Pope Francis has suddenly, and without the usual week’s notice, re-written the process of annulling a marriage within the church, issuing two apostolic letters aimed at making it easier to annul marriages that are deemed invalid by a church court. Only one, instead of two, judgments will now be required before a marriage is determined invalid and annulled. And in cases where both parties agree, an annulment can be expedited by a bishop. Pope Francis also ordered that the courts waive most of the fees that in the past have regularly cost hundreds of dollars for cases in the U.S. Wow!
There are about 20,000 annulment cases a year in the United States, requiring a lot of evidence, an appeal, and confirmation by a second court. It can take six months to a year, or longer.
Only a month ago Pope Francis said Catholics who divorce and then remarry should be embraced and not be excommunicated. Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center says that 60 percent of Catholics favor allowing divorced Catholics who then remarry to receive communion, contrary to current doctrine. (NPR website September 2015) .
This is a great Pope! His truly signature action, however, would be to declare that to have a number of children you cannot support or feed and who will have no jobs when they grow up is against the will of God and imperils the human race (God’s creation, yes?!); that “go forth and multiply” made sense on an empty planet during the Iron Age, but is no longer appropriate. The follow-on implications of such a volte-face are pretty obvious. But could the Pope personally survive it?
I completely agree with the Pope. Divorce is a highly personal matter, and so people should not be condemned for making decisions that they felt were necessary: either for the benefit for the children, or simply to prevent further sorrow in the future.
But in order to reverse Church teaching on having children, the Pope would have to embrace the immorality of contraception. Is is simply not realistic to except people to not have sex if they wish to not have children. Unfortunately, I don’t see it happening any time soon, though I’d love to be proven wrong.