I don't understand anullments (sp?)?

Question

why is it ok to divorce if you pay a bunch of money? i've never heard that in the bible or anything

how can they say there "never was a marriage" when there really was one?

Answer 1

I think it's not divorce...It's saying that there was never actually a marriage...

The point is that there wasn't. If two people enter a contract and later it is discovered one of them was mentally ill at the time, the contract has no validity. It would be thrown out of any court.

Answer 2

First off, let's set the record straight -- an annulment is not "a divorce that you get if you pay lots of money."

In the Catholic Church, a valid marriage must contain two conditions: an intended lifelong commitment, and an openness to having children.

If either of those two conditions is absent, the marriage can be declared invalid -- that is, it can be declared as never really existing on a valid level in the first place -- and an annulment can be declared.

Annulments also exist under secular law, by the way. Under secular law, an annulment can be declared if it's discovered, sometime after wedding day, that there was a reason why the marriage was never valid to begin with. For instance, one of the spouses is already married, or one of them is not marrying of their own free will, or is too young, etc.

This is not the same thing as a divorce. A divorce ends a valid marriage. This is possible under secular law, but not in the Catholic Church. In the Church, only the death of one spouse ends a valid, sacramental marriage.

Regarding money: the Church does not declare annulments on a rubber-stamp basis. It conducts a thorough investigation -- a "tribunal" -- before making an annulment declaration.

There are costs involved with such investigations, and it's not unfair at all for the Church to ask the petitioner(s) to bear at least some of that cost.

Answer 3

Divorce is a civil procedure that dissolves a civil contract, and is available on demand. Annulment is an ecclesial (church) procedure that doesn't dissolve anything, and is not available on demand. There are certain criteria that are essential for a valid Christian marriage. Therefore it is entirely within the authority of the Church to examine the circumctances of a particular union to see if all the required criteria were present. If not, then the marriage was not and is not valid. This is plain common sense. Divorce is never "ok", even though it does cost a lot of money because the lawyers involved need to be paid. Annulment is logically acceptable and necessary, and yes there are some costs involved because there are lawyers and other professionals involved. Why would you expect such professionals to straighten out problems you yourself caused, without being paid for their work?

Answer 4

Anullments are granted by the Catholic church for religious reasons.
The basis for an annulment is that there was a serious deception involved in the marriage such as not being legally divorced yet, or the spouse was actually gay or something serious.
An Annullment is basically legally saying the union never occurred in the eyes of either the State (government) or the Church (Catholisism) and leaves you free to remarry.

Answer 5

Since the Catholic church doesn't allow divorced people to remarry, they call their previous marriages null. Otherwise, a lot of people wouldn't be Catholic. Really, they just use the term annulment as a loophole or technicality to help divorced people marry in the church. I have an aunt who had to get some annulments so the church would give her permission to marry a Catholic man.

Answer 6

The Catholic church was kinda painted into a corner -- Jesus clearly stated that marriage was for life; but wealthy patrons of the church still wanted to be able to dump their old wives when they started getting a little long in the tooth. Annullments get around this thorny issue by allowing the divorcee to create some trumped-up charge so the church can say, "Oh, the first marriage never REALLY happened!" "Pay us some cash to make up for your sinning with that other woman, and then we can marry you for REAL!"

Answer 7

An annulment is not 'paying a bunch of money.' It is when it is decided for one reason or another that your marriage was not a sacramental marriage but a natural one. Such as one partner was not baptized or the Pauline Privilege or Petrine Privilege. There are other reasons as well.

Answer 8

Anulment is the christian way of divorcing without really doing so. It is not hypocritical, because no one is supposed to notice that divorce by any other name is still divorce.

Answer 9

Yep. The Catholics have the business end down pretty solidly.

Answer 10

religion revolves around money