Month: July 2005

Annulments & Infallibility

A reader writes:

Thanks for your blog, I enjoy it a lot — and I’m a So. Baptist!

A question I’ve wondered about:  Are pronouncements of annulment infallible (perhaps "inherently efficacious" would be a better term) regardless of the truthfulness of the testimony the judgement is based on?

For example, a couple divorces and one spouse files for and recieves an annulment based on objectively false testimony.  (E.g., he claims he was drunkor under duress.)  Leaving aside the one partner’s grave sin of perjury, would the other spouse be free to remarry assuming she knows that the judgement of the court is in error?

We’d have to distinguish at this point between legally free and actually free.

Legally, if the marriage was annuled by the proper authority then the parties are legally free to marry someone else, assuming there are no other impediments affecting the situation (e.g., if the partner wishes to marry someone who is a priest or is under age or is another woman then that’s a no-go because the other party is not legally free to marry her).

In terms of actual freedom, the situation is more complex. At issue is whether the tribunal’s judgment was erroneous. For this to be the case, the following conditions would need to obtain:

  1. Some of the evidence presented to the tribunal was fraudulent,
  2. The tribunal’s decision was based on this evidence (rather than other, non-fraudulent evidence they may also have), and
  3. There are no other solid grounds for the marriage to be null.

In your example, you have stipulated that condition (1) applies: The husband lied in presenting some of the evidence to the tribunal. But presumably not all of the evidence before the tribunal is fraudulent. If that is the case then the decision to annul might have been based on non-fraudulent evidence and thus be correct, in which case condition (2) does not apply.

Further, even if the tribunal did base its judgment on the fraudulent evidence such that without this evidence it would not have issued a decree of nullity then there could still be other factors rendering the marriage null that never came to the tribunal’s attention. If that’s the case then condition (3) does not apply. It thus could be that the tribunal’s decision to annul was correct in spite of the fact that it was based on fraudulent evidence.

If the decision was correct–either because it was based on non-fraudulent evidence or because there was a hidden reason for nullity that never came to the tribunal’s attention–then the woman is actually free to marry someone else as well as legally free.

What she is morally free to do depends on her awareness of her actual freedom. If she is actually free but has no reason to believe that she is free and simply thinks that she got an annulment because her ex-husband lied then she is not morally free to marry a new person. She is actually free to do so because she is not really married to her first husband, but he is not morally free to act on this because as far as she knows, the two of them are hitched.

On the other hand, it could happen that she is actually free to marry and she knows it even though she also knows that her ex lied to the tribunal. It could be, for example, that she is aware of the fact that either conditions (2) or (3) do not apply. For example, she might be aware of a hidden but unprovable ground for nullity that was never submitted to the tribunal. (Let’s also suppose that she is a qualified canonist so that she knows with great thoroughness what are and aren’t grounds for nullity.) In that case she is legally free to marry (because she has an annulment) and she is actually free (because the marriage really was null) and she knows it, making her morally free.

Such cases would likely be very rare, and no one in such a situation should rapidly conclude that they were morally free to marry. (The chances of self-deception on the question of whether one is actually free are quite substantial.) But it is possible in principle.

However, this is not because the tribunal has the ability to dissolve the marriage.

I guess the answer would depend on if "binding and loosing" authority is exercised, or if the court is claiming only to recognize that a marriage never existed.

It’s the latter. Valid, consummated marriages between baptized people can never be dissolved by anything except death, and so tribunals can’t dissolve them. They can, however, issue findings of fact about whether such a marriage ever existed.

Such findings are not protected by infallibility. (They could be if the pope were to intervene and infallibly define the status of a particular marriage, but that never happens.) The law is written  to err on the side of caution in these matters (thus whenever a tribunal issues a finding of nullity then it is automatically appealed for a second examination). Error is possible, but the system is designed to produce more false positives (i.e., findings that a couple is validly married when they are not) than false negatives (i.e., findings that a couple is not validly married when they are).

PS — The question above is purely theoretical.  My wife and I are happily married lifelong Baptists.  I just greatly appreciate the intellectual rigor RC’s bring to moral questions.

Thanks for asking! Hope this helps!

Christ Is Kewl

Hollywood may have been unwilling to honor Mel Gibson for his blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, but it is definitely willing to cash in on the success of his movie by scavaging religious imagery to plump up otherwise thoroughly secular films:

"In the summer blockbuster movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith, from 20th Century Fox, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play godless suburbanites and professional assassins. But when they steal their neighbor’s car for an extended chase scene, a crucifix hangs conspicuously from the rear-view mirror, and in the next scene the actors wear borrowed jackets that read ‘Jesus Rocks’ as they go on the lam.

"’We decided to make the next-door neighbor, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians,’ explained the movie’s director, Doug Liman. ‘It’s literally in there for no other reason than I thought: This is cool.’

"Liman isn’t alone. Mainstream Hollywood, after decades of ignoring the pious — or occasionally defying them with the likes of Martin Scorsese’s revisionist Last Temptation of Christ and Kevin Smith’s profane parody Dogma — is adjusting to what it perceives to be a rising religiosity in American culture."

GET THE STORY.

Uh huh. Sure.

What these Hollywood types don’t seem to understand is that Mel Gibson’s movie succeeded because it was sincere. It wasn’t aimed at milking the presumed "religiosity" of a target audience. (Had it been so crassly targeted it would have been far less overtly Catholic in its appeal to an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian audience.) But draping a crucifix on a mirror and stuffing pop icons into "Jesus Rocks" jackets is so patently patronizing as to be immediately scorned by the audience whose bucks Hollywood wants.

Christians, in the eyes of Hollywood studios, are handy milch cows but are not worth taking seriously.

The End Of The Diet?

Today I’ve been writing in response to a gentleman who weighs 175 lbs and wants to lose 20 lbs. Compared to many folks, he’s quite close to his weight goal, which is great! But it also brings up a note of caution that I’d have for him:

One
thing I need to warn you about, though, is what happens when you get to
your weight goal. If you approach dieting with the idea that as soon as
you hit your desired weight you can go back to eating exactly the way
you used to then your diet will do you no good at all. It may even harm
you.

When you get to your weight goal you can modify your eating habits somewhat so that you stop losing weight, but you can’t just go back to eating the way you are now or all the weight (and likely then some) will come back.

This is important to know when you are as close to your weight goal as
you are. If you had a hundred pounds to lose then the idea of making a
permanent change in your eating habits would set in long before you got
to the target weight. With only twenty pounds, though, (ten of which is
likely water weight that will come off in the first two weeks) you may
get to your weight goal so quickly that you are tempted to think of a
diet as just a temporary change of eating habits.

But the thing is: You body is used to weighting 175 lbs. That is where
you "set point" is right now. You can get away from the set point by
changing your eating habits, but if–as soon as you hit 155 lbs.–you
completely stop dieting then your body will try to trick you into
getting back to 175, because that’s where it’s used to being. It will
treat 175 as your normal weight and 155 as some kind of temporary
famine weight that it wants to get away from as quick as it can. You
have to stay at 155 for long enough for your body to establish a new
set point, for your body to think 155 as the "new" normal, and that
means a longer commitment to new eating habits than just the effort
needed to get down to 155.

Both Atkins and South Beach have modified, longer-term variants
(described in their respective books) to help you keep the weight off,
but you’re so close to your goal that you need to be aware of these up
front or you may think that you don’t need the diet any more and stop
as soon as you hit your weight goal (in which case five to ten pounts
of water weight will come back within a matter of days upon resuming
your previous eating habits, and fat weight will start accumulating
again also).

Hope this helps, and happy dieting!

His & Hers Dieting

Earlier I was answering a reader who was asking about whether to go on the Atkins or South Beach diet. Here’s another consideration I’d raise for him to think about:

One thing that you don’t mention in your list but that may be

important is the fact that you are a guy. After reading lots of diet

books, it has become clear to me that certain diets are better suited

to "guy psychology" and others to "gal psychology." In other words,

guys and gals will find certain diets easier to do than others. For

example, diets that require more complicated cooking tend to be easier

for women than men on average, since women are more comfortable doing

complicated cooking on average.

The most extreme "gal" diet I’ve yet encountered is the Fat Flush diet,

which is so female-centered that the author doesn’t even bother writing

the book for both sexes. Instead, the author writes exclusively on the

assumption that the person doing the diet is female and then, at the

back of the book, has a single question devoted to "Can guys do

this diet?" It’s also clear from the nature of the diet why the writes so exclusively for

women. It’s not just that most dieters are women, it’s that the diet is

so micro-regimented that very few guys doing their own cooking would be willing to attempt it .

Guy dieters tend to have more of a "Just tell me what I need to know

and let me get on with it" attitude and don’t want to have to deal with

complicated menu plans or cooking.

Judged by that standard, Atkins is

more of a "guy" diet, and South Beach is more of a "gal" diet (though

nowhere near as much as Fat Flush).

Don’t get me wrong: Both genders can do perfectly well on both

diets. Many men may even prefer South Beach to Atkins (particularly if

they aren’t doing all of their own cooking), and many women may prefer Atkins

to South Beach (particularly if they are cooking for just themselves

and don’t want to make a lot of speciality dishes for just one person).

I’m simply saying that, on average, I suspect Atkins fits a little

better with guy diet psychology and South Beach fits a bit better with

gal diet psychology.

You mileage may vary.

His & Hers Dieting

Earlier I was answering a reader who was asking about whether to go on the Atkins or South Beach diet. Here’s another consideration I’d raise for him to think about:

One thing that you don’t mention in your list but that may be
important is the fact that you are a guy. After reading lots of diet
books, it has become clear to me that certain diets are better suited
to "guy psychology" and others to "gal psychology." In other words,
guys and gals will find certain diets easier to do than others. For
example, diets that require more complicated cooking tend to be easier
for women than men on average, since women are more comfortable doing
complicated cooking on average.

The most extreme "gal" diet I’ve yet encountered is the Fat Flush diet,
which is so female-centered that the author doesn’t even bother writing
the book for both sexes. Instead, the author writes exclusively on the
assumption that the person doing the diet is female and then, at the
back of the book, has a single question devoted to "Can guys do
this diet?" It’s also clear from the nature of the diet why the writes so exclusively for
women. It’s not just that most dieters are women, it’s that the diet is
so micro-regimented that very few guys doing their own cooking would be willing to attempt it .

Guy dieters tend to have more of a "Just tell me what I need to know
and let me get on with it" attitude and don’t want to have to deal with
complicated menu plans or cooking.

Judged by that standard, Atkins is
more of a "guy" diet, and South Beach is more of a "gal" diet (though
nowhere near as much as Fat Flush).

Don’t get me wrong: Both genders can do perfectly well on both
diets. Many men may even prefer South Beach to Atkins (particularly if
they aren’t doing all of their own cooking), and many women may prefer Atkins
to South Beach (particularly if they are cooking for just themselves
and don’t want to make a lot of speciality dishes for just one person).
I’m simply saying that, on average, I suspect Atkins fits a little
better with guy diet psychology and South Beach fits a bit better with
gal diet psychology.

You mileage may vary.

Atkins Vs. South Beach

A reader writes:

So could you answer a quick question for me?

I’d like your opinion on which diet to do: South Beach v. Atkins. 

Different diets work better for different people, so instead of simply telling you which to try, let me interact with the conditions you feel are important to making the decision and give you my impression of which way a particular consideration tips.

Impacting this decision:

– I’m 5’6", about 175 lbs., looking to drop about 20.

Okay, the good news is that your weight loss goals/needs are modest enough that probably either one of the diets will work for you. It’s not like you have 100 or more pounds you need to lose. If you did then you’d likely need to consider a more intensive strategy than you do.

– I currently have very little idea what I’m allowed to eat or not
eat with either diet, but really only have the time to read up on one.

If time is a consideration then that probably tips toward Atkins. The Atkins diet is built around a few simple principles that are easy to learn and that you then apply yourself to come up with your own menu. South Beach’s principles are "fuzzier" and it relies more heavily on telling you what you can and can’t eat. One of the things that South Beach does not do is give you a formula that you can go out and apply for yourself. It relies more on giving you lists of approved and disapproved menu plans and foods. This means that you have to rely more on the book and less on your self.

To put the contrast crisply: I could take two minutes and tell you the principles you need to know to do Atkins, but there’s no way to do that with South Beach because the author never comes out and gives you a concise list of principles to follow. He doesn’t offer a concise "formula" the way Atkins does.

– I more or less have my wife’s support.

That probably tips toward Atkins, too. Because of the way South Beach works, it involves a lot more specialty cooking. A typical man will need more spousal support for South Beach than for Atkins. The cooking is (or can be) simpler in Atkins than in South Beach.

– I really don’t like vegetables; the only ones I eat are corn, potatoes, and baby spinach, and not much of those.  The spinach I can do once a day, but I don’t particularly like it, and eat the leaves raw.  I’ve tried to change this behavior toward veggies, but by now it’s so ingrained I can’t avoid the gag reflex.

Corn and potatoes will be a problem under either diet. Baby spinach will be fine under both.

Both diets will want you to eat veggies, but it’s easier to ignore this if you’re doing Atkins than if you’re doing South Beach.

 

– I do eat most fruits.

If you really want to eat fruits then that would tip towards South Beach. Fruit options are more limited under Atkins. If you can take or leave fruits then it doesn’t really matter.

 

– I eat all kinds of meat, but am also currently a carb addict.

As far as meat goes, this tips slightly toward Akins. Both allow meat, but Atkins allows a bit more diversity in kind and quantity than South Beach.

As far as being a carb addict, this is less of a concern than it used to be as there are so many low carb alternatives on the market now (e.g., low carb tortillas are in all of the grocery stores–at least out here–and they can be used not only for the obvious purposes but also for things like making sandwiches and pizza; Dreamfields pasta is also in all the supermarkets out here).

Atkins is stricter on carbs in the first two weeks of the diet, but after that there’s really not much of a difference as after the first two weeks Atkins will let you eat as many carbs as you want as long as your weight loss doesn’t stop.

 

– We’re not poor, but we also don’t have a lot of money to spend on diet foods, vitamins, etc., although I do plan to try your fiber supplement idea.

Neither diet requires you to buy speciality foods, though they are there if you want them (particularly when you want a treat, like low carb candy or ice cream).

Neither diet requires nutritional supplements, though Atkins talks them up more. Your goals are modest enough that you can probably get by with just a good multivitamin (which you ought to be taken anyway). If you had more weight to lose then supplementation would be more of a priority.

 

– I drink a LOT of diet soda.

Neither diet prohibits this, though both will tell you to avoid taking in huge amounts of caffeine since caffeine stimulates insulin production and that will inhibit weight loss. When I first went on Atkins (before South Beach was on the market), I lost a very large amount of weight while drinking diet cokes like crazy (though a good chunk of that was Diet Rite brand since this kind has neither caffeine nor NutraSweet). Both diets will allow diet coke, and even moderate caffeine.

That deals with the list of considerations you mention, but there are a couple more things I’d like to offer that may be helpful. Since this post is getting lengthy, though, I’ll spin them off into new posts.

E-Mailing Questions

I’m home for lunch, so a little lunchtime blogging. A reader writes:

Just a logistics question. I’m assuming that you probably don’t have time to answer all faith/church questions that you receive. But is there a "normal" amount of time that it takes you to respond to the ones you do answer?

I’m afraid that there’s not fixed answer to this, but I can describe what tends to happen:

People send queries, links, etc., to my gmail account, and I at least look at all of them. The great majority I read in detail, though in the case of some unusually lengthy ones I’m afraid that I can’t do more than skim them.

Many of these I intend to answer but don’t have the time to answer at the moment. As a result, they start moving down the stack in my inbox. The ones that tend to get answered tend to have one or more of the following characteristics:

  1. They are short. The shorter the query is, the easier it is for me to answer it. If someone has sent a query that is several screens long, the odds of it getting answered are much, much lower than if it is only two sentences long. The shorter one can make the query, the more extraneous background one can cut out of it, the greater the odds of it being answered.
  2. They don’t require me to look something up. The more likely it is that I’ll have to go do a bunch of research, the less likely it is that I’ll be able to respond. I know that there’s no reliable way for correspondents to know that I’ll have to research vs. what I won’t, but some kinds of queries are more likely than others to trigger the need for research. E.g., "What do you think about the personal scandals surrounding this particular pope in the tenth century?" and "What are the laws regarding hounds in the midsouth states of the U.S.?" and "What do the sheriff’s records in Amarillo, Texas have to say about Alberto Rivera?" are ones almost guaranteed to require research. (These are all variants on questions I have actually received.)
  3. They don’t require me to write a huge, complex answer. Since I’m doing my responses in the evening, after I’ve gotten home from work, I’m likely to be tired or wanting to veg out. The more time and energy a reply would take, the less likely it is that I’ll be able to provide one.
  4. They are on only one point. The more points that an e-mail tries to take on, the lower the chance of it getting answered. The reason is that adding more points (a) lengthens the email and (b) ups the chances of me having to look something up and (c) lengthens the response I’d have to write. A corrollary here is that it’s easier to get answers to multiple questions on different subjects if you ask them one at a time rather than combining them in a single email.
  5. The don’t deal with questions that I’ve answered repeatedly. I actually cut quite a bit of slack in this area, but it won’t be interesting to the readers if I simply answer variants on "Can I attend this wedding?" and "Is an annulment needed here?" I feel a bit of a Catch-22, because these questions are important for pastoral reasons, but they are the current equivalent of "Did Jesus have brothers?" (the question that was asked Every Single Show back in the early days of Catholic Answers Live). Recently I received a question of this nature that was simple enough that I was tempted to post it and let the regular readers answer it in the combox.
  6. They are questions of special pastoral importance. For obvious reasons, I try to answer these. This is also the reason I answer as many marriage-related questions as I do.
  7. They are recently-received. When I’m looking for questions to answer on the blog, it’s just easier to go to the top of the stack than to root around further down in the inbox. A corrollary is that if it’s been a while since you asked your question and it hasn’t been answered, you may want to re-send it. Just bear in mind the following point. . . .
  8. They are polite. Questions of an insulting or rude nature are less likely to be answered. People who write in only to tell me that I’m an idiot (and there are many such people), of course, get no response. If they tell me I’m an idiot as a prelude to asking a question, they are very unlikely to get a response. If they say "How dare you not answer my question, you cussed so-and-so!" they also are less likely to meet with a favorable response. After all, nobody is paying me to do this. I’m spending my own time and money to provide this service, and I simply can’t promise a response to every query. (At times the situation brings to mind the 285th Rule of Acquisition).

I also should mention one other matter. Folks reading the blog don’t see the responses I send back privately. This is something I do for particularly delicate situations. Sometimes I privately address some really amazing situations that are simply too sensitive to go into on the blog. While this is something that I do in exceptional circumstances, the limits on my time are such that if I at all can, I prefer to answer the questions on the blog itself.

I take pains to mask the identities of the people writing in. I even edit the e-mails they send to remove or fuzz over potentially revealing pieces of information (e.g., what year people got married, what churches they were members of, the precise number of kids they have, how old someone is). This lets me answer some otherwise delicate questions in a way that (a) respects the privacy of the individuals involved, (b) will benefit those in the audience who may be in similar situations, and (c) allows me to get a blog post done.

I say that to point out that individuals who write should in the main expect their queries to be dealt with here on the blog rather than by private e-mail, though in exceptional cases the reverse is what happens.

So. . . . I’m sure that’s both more and less info than the reader wanted, but I hope it provides a better feel for how email queries get handled and how to maximize the chances of having them answered.

Who Wants To Be A Married Man?

Given current demographics, we can predict that coming soon to a Chinese audience will be a Made In China version of the game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? But the prize on the Chinese version of the show will not be a million dollars but a woman eligible for marriage:

"China will have more than 23 million men unable to find wives by 2020 because so many more boys are being born than girls, according to a study.

"The widespread practice of aborting female foetuses [i.e., fetuses] is being blamed for creating a generation of bachelors who will pose increasing social problems, it says.

"These men are known as ‘bare branches’ because they will never bear fruit. History suggests that they will give rise to higher crime rates and political instability. Their number might encourage China to become more authoritarian or seek an outlet for their energies through war."

GET THE STORY. (Use BugMeNot.com if you get nabbed by the Evil Registration Requirement.)

Of course, Americans don’t usually discriminate on the basis of the sex of the child. In America, unborn babies have an equal opportunity to be aborted. So, in America, we may one day have a game show titled Who Wants To Live?

And modern man thinks the ancient Greeks and Romans who abandoned unwanted babies to the vagaries of the elements were barbarians.

Convalidation Query

A reader writes:

My parents were married in the Catholic Church in the 1960s. My father was a baptised Catholic and my mother was a non-Catholic. They remember the parish priest having to obtain a dispensation for their marriage.

A few years ago, my mother became a Catholic. As she was preparing for reception into the Church, research showed that she had not been baptized in the Church of England (as we had always assumed) but ‘dedicated’ in the Salvation Army. Accordingly, she was baptized at the Easter Vigil.

My question relates to their marriage. I have heard that a different kind of dispensation is needed for a Catholic to marry an unbaptized person than to marry a baptized non-Catholic. We don’t know what kind of dispensation the priest obtained in the 1960s.

My question is this: Was their marriage valid? Is it now? If not, what steps would need to be taken? (My father, who currently has some “issues” with the Church would be absolutely furious if asked to go through a convalidation ceremony).

You are correct that a different kind of dispensation is needed. When a Catholic marries a non-Catholic baptized person then a "mixed marriage" dispensation is needed. When a Catholic marries a non-baptized party, however, a "disparity of cult" dispensation is needed.

That being said, there is a good likelihood that the latter dispensation was granted when your parents married back in the sixties. In many dioceses even today it is standard practice to grant a disparity of cult dispensation at the same time as granting a mixed marriage dispensation–precisely in order to take care of situations like this one.

My impression is that this was all the more common back then, when there was a more cautious attitude taken with regard to the validity of individual Protestant baptisms (i.e., there was an acknowledgement that Protestant baptisms were valid in principle but a greater caution about whether the baptism had been validly performed in any particular case).

There is thus a good chance that the diocese issued both dispensations at the time your parents married.

The way to find out is to contact the diocese in which they were married and ask them to look it up. They (or the parish) should have the record.

If it turns out that they did not get both dispensations then the matter could be handled by convalidation or, hypothetically, by a procedure known as radical sanation ("healing from the root"), which would not involve a renewal of consent by your father.

One should not get ahead of oneself, though. The first step for your mom would be to contact the diocese and find out what dispensations were granted.