A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Romano Amerio on the conduct of American marriage tribunals March 23, 2012

Romano Amerio was a brilliant and orthodox Italian Catholic philosopher.  His seminal work, Iota Unum, charted the changes in practice that occurred in the Church over the period 1940-2000, roughly.   When he first wrote the book in the mid-80s, it was received very coldly, as a revaunchist throwback to the “bad old days” prior to Vatican II, counter to the “new springtime” that was so obviously budding forth throughout the Church.  Now, it is receiving quite a re-appraisal, and is being viewed by more and more as a high-quality, substantial critique of the many deleterious changes that occurred in the late 20th century. 

In Chapter 80, Amerio discusses the phenonomenon, unheard of in the Church outside of severe external persecution, of thousands of priests leaving the Church.  During the pontificate of Paul VI, there was a policy that declared such priests dispensed from their orders by reason of invalidity for lack of consent.  Prior to ca. 1970, such men would have been held to have been apostates and would have still been under the requirements of clerical celibacy.  But by declaring these men invalidly ordained, they were dispensed from such conditions and many went on to marry and then even have official roles in the Church! (in various chanceries, as DREs, etc).  There is a parallel here to how the divorce tribunals operate in the US.  I’ll let Amerio explain:

It would seem that in the recent jurisprudence of the Holy See, lack of consent is no longer to be judged by a mans’s dispositions at the time of rodination, but by subsequent experiences of unsuitability or moral discontent during his life as an ordained priest.  It is this same critierion that the diocesan tribuanals of the United States tried to introduce in marriage annulment cases, and that Paul VI criticized and rejected in 1977. [Well, it appears those grounds for annulment weren’t fully rejected, because they are used very widely today] By this criterion, the very fact that a priest asks at any given moment to return to the lay state becomes a proof that he was immature and incapable of giving a valid consent and thus a convalidation, which would prevent a dispensation from celibacy under canon 214, also ignored. As with the American tribunals, we are here confronted by a veiled denial of the importance of every individual act and a tacit adoption of the [erroneous] principle of globality. Each individual moral act is stripped of importance, so that the sum total of such acts can be invested with it. Perhaps the fuindamental reason for decline in priestly vocations, that accompanied the increasing number of defections, was this trivialization of the commitment involved, which robs the priesthood [or the marriage] of the air of totality and permanence that appeals to the noblest part of human nature, by persevering through trial and hardship. It is certainly true that, as John Paul II has said, these defections are “an anti-sign, an anti-witness, which has contributed to the disappointment of the council’s hopes.”

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Now, Amerio states above that the understanding that US marriage tribunals tried to use to grant annulments – that a divorce or desire to divorce is ipso facto proof that proper consent was not given – was rejected by the Holy See, or at least Paul VI.  I’ll have to take his word for it, but it seems such a rejection was not total, or lasting, or that some minor differences have been used to apply much the same reasoning to many annulments granted today.  I have been told that our culture is in such a state that many people approaching the altar today simply don’t have a proper understanding of what marriage means, and therefore cannot give “true” consent.   Perhaps.  But relative definitions of consent have changed dramatically in the last 40 years. 

There is so much temptation all around to abuse the process.  In all the various tribunal related processes, there is really only one person, one role that defends the former marriage (remember, all tribunal cases occur only AFTER the divorce is final).  That is a canonical role in the process itself – the “defender of the bond.”  Outside of that, pretty much everyone involved has a vested interest in seeing the annulment go through.  After all, the divorce is a fait accompli. What’s important now is that we preserve a person’s access to the Sacraments, right?

The grounds for granting annulments, prior to 1970, were very narrow.  Now there are “psychological” grounds, or grounds of “consent.”  You can be married for 40+ years, raise kids, be Grand Knight, leader in St. Vincent de Paul, and still get your marriage declared “invalid” after the wife walks out.  There is no question the system is being abused.  How widely is the only question.

All I can say is, I pray these annulments really are valid, in the eyes of God.  If not, there’s going to be hell to pay.