The summer after my father died, my younger sister worked as a candy striper at the hospital where he had worked. She met a man there whom she introduced to our older sister. Before long, my older sister was engaged and in the summer of 1968 they were married. We rarely saw them after that since his job took them to remote places like Wolf Point, MT and Zuni, NM. They seldom came home to visit because my brother-in-law never felt comfortable with our family lifestyle.
In the summer of 1992, I helped my sister move from Colorado to California. On the way, she told me that her marriage was in trouble. Her husband had moved to Sacramento the year before to get their older children into a better high school while my sister and their younger children stayed behind to sell the house. He was having an affair and as much as she loved him, my sister was not too hopeful that their marriage could be saved. Despite their efforts at counseling, the end came a year later.
Divorce is not a common experience in our family. At that time, I had 35 first cousins, ranging in age from 38 to 82, and only two of them had experienced divorce.
A few years later, she decided to seek an annulment, so my sister asked me to serve as a witness for her. I made the observation that she did not marry a husband; she had married a father. I then explained that she met her former husband less than a year after our father had died; the two men were both army officers, pharmacists, and physically big men each in their own way. As I expected, the tribunal in Sacramento granted my sister a “declaration of nullity.” After its investigation, it concluded that no true sacramental marriage existed between them. Such a decree says nothing about the legal status of their marriage or their children.
The business of divorce and annulment undoubtedly leaves many people confused and sometimes angry, especially if they were never married in the Catholic Church. Why do I need to go through another trial with the Church in order to marry again? I recall years ago how Ann Landers even called an annulment a Catholic divorce. Actually, we are dealing with two separate issues here.
A divorce is a civil decree stating that a legal marriage no longer exists. The marriage between my sister and former brother-in-law witnessed here in Washington was terminated by a court in California 24 years later. In the eyes of society, they were now legally free to remarry.
Based on what Jesus has said, the Church presumes every couple to be married in the eyes of God until, as the vows state, death do they part. In the wedding rite, one even finds the line taken from today’s gospel, “Let no man separate what God has joined.” Thus, the Church does not have the freedom to terminate a valid marriage. Being divorced doesn’t free a person to marry, so the question is asked, “Did God in fact join this couple together?” In other words, was this marriage a truly sacramental union?
Like priesthood, marriage is a vocation. Not everyone is called by God to marriage, or if they are, some choose to marry a person other than the one God had in mind.
A tribunal’s mission is to discern if a sacramental marriage exists or not. Whenever a declaration of nullity is granted, the tribunal has determined that something was lacking which made the marriage as a sacrament null from the beginning. Often times, one spouse or both entered into the marriage either unable or unwilling to fulfill the vows that were exchanged along with the implicit responsibilities that a true marriage entails. Two fairly common examples would be when one or both spouses enter the relationship lacking the intent, the desire or the capacity to remain faithful to one another or to have and raise children.
What makes a marriage sacramental? Up front, I would say when both spouses strive to include God as an integral partner in their union. Statistics show that when couples pray together, their marriage becomes practically indestructible. When God is missing from a person’s life for any number of reasons, self-centeredness is likely to fill the vacuum. Sooner or later, that is apt to stop a person from carrying out the fundamental responsibilities of marriage, namely attending to the well-being of one’s spouse and children.
I often tell engaged couples that a wise approach to ensuring the success of their marriage would be to adopt the line, “God is first, you are second, and I am third.” If that were the creed of every lover in every marriage, I am convinced that the seeds of divorce would never take root. The lover who honestly lives that creed could not verbally or physically batter the beloved. The lover who honestly lives that creed cannot deny the dignity of the beloved. The lover who strives to live that creed will not be unfaithful to the beloved or their children.
The lover who lives with this conviction would see the beloved, not as someone to be dominated or diminished, but as a spouse equal in dignity and value, for both the lover and the beloved are created equal in God’s image. The lover who believes this would never ask the question raised by the Pharisees in this gospel for instead of seeing marriage as a link merely joining two separate and possibly unequal partners, the lover sees their union as one bonded together by God that no one or nothing but death can separate.