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Washington D.C., Jun 17, 2016 / 03:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A virtual brouhaha erupted Thursday after Pope Francis said in unscripted remarks that “the great majority” of marriages today are null, due to a “provisional” culture in which people do not understand permanent commitment.

Although his comment was later revised to say that “a portion” of marriages are null, the question remains: What exactly makes a marriage invalid?

“It’s certainly in my experience that the kind of provisional culture, the conditional and temporary way in which we view real permanent institutions, has an impact on marriage, on the way that we live our marriages, on the way that we relate to our spouses, and those kinds of things,” J.D. Flynn, a canon lawyer in Nebraska, told CNA.

Pope Francis, during a Thursday question-and-answer session at the Diocese of Rome’s pastoral congress, decried today’s “culture of the provisional” where people are unwilling to commit to a lifelong vocation.

“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null,” he continued. “Because they [couples] say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

The Vatican on Friday revised the remarks in the official transcript, with Pope Francis’ approval. The text was changed to say that “a portion” of marriages today are null, not a “great majority.”

Many couples “don’t know what the sacrament is,” the Pope said on Thursday. “They don’t know that it’s indissoluble, they don’t know that it’s for your entire life. It’s hard.” Pope Francis faulted, in part, lack of good marriage preparation in teaching engaged couples about the truth of marriage.

In his impromptu comments, the Holy Father was not declaring any particular marriages to be invalid, as Church tribunals do when they establish that a marriage never actually existed, Flynn said. He added that “it’s important for people to remember that the Church always presumes the validity of a marriage unless it’s proven otherwise.”

Whether the number of invalid marriages is “a portion” or “the great majority,” such cases do exist, and the Church has very specific processes in place to evaluate them.

Just because a couple encounters difficulties does not mean their marriage is invalid. “Marriage is, by its very nature, a difficult thing,” Flynn said, “and the Church instructs us to presume that God has given us the grace of marriage, and to rely on that grace, and to ask God to strengthen that grace.”

When a tribunal does examine the validity of a particular marriage, it looks at two primary factors from “the time [the couple] attempted consent,” or the time that they made their wedding vows, Flynn explained.

First is the “object of their consent,” he said. “Did they intend against what marriage really is, or did they intend to marry as the Church understands marriage?”

The second factor is the person’s “capacity for consent,” he added. “Did they have the ability to make a full and free human act of consent?”

There are some key ways that a “provisional culture” can affect people’s marriages, he said. For example, grounds for annulment can include when “a person might directly and principally intend against a permanent marriage.”

“That is to say,” he continued, “‘I marry you but I intend to end this perpetual union when I see fit’.” This can’t just be an admitting that divorce “happens,” he noted, but rather “an intention against the permanence of the marriage” at the time of the wedding vows.

Another nullifying factor is “ignorance” of the nature of marriage as “a permanent union between a man and a woman, that in some way is ordered to the procreation of children through sexual cooperation,” he said.

“We presume that everyone who has achieved puberty is not ignorant of marriage. The law of the Church says we’re supposed to presume that,” he said.

So for ignorance to nullify a marriage, “you have to prove in a definitive way that they really had no knowledge of the concept of marriage as a permanent union.” And this would be ignorance of a “basic human understanding” of marriage, Flynn clarified, not an ignorance of graduate-level theology of marriage.

Also, a person’s “grave” psychological defects or a “grave defect in their will or in their cognition” can be factors mitigating a person’s “ability to choose” to marry someone, he said. And this has a higher risk of happening in today’s culture.

He acknowledged that “it is true that in a breakdown of the family, in a ‘provisional culture,’ in the ‘culture of death’ as John Paul II said, it’s more likely that people’s ability to choose the act of marriage will be mitigated.”

There are other factors that can nullify a marriage as well. One question is if someone is “free to enter into the human relationship of marriage,” Flynn said.

“In other words, are they capable of having a human relationship at all with other people, or do they suffer psychologically in a way that they wouldn’t be able to?”

Another question is, “Does a person reserve to themselves the right to create children in an intentional way?” Flynn asked.

Although the Church teaches that contraception is gravely wrong, using it does not make one’s marriage invalid, he clarified. For that to be the case, someone “has to intend, directly and principally and definitively, not to grant the other person the right to the good of children. Not to be open, in any way, at any point in the marriage, in a definitive sense, to children.”

Furthermore, if a person takes their wedding vows with the definitive intention not to be faithful, the marriage would not be valid. This is different than a case of someone vowing to be faithful and then cheating on their spouse later, he clarified.

The Church’s annulment process is thorough, he said, and for good reason.

“It’s very difficult to kind of mete out what a person had intended on their wedding day, which is why the Church’s process for a declaration of nullity is so exhaustive,” he said, “and why it’s often the case that it’s difficult to come to a conclusion.”

“Because you have to go back to an earlier time and get real testimony about what a person’s capacity was or what their intentions were,” he added.

Other present-day marital problems Pope Francis mentioned are couples who are living together in a sexual union before marriage, and couples who are expecting a child before marriage, and who are rushed into marrying in a “shotgun wedding” rather than “accompanied” by the Church in order to spiritually “mature.”

Mary Rose Verret, who with her husband Ryan runs the “Witness to Love: marriage prep renewal ministry,” emphasized the importance of the Church teaching these couples about Christian marriage, and ensuring they are living in accord with Catholic teaching and are ready to receive the sacrament before they make their vows.

Couples who want to enter the marriage prep program, but who are cohabiting or expecting a child, should not be rushed into marriage at the expense of formation, she insisted. “Don’t push them to get married. Accompany them, wait with them, be a witness to them, but don’t just push them to get married.”

Even married couples who are accompanying engaged couples in their ministry need catechesis, Verret added. These “mentor couples” are picked by the engaged couple to help them prepare for marriage and go through the marriage prep process with them.

“They do the ‘virtue development’ workbook, they’re coached in accompaniment, and they even go to the marriage prep retreat with the engaged couples. They do all of it with the engaged couple,” Verret said.

“And what we hear from them is ‘this is the marriage prep I never received’,” she said.

“The big thing that we’re trying to do is give marriage preparation to an entire generation that did not receive it.”
 

Photo credit: isak55 via www.shutterstock.com.

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By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Catholic Church has launched a new kind of "special forces" in the fight against child abuse.

Nineteen men and women from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas became the first graduates awarded special certification in the safeguarding of minors -- an initiative begun in Rome in 2016 to help dioceses, bishops' conferences, religious orders and other church bodies excel in child protection.

The graduates -- who are psychiatrists, theologians, canon lawyers, educators and child protection officers -- were honored June 14 during a graduation ceremony at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University.

Pope Francis sent a personal letter for the occasion, praising the new graduates and telling them, "I wish you courage and patience; be brave and committed."

The five-month, intensive program is run by the Center for Child Protection at the university's Institute of Psychology and grew out of an e-learning program, but offers more active discussion and group work with onsite, face-to-face instruction by experts in a variety of fields.

The diploma course includes six in-depth interdisciplinary seminars on: defining the problem of sex abuse; children's rights; the importance of sacred and safe spaces; the abuse of faith in abuse scandals; the liberating force of truth and justice; and how to help survivors and their families.

Now armed with new insights and specialized knowledge, the priests, religious men and women, and consecrated laypeople were ready to head home to improve the church's response and beef up its role in protecting minors from sexual predators.

While some students were invited to present their projects to the guests assembled for the diploma ceremony, many of them mingled later in the university foyer, talking about their research and findings, and posing proudly for photographs in front of their poster presentations.

Marist Brother Fortune Chakasara of the Diocese of Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe, pointed to his large drawing of spear-wielding village leaders fending off a lion, snake and alligator -- animals symbolizing HIV, poverty and dysfunctional families.

The warrior vs. predator images, he said, illustrated the importance of standing up to and protecting children from specific enemies in a way that would resonate with local villagers.

In her final project, Sister Damiana Kasoo tackled the culture of silence in Kenya and the pressures people feel to protect the family name from scandal.

A member of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, Sister Kasoo is a canon lawyer at the Kenyan bishops' conference, which sent her and a colleague, also a canonist, to Rome for the course. The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which has been inviting mission dioceses to respond adequately to the problem of child abuse, funds scholarships for students from Africa, Asia and other mission territories for the diploma course.

Sister Kasoo told Catholic News Service that devising and educating others about "a prevention program will be all up to me. I will go back to deliver what I learned here." She said she will create programs for all the dioceses in Kenya and then follow up in person, helping dioceses with training and implementing safeguard protections.

What struck her the most during the course, she said, was learning about "the pain the victims go through." She only learned about it because the course included listening to and speaking with a survivor, who offered powerful firsthand testimony of the impact of abuse by church members.

Kenyan Father Bernard Malasi's project looked at people's "fear of authority," which prevents them from reporting abuse or deceives them into accepting "payoffs" from the church, he said.

"They are poor so they take (the money) and stay quiet," he told CNS.

Father Malasi works as the child protection coordinator in the Diocese of Malindi, and he said it was his bishop, Maltese-born Bishop Emanuel Barbara, who sent him to take the course.

The biggest obstacles Father Malasi said he sees in implementing protection policies remain: "denial -- people say abuse doesn't happen"; illiteracy; corruption, including in the judicial system; and poverty, which continues to be the motivating factor for some families to force their children into prostitution.

"The most important thing I learned is that children are part of the church, they are the future of the church. Abuse is killing them" emotionally, spiritually and developmentally, he said. "It kills their future" and leaves them with no hope.

Annette Schavan, German ambassador to the Vatican, praised "the courage of the Jesuits" at the Gregorian University for developing needed programs and resources for the protection of children from abuse.

"The time of concealment and silence had to come to an end," said Schavan, the former federal minister of education and research.

"A new chapter in the history of the Catholic Church" has begun, she said, and such work to increase awareness "brings us hope."

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Rome, Italy, Jun 16, 2016 / 02:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Updated June 17, 2016 to include a clarification by the Vatican: Pope Francis approved a revision to the official transcript to say that “a portion” of sacramental marriages are null, instead of “the great majority.”

Pope Francis said Thursday that many sacramental marriages today are not valid, because couples do not enter into them with a proper understanding of permanence and commitment.

While he initially said in unscripted comments that “the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null,” he later approved a revision of these remarks.

When the Vatican released its official transcript of the encounter the following day, they had changed the comment to say that “a portion of our sacramental marriages are null.”

In the Vatican blog “Il sismografo,” Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said that this change is a revision approved by the Pope himself.

“When they touch on subjects of a certain importance, the revised text is always submitted to the Pope himself,” Fr. Lombardi said. “This is what happened in this case, so the published text was expressly approved by the Pope.”

The initial comments had come as the Pope was addressing the Diocese of Rome’s pastoral congress. After his initial scripted remarks, he held a question-and-answer session.

A layman asked about the “crisis of marriage” and how Catholics can help educate youth in love, help them learn about sacramental marriage, and help them overcome “their resistance, delusions and fears.”

The Pope answered from his own experience.

“I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,” he said.

“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

He spoke of his encounter with a woman in Buenos Aires who “reproached” him. She said that priests study for the priesthood for years and can get permission to leave the priesthood to marry and have a family. For the laity, this woman said, “we have to do the sacrament for our entire lives, and indissolubly, to us laity they give four (marriage preparation) conferences, and this is for our entire life.”

Pope Francis said that marriage preparation is a problem, and that marital problems are also linked to social situations surrounding weddings.

He recounted his encounter with a man engaged to be married who was looking for a church that would complement his fiancée’s dress and would not be far from a restaurant.

“It’s social issue, and how do we change this? I don’t know,” the Pope said.

He noted that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he had prohibited marriages in the case of “shotgun weddings” where the prospective bride was pregnant. He did this on the grounds there was a question of the spouses’ free consent to marry.

“Maybe they love each other, and I’ve seen there are beautiful cases where, after two or three years they got married,” he said. “And I saw them entering the church, father, mother and child in hand. But they knew well (what) they did.”

Pope Francis attributed the marriage crisis to people who “don’t know what the sacrament is” and don’t know “the beauty of the sacrament.”

“They don’t know that it’s indissoluble, they don’t know that it’s for your entire life. It’s hard,” the Pope said.

He added that a majority of couples attending marriage prep courses in Argentina typically cohabitated.

“They prefer to cohabitate, and this is a challenge, a task. Not to ask ‘why don’t you marry?’ No, to accompany, to wait, and to help them to mature, help fidelity to mature.”

He said that in Argentina’s northeast countryside, couples have a child and live together. They have a civil wedding when the child goes to school, and when they become grandparents they “get married religiously.”

“It’s a superstition, because marriage frightens the husband. It’s a superstition we have to overcome,” the Pope said. “I’ve seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity, but there are local superstitions, etc.”

“Marriage is the most difficult area of pastoral work,” he said.

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