Catholic annulment process is to determine whether or not a valid marriage bond was brought into being on the day of your wedding. As we discussed before, not all marriages have a valid bond. Some marriages have the appearance of being valid but do not have a valid bond. We know that a valid marriage is one that takes place between a man and a woman who come to the altar with the desire to create a permanent union with an openness to having children. (Note: This would include couples who are unable to have children but still marry with the desire to create a lifelong, permanent relationship and an openness to new life if God chooses to bless them with that gift. A couple can still have a valid marriage even if they are not able to have children.) As previously mentioned, the Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a sacrament. So, in addition to the unitive and procreative aspects needed to form a valid union, it takes two baptized Christians to form a sacramental marriage.

      But some marriages only appear to be valid when they actually are not. How does that happen? Well, think of it this way. For a sacrament to take place, two things must be present: matter and form. To understand what these two elements are, take a look at the Mass. A priest can pray the words of Eucharistic consecration (the form) over an Oreo cookie, but it cannot be changed into the Body of Christ because that is not the proper matter. The host must be unleavened wheat bread. Likewise, even if the proper host is on the altar, I cannot pray the words of consecration over it: only an ordained Catholic priest can. To take another example, look at Baptism. If you try to baptize someone with Coca-Cola, there is no valid baptism. You must use water (matter) and say the appropriate blessing (form) during the pouring of the water.

      The same is true for a marriage. All the right things must be in place for a marriage to be valid. The form of the Sacrament of Matrimony is the vows themselves, while the matter is the couple’s mutual consent and the consummation of the marriage. Often, it appears that a couple has everything they need for a valid marriage — they can check off the usual boxes, the service at the church, the dress, tux, rings, certificate, etc. But if the two people exchanging their vows do not fully intend the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage, a valid bond cannot be created.

      In my own experience, anyone who attended my wedding back in 1990 probably would not have questioned the validity of our marriage based upon what they saw. He and I were both Catholic, and we got married in a beautiful Catholic church with a full Mass. We had the dress, the tux, the rings, a handsome bridal party, and flowers. We had all the right things in all the right places except for the most critical aspect: intentions. My then-spouse later admitted many disturbing things about that day and the days leading up to the wedding. The most unfortunate thing, in my opinion, was that he never had any intention of remaining faithful or remaining married. He knew going into it that at some point he would leave. This is an example of how a couple can appear to have a valid marriage when they really don’t.

       Permanent Ain’t So Permanent After All

      Situations such as mine are more and more common these days, especially caused by the attitudes and perspectives of society. Many generations of divorce have diluted the notion