By JOHN-HENRY WESTEN
(Wanderer Editor’s Note: At the beginning of this year, The Wanderer published a two-part interview with Raymond Cardinal Burke by our columnist Don Fier, issues of January 8 and 15, 2015. In that interview, Cardinal Burke commented on the annulment process and the calls to “streamline the process.”
(Following this LifeSiteNews story, we reprint the relevant paragraphs from that interview, which appeared in our January 15, 2015 issue.)
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STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (LifeSiteNews) — Speaking September 8 at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Raymond Cardinal Burke expressed grave reservations about the very proposals that were released the same day in Pope Francis’ motu proprio concerning annulments in the Catholic Church.
Burke was addressing those proposals as outlined in the reports from the 2014 Extraordinary Synod on the Family which took place last October, and not the motu proprio, since his prepared remarks predated the release of the motu proprio.
The crowd was directed to refrain from asking questions on the motu proprio as the cardinal had not had time to review it sufficiently.
The most startling changes in the annulment procedure were to drastically lessen the time for acquiring an annulment to as little as 45 days. Moreover, the motu proprio eliminated the need for a second confirming judgment and left to the local bishop rather than canonical judges, the decision on annulments.
Speaking of similar proposals as part of the synod documentation and not as part of the motu proprio, Burke noted that the canonical procedures had been developed over centuries to give certainty of arriving at the truth.
He stressed the importance of determining the truth on the matter, noting that it deals with the “salvation of souls.”
Burke noted that similar proposals to alter the process along the lines that were suggested at the synod (and now implemented in the motu proprio) were also proposed before the 1983 reformation of canon law and were rejected by Pope St. John Paul II. Moreover, Burke noted that the Vatican already attempted a lessening of the procedures for the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s, leading to an impression of “Catholic divorce.”
Burke firmly rejected the notion that people could be too weak to conform to God’s law on marriage, saying that our Lord has assured us that He gives to us all the grace we need to live our lives in His will.
“In the present moment when the attacks on matrimony and on the family even within the Church seem the most ferocious,” he said, “it is the Church who must show to the whole of society the truth in all its richness and thus the beauty and the richness of the truth about marriage.”
“The Synod Fathers and all faithful Christians must be willing to suffer,” he added, “to honor and foster holy matrimony.”
He warned that “confusion and error on holy matrimony” are being “sown by Satan in society and in the Church.”
Marriage, he said is “under a ferocious and diabolical attack.”
Responding to Church leaders who have called for false accommodation with the world, even for silence in the face of homosexual liaisons being accepted as “marriage,” he said we must “call things by their proper name in order not to risk contributing to confusion and error.” That, “according to Divine wisdom, the Church must always speak the truth with love.”
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Q. In the chapter you wrote for the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ, you emphasized the importance of seeking the truth in the juridical process to determine if a man and woman are in a valid marriage. You returned often to two key points: 1) This matter concerns “the salvation of souls,” and 2) the discipline that is to be followed has been “carefully developed over the Christian centuries.”
Yet now there is a call to “streamline the process,” to make it a pastoral rather than juridical decision. Please explain the distinction between juridical and pastoral considerations and why objective truth must be sought.
Secondly, when a declaration of nullity has been wrongly granted, where does the culpability lie: the tribunal (i.e., the judge, Defender of the Bond, and other members of the tribunal); the couple (i.e., the man and/or woman who sought the declaration of nullity); or both?
A. With regard to the question of the salvation of souls, our vocation in life is the way to salvation. It is by fidelity to our vocation, whether we are called to the married life, to the priesthood, or to the consecrated life, that we save our souls. If we are unfaithful, we are in danger of losing our salvation. That is why the question of vocational discernment is extremely important to us as we are growing up and then, once we embrace our vocation, as we give all our energy to living it fully.
So this is not a matter of declaring marriages null — it is not a matter of just making people’s living arrangements easier. It has to do with a promise a man and woman made before God to live in faithful, enduring, and procreative love of one another. Unless in some way that promise was not made — either because a person was not capable of making the promise or a person deceitfully withheld an essential aspect of the marriage contract — it is a valid marriage and one is bound to live in fidelity to it until death parts the couple.
Therefore the Church, understanding this, has developed a very careful process over the centuries to arrive at the truth. If a party comes to the Church and makes a claim of nullity for his or her marriage, the Church has to seek out the proofs that demonstrate that claim as well as seek out proofs that are contrary to the claim so that the judge can make a decision with moral certitude, that is, a decision where there is no reasonable doubt to the contrary that the claim of nullity is true. The couple making the claim of nullity, in that way, can then be at peace about entering a valid marriage.
The juridical process is, in fact, very pastoral. To make a dichotomy between what is juridical and what is pastoral is false because marriage establishes a relationship between two persons in justice which has a juridical character to it. Only by a juridical process can one be at peace about the nullity of the marriage and therefore, the freedom to enter into union with another person. That is the most pastoral thing.
I always say that justice, what the juridical process seeks to attain, is the minimum but irreplaceable condition for charity. How can you talk about charity if you are not just?
If the Church, for instance, is lightheartedly declaring marriages null, it is an injustice to the parties and everyone else involved in the marriage. It is not just the two parties — we are talking about children, relatives, and the whole of society. Think of the tremendous harm that has been caused in our society by no-fault divorce and subsequent rampant divorces. Marriage as an institution is in crisis. So a distinction between the juridical and pastoral simply does not exist.
When the declaration of nullity has been wrongly granted, that is, it is granted without following the process seriously and the judge makes a decision without coming to moral certitude, it weighs on the conscience of the tribunal. We have to think that the parties are acting in good faith. In other words, the parties came to the tribunal, asked for a judgment, and the tribunal gave them a judgment. We cannot hold them accountable for a false judgment unless they deliberately brought false proofs to the tribunal and in some way deceived the tribunal. It is very difficult to imagine that could happen, so we have to presume that they are in good faith.
A point that I would like to make is that every marriage that is broken is not a candidate for a declaration of nullity. Many marriages are broken because of sin. For example, consider a couple entered a valid matrimonial union and lived together for several years and had children. Then, in some midlife crisis, the husband takes up with a young secretary who shows interest in him and abandons his wife. Is that marriage null?
We had a period in the United States — in a very particular way from 1971 until 1983 — during which the volume of declarations of nullity was very high when the process did not respect the time-tried process of the Church. People, not without reason, called the declaration of nullity “Catholic divorce.” They saw declarations of nullity being granted for marriages that were clearly valid.
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