In Defense of the Family - Part Three : Marriage preparation and annulments

MARRIAGE PREPARATION:

Many will say that in this day of social revolution that it is not being realistic to point to the pre-marital preparation class with a priest to be that important. But it is probably the most important thing a couple can go through to prepare themselves to enter into a lifelong commitment with each other. It does not just involve them but the children that will come into the world as a result of their union. There is one thing that is more important and that is the quality of the union of their parents and the stability of the home in which they were raised. These two elements together; the family and the home they each come from and the preparation for marriage given them by the Catholic Church.

ANNULMENTS:

Within the Church Universal the United States amounts to eighty percent of annulments. Sixty years ago The Church in The United States produced about six hundred annulments a year. Today it is about sixty thousand. The annulment process is to examine the marriage to see if there was any impediment existing at the time of the marriage which would make it null and void, in which case the petitioner is granted the annulment which leaves him or her free to enter a marriage in the Church. It leaves the other party in a quandary if they believed they had a valid marriage to begin with. All of this is a very complicated and intricate thing to examine and can't be done justice to in a few words. If there was a reservation in the mind of either party at the time of the ceremony the marriage can be declared invalid. But the case was that the Church invited psychologists to make judgments on fine points of Canon Law and the decision was made that some people were incapable of making a marriage commitment or understanding the meaning of the term and so, therefore, were incapable of really saying, "yes". The bond of marriage between husband and wife cannot be broken. The Bible tells us that they are two in one flesh. Adam said when he saw his wife Eve, "Here at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" The Church does not approve of divorce but none the less we have so many annulments that outsiders called it the Church's divorce. The ones who suffer the most and for the rest of their lives are the children of broken homes.