Author: Jimmy Akin

Canonist Ed Peters points out two extraordinarily important facts regarding the Kennedy-Rausch annulment case that I hadn’t been aware of. If press accounts are accurate then . . .

1) The Rota was serving as a court of second instance.

This is an extraordinarily important fact. Here’s why: When an annulment case is handled by a tribunal and a finding of nullity is reached, it is automatically transmitted to an appellate tribunal (a court of second instance) for its evaluation. Only if the appellate tribunal agrees is the person free to marry in the Church.

This means that what is popularly known as "an annulment" (that’s a colloquial designation) actually consists of two separate findings of nullity by two separate tribunals.

Normally the appellate tribunal that hears the case in second instance in an American annulment case is also in America, but it’s possible to appeal directly to the Rota, which is apparently what Sheila Rausch-Kennedy did in this case.

This means that Joseph Kennedy never had "an annulment."He never got the second finding of nullity from the appellate tribunal.

It is not the case–as I had supposed–that Kennedy received "an annulment" (findings of nullity from both the courts of first and second instance) and then the Rota got involved (as a court of third instance) and overturned the annulment. There never was an annulment because the second finding of nullity had not come in.

2) The Rota sat on this case for TEN YEARS.

That’s a QUADRUPLE HUH????

The Boston archdiocese tribunal apparently issued its finding of nullity in 1997 and the case has been stuck in the Rota ever since!

This is simply appalling.

John Paul II twice in his annual addresses to the Rota scolded them about not processing cases in a timely manner.

In his 1984 address, after the release of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, he stressed:

In the reform of canonical procedural law, an effort was made to meet a very frequent criticism, which was not completely without foundation, concerning the slowness and excessive length of trials. Therefore, accepting a deeply felt need, without wishing to impair or in the slightest way to diminish the necessary guarantees offered by the course and formalities of tribunal procedure, [the new law] has sought to render the administration of justice more flexible and functional by simplifying procedures, speeding up formalities, shortening the time-limits, increasing the discretionary powers of the judge, etc.

This effort must not be rendered vain by delaying tactics or by a lack of care in studying cases, by an attitude of inertia that is wary of entering the new track for moving ahead, by a lack of expertise in applying the procedures.

We then turn to the 1983 Code and find that it provides that:

Can.  1453 Without prejudice to justice, judges and tribunals are to take care that all cases are completed as soon as possible and that in a tribunal of first instance they are not prolonged beyond a year and in a tribunal of second instance beyond six months.

Got that?

Tribunals of second instance are supposed to process cases in six months barring special circumstances that would interfere with the execution of justice. Yet the Rota sits on this thing for ten years! Further, if what Time said is accurate then even after it reached the finding, it still took two years to draft the statement announcing its finding.

Circumstances in which justice would require this kind of delay are almost unimaginable. On its face the situation appears to be one of gross negligence on the part of the Rota.

Justice delayed is justice denied, and on the face of it, the Rota denied justice to Kennedy and Rausch for years by taking twenty times longer than the law specifies to process their case.

Now, maybe there are facts that we aren’t aware of that would show that justice required this astonishingly slow pace, but (by definition) it would be astonishing if there were.

In his 1996 Rotal address, John Paul II spoke of the need to resolve the question of what a person’s marital status is (are they validly married or not?) in a timely manner, stating in part:

At the same time, however, the current legislation of the Church shows a deep sensitivity to the requirement that the status of persons—if called into question—does not remain in doubt for very long.

The current legislation of the Church may show that deep sensitivity, but in this case–on the face of it–the Rota did not.

And sadly, this is all too often the case–in tribunals around the world. A friend of mine has a relative who has been vainly trying for years to get a Mexican tribunal to take action regarding an annulment case concerning a marriage that was contracted in Mexico, yet the person has been unable to get the tribunal to do anything at all.

If you want know why America has so many annulments compared to other countries, a significant part of the reason (you’ll note I said "part") is that it has a tribunal system that actually processes cases in something like the time limits specified in the law instead of letting them sit for years without resolution or refusing to even take action on the case.

Okay, the folks at Time Magazine have once again demonstrated their incompetence.

GET THE STORY.

CHT to the reader who e-mailed asking confirmation of the fact that the Church does not "de-sanctify" marriages.

It doesn’t.

Time doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

What it does do is sometimes declare them null from the beginning. Hence: an-nul-ment.

Saying something was null from the beginning is not the same as stripping it of sanctity. It has to be there before you can remove its sanctity. No thing, no sanctity.

Oh, and the correct word for removing the sanctityof a thing would be desecrate or deconsecrate, not "de-sanctify."

But the stupid stuff in the story doesn’t stop there! Oh, no! That would be too easy!

EXCERPTS:

The annulment was the subject of Rauch’s 1997 book Shattered Faith, which lambasted her ex-husband and was severely critical of the Catholic Church’s proceedings, which made the marriage (which had produced twin boys) null and void in the eyes of the church.

How many children a union produced has nothing to do with whether the marriage was validly contracted on the wedding day.  Time is presenting criticism of the concept without presenting the rejoinder.

Rauch argued that Kennedy was able to unilaterally "cancel" nearly 12 years of marriage because of his clan’s influence in the church.

How long a union lasts has no direct bearing on whether it was validly contracted on the wedding day. Same problem as before, and petitioners cannot "unilaterally cancel" anything. Both parties are given the opportunity to provide evidence, and it’s the tribunal that makes the decision.

Few observers thought the appeal to Rome by Rauch, an Episcopalian, had a chance against the well-connected Kennedy.

Time needs better observers. First, the fact Rauch is an Episcopalian is not going to have a material impact on the decision, and Kennedy’s connections–whatever they may be in Massachusetts–are not going to be decisive in Rome.

With divorce strictly prohibited in Catholicism, annulments allow Catholics to remarry before a priest and continue receiving the sacraments.

Civil divorce is not "strictly prohibited in Catholicism." Civil divorce can be legitimate for any number of reasons. What you can’t do is get remarried just because you have a civil divorce.

Several years after his 1991 civil divorce to Rauch, Kennedy obtained an annulment from a Church tribunal in Massachusetts so he could have a Church ceremony with Kelly. The couple had already been married in a 1993 civil ceremony, but needed the Roma Rota appeals tribunal at the Vatican to uphold the Massachusetts annulment verdict before they could be married by a priest.

The Rota does not weigh in on each and every finding of nullity in the world. It’s agreement isn’t necessary unless one of the parties appeals to it. (Oh, and you don’t have to be married by a priest in order to observe the Catholic form of marriage.)

At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI has indicated that he wants to streamline the Roma Rota to respond to the desire of divorced Catholics to stay inside the Church.

Huh? When did he do that? He’s never made any statements about streamlining the Rota. On the contrary, he’s stressed that tribunals around the world should follow the detailed instructions of Dignitas Connubii.

But there is also concern that some Catholics, particularly in the U.S., abuse the practice. "People think it’s their right," says one Rome-based canon lawyer. He adds sternly, "It’s not a right."

Double huh? It’s not individual Catholics who "abuse the practice" of granting annulments. Only Church tribunals can grant annulments. If there is a generalizable problem (and this is something that is quite arguable) with the annulments being granted then the fault lays with the tribunals granting them, not simply the people asking to have the validity of their marriages examined.

The story also refers to multiple unnamed "sources," meaning that there is a shadow of doubt over the whole thing.

It also says this:

The Roma Rota’s ruling, written in Latin, was reached in 2005, and had
been kept secret while the official written notice was being prepared,
said a source in Rome familiar with the case.

We can’t know if this is true since the source is unnamed, but if it is: Triple huh? What’s something like this doing sitting on someone’s desk for two years? It doesn’t take that long to prepare a written notice!

While Time Magazine has demonstrated what it doesn’t know about this case, Ed Peters has some sage advice to remember what we all don’t know about it.

GET THE STORY.