The practice of annulment sounds like talmudic "this isn't what it obviously is" practice. Like we can manipulate God and say "see? it was annulled, it never existed". Reminds me of Mormon's jumping on beds so a couple doesn't actually initiate coitus, therefore they're still virgin, but experience sex anyway via the bouncing of the bed.
Divorce
- Thread starter JR5
- Start date
That's a thing? lol
It always feels off I think, bad taste lingers long as consummation has occurred- is it considered absolved fornication from then on?
Nobody gets married intending to later on seek to have the union pronounced invalid post facto. Annulment is not the couple's believing they can fool or play gotcha with God. It's usually one party's deluding him/herself she can cheat out both- God and the other side, by pretending to be someone else- and finding out it did not work in the end.
It shall not be granted fast and easy, there are very specific conditions that must be met, it's not a frivolous inquiry. Both parties can be dishonest, an impotent man and an infertile woman concealing their deficiencies. If both take Jesus seriously every marriage will work out.
In Russia you get three shots. I'll use a hyperbolic statement for emphasis- Look around at the pews, X is on his third wife, miserable and depressed, stuck in the mud with all of his options exhausted; Z is radiant and happy with one fresh start left should things go sour. Three time's the charm... I need just one more, give me another chance, what difference does it make... too bad for you, hard limit reached. This I know due to proximity, in the other Orthodox countries the same 'three marriages' rule applies I guess- is it akin to the practice of keeping score for the brothers in our lives who have sinned against us- whom we must forgive the seven dreaded times, but after that it's our turn to shoot, fire and fury. Does this also seem Pharisaic or Talmudic, like counting one's steps on a Sabbath?
I don't like your choice of using reproductive activities as the metaphor in testing for the validity of sacraments, but now that you've brought it up I'll go along with an even more hideous- really ridiculous- but only a hypothetical example to illustrate the point. The logic of Annulment is more akin to declaring that there was no sex with a woman, when it turns out the vagina was artificial- when your expectations have been deceived completely and the truth to which you had every right, denied you.
Alternatively, I can compare annulment to a situation where a pastor in Germany marries two men. The two have not been bound together in heaven, even though the clergyman had conducted the ceremony properly and given every assurance, nothing happened. They've never been seen as married from the Catholic Church's perspective, like those normal people whose marriage was annulled.
In Poland, one of the neighbors were a couple where the woman (a dishonest and envious person, always gaming the system for gibs, faking disability) had divorced her alcoholic husband and found her little daughter a new daddy who would beat her severely, the four year old me did not like hearing the screams and audible begging 'daddy no' coming from across the street, she was 3 years older, it eased off when she went to high school. I remember my mother rushing in to save her on a few occasions, she even stayed with us overnight in my bed a couple times when we were toddlers when her mother had run away again for a day or two. But her mother knew everything, and a foster family or state custody could have been worse, unwanted kids call orphanages 'plighters' there, I didn't know much back then but every kind of abuse can happen in them at the hands of other kids and the workers, that's how I excuse the silence of all the neighbor witnesses, the 'it's none of our business' approach. She sought annulment unsuccessfully, widowed at last, she was happy to marry her life partner, go to confession with absolution, and start receiving communion, by then the daughter had long been out of the house and married with kids. From what I know there's no bad blood between any of them.
Trusting God, one hopes the annulment process is free from abuse. Through the ups and downs of marriage we shouldn't be quitters though, life's not about us alone, and we must sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the kids and grandkids, keep on fighting, persevere, aware of our mortality- 'memento mori', we'll get to rest eternally later. So yeah, I don't endorse annulments, if you've chosen poorly pray and carry your cross.