Sheila Rauch Kennedy on Canon Law & Annulments

There must be a better way than annulment to protect Catholics and marriage.

...many see easy annulment as the church's well-intentioned attempt to address divorce and remarriage among its members. Yet the prevalence of annulments in the United States — 90% of annulments decided in U.S. church courts are granted; roughly 57,000 last year alone — has also led many theologians to question whether the Catholic Church is truly protecting its marriage sacrament. In many cases, the process has become cruel, dishonest and misguided, prompting church lawyers to caution that the procedure itself may violate Catholic law.

In the United States, the vast majority of annulments are granted on the basis of Canon 1095, a code in Catholic law that allows psychological factors to be taken into account when evaluating a marriage. Canon 1095, based on well-established Catholic law, states that a person must have the capacity to understand what he or she is doing by marrying and be able to meet its requirements. It stipulates that husbands and wives must enter into marriage honestly and freely, without fraud or duress, and be capable of consummating the union.

...Church courts in the U.S., however, have broadened acceptable criteria for psychological incapacity to include almost anything, from personality traits such as self-centeredness, moodiness or being eager to please to unproven "disorders," which may be embellished into full-blown mental illness, a practice that has prompted critics to refer to Canon 1095 as the "loose canon."

Perhaps later, Dr Ed Peters might review and comment on Kennedy's article which can be read here.