Pope John Paul II reiterated the Vatican’s stand against divorce in his speech to the Roman Rota, a tribunal handling annulment appeals, last January 28.
Although the appeal is limited to lawyers who are free to choose their cases, the Supreme Pontiff said Catholic civil lawyers must refuse to handle divorce cases if these are intended to break the marriage bond.
For their part, the Pope said Catholic judges “must find effective means to promote matrimonial unions, above all through a wisely conducted work of reconciliation” should they encounter divorce cases.
The Church has continuously opposed divorce by promoting a “mentality, social custom, and civil legislation in favor of indissolubility.”
Separated couples are permitted to obtain a civil divorce if it is “the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Referring to divorce as a “plague” with devastating consequences for society, the Pope stated that the Church has unwaveringly defended marriage’s permanence, which is a divine as well as an inviolable human institution. Similarly, the Church has also opposed unconventional unions such as gay “marriages.”
The Pope criticized some church tribunals for promulgating judgments that an apparent marriage was null from the start, which in recent years had “more or less openly relativized” the meaning of marriage.
“The injustice of a declaration of nullity, opposed to the truth of the normative principles or facts, is particularly serious, since its official link to the church promotes the diffusion of attitudes in which indissolubility is supported with words but obscured in life,” he said.
The Pope said that these tribunals should presume the indissolubility of the marital union. This does not mean prejudice against just declarations of nullity, but rather a working conviction regarding the good at play in the process, which is united with an ever-renewed optimism that comes from the natural character of matrimony and from the Lord’s support for the spouses. Marlon M. Castor with report from the Catholic News Service
