SHOULD ANNULMENTS BE SO EASY?

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

One man's political mess is another man's teaching aid. As Joseph P. Kennedy II suffered the fallout of his annulment, Father Michael Smith Foster, associate judicial vicar with the court that awarded it, took the opportunity to pen an article for the local Catholic newspaper, the Pilot, in which he addressed 13 "misconceptions" about the practice. No. 4: "Declarations [of nullity] render children illegitimate." This is simply not the case, Foster explained. No. 2: "Declarations cost thousands of dollars." In fact, the fee in Boston is only $450. No. 13: "There are too many declarations granted in the U.S."

Well, many Catholics, some in high places, share that particular misconception. Sheila Rauch Kennedy (an Episcopalian) decries what she claims is the annulment procedure's dishonesty in ruling that a once happy marriage never existed in the eyes of God. But for two decades, the main criticism of the American church's annulment system, at least among conservatives, has been of its generosity. U.S. Catholics in 1994 received 54,463 annulments, 75% of all those granted worldwide and more than 90% of all they requested. Some people wink and call it "Catholic divorce." Others, like former Pilot editor Philip Lawler, are grim: "To speak in economic terms," he says, "the inflation of annulment has debased the currency of marriage."

In Catholic belief, no human can dissolve a marriage, a sacrament undertaken by bride and groom before God. Church tribunals do not presume to void the contract. They can only determine (to the dismay of people in Rauch Kennedy's position) that owing to human incapacity or error, a valid contract was never entered into in the first place. For centuries the standards for this were clear and high: mental illness of either spouse, for instance, or impotence at the time of marriage. In 1968 only 338 decrees of nullity were granted in the U.S. But in the early 1960s, John Keating, a young American priest, wrote an influential doctoral dissertation summarizing Vatican rulings that justified the use of "psychological insights" to assess failed marriages. Since then American clergy have psychologized enthusiastically. The Archdiocese of Chicago, for instance, will now consider annulling the union of a "person [who did] not intend to care for his/her partner."

The consequences of such liberalization have not pleased the Vatican. In 1993 Archbishop Vincenzo Fagiolo called the American annulment figures "a grave scandal." Robert Vasoli, author of the forthcoming book Tearing Asunder: Annulment American Style, says that on this issue, "the church in the U.S. is practically in schism with Rome." An overstatement, perhaps, but in 1994 Pope John Paul II warned the Roman Rota, the Vatican court to which Rauch Kennedy has appealed, against a "mistaken idea of compassion and mercy" that might cloud true justice.

Thomas Doran, who served on the Rota until he was made Bishop of Rockford, Ill., understands both sides. American Catholics live "with a divorce mentality," he says, and are bound to be affected by it. But they are also subject to Catholic canon law, which has always strictly carried out Jesus's teaching against divorce. Doran and his colleagues are in the middle. They would like to stem the annulment tide. "But the trouble," he sighs, "is that saying no is never an easy thing to do."

--By David Van Biema. Reported by Greg Burke/Rome and Richard N. Ostling/New York

With reporting by GREG BURKE/ROME AND RICHARD N. OSTLING/ NEW YORK