Catholic Church and Cult of Confusion
Written by Confusion support on March 3, 2008 – 11:45 am -
I am Catholic. I have been involved in two Catholic Annulments. They both went differently. One thing came out of the entire process. The Catholic Church has little idea what it is doing. They are in a “cult of confusion”, purposefully trying to confuse people, claiming only they can make certain religious laws and changing practice or opinion based on money or politics. I speak as an intelligent person who is telling you the complete truth. Anyone who does not believe this has probably not been involved in any complex Catholic process or organization.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-Catholic or against any other denomination. But I AM against any denomination claiming they have all the answers and are preeminent in all decisions concerning religion.
In one of the annulments the Catholic Church made the statement, “whether the marriage in question has been proven invalid on the ground of lack of due discretion on the part of the petitioner”. That can basically mean anything. That is just a small example. The Catholic Church, as evidence, takes the testimony of each spouse and uses that. Each spouse can say what they want, make up information, lie or speak in anger and completely fool the Catholic Church itself! The entire annulment process is archaic and ridiculous. Each party in the annulment can pick witnesses of their life. Of course these witnesses can say anything, depending on how well they liked one of the parties.
In another annulment I was witness to, the two parties who formerly were married, were not Catholic, and had never been. The male ex-spouse had a new wife who was Catholic. This new wife decided that she wanted the old marriage annulled. In some way she was allowed to fill out the paper work for her husband (who was not Catholic and didn’t really want to even do it). The Catholic Church took the case (and money) and proceeded in an attempt to annul the old marriage. Keep in mind that neither spouse from the original marriage was Catholic! By what power can the Catholic Church claim that they can annul anyone’s marriage in front of a Catholic Tribunal, regardless if either party was Catholic or not! Is this a joke? This is completely ridiculous! A more proper action would have been for the Catholic Church to immediately dismiss the case, on the grounds that neither party was Catholic nor had been married Catholic (as well as the fact that the new spouse, who was not part of the annulment, filled out the paper work)! I can bet that if the Church was doing this annulment for free they would have dismissed it instantly. The Catholic Church does not consider marriages made civilly, or not in the Catholic Church, as fully valid. Yet, in this case, they are attempting to annul a marriage they don’t consider valid in the first place? What!? This is obviously adding to the “cult of confusion” and a symptom of Catholic egoism.
Annulment cases, and other Catholic processes are too long to discuss here in complete detail, but I have been sitting with mouth agape, in confusion, trying to understand where the Catholic Church is getting their ideas for what they do at times. Totally amazing.
Tags: catholicPosted in Religion Confusion |
March 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
While some organized churches seem more open to accepting the idea that they may not have all the answers, I think most feel that they are interpreting the Bible and other religious dogma correctly, so expect their followers to support their tenants. Some such tenants seem ridiculous to the outsider looking in, and in some cases to the insiders themselves. The Catholic church has more than its share of these. As a fellow Catholic, who also happens to be divorced, I’ve looked into the annulment process in some depth, and find it to be absurd. First of all, I, having not married a Catholic in the first place, would have an annulment granted almost immediately. But for those couples where both parties are Catholic, the regulations are almost laughable, and so ambiguous that one could interpret them any way they’d like. How, for example, can you prove or disprove that someone got married with less than honorable intentions and full dedication to the institution. Even if you did fully expect the marriage to work out, what benefit is there in making an annulment difficult. As the original article notes, you could simply lie so that your marriage would be quickly annuled. The easiest way to do this would be for one party to simply state that he/she fully intended to engage in extramarital affairs while married. That should shorten the annulment process quite a bit. I remain a Catholic because, in spite of the church’s faults, I like the tradition, reverence, and consistency of the Catholic service, and feel a strong connection to my childhood through the church, having been raised Catholic. I also feel that, because the church itself represents God’s house, attending a service is a way of showing God that you care enough to pay a visit once in awhile. And, it also provides me with some occasional social interaction, which most humans need from time to time. It would certainly be nice if the Church didn’t take itself so seriously though. I mean for God’s sake, they have an entire city as their headquarters. Do they really think that’s what God would want?
April 12th, 2008 at 9:34 am
You are both very sad and ill informed and love your own egos more than you would ever, likely, discover.
And, what is quite amusing is that this comment is from a man who left the Catholic Church over divorce/annulment. The difference here is that I know what I am talking about and apparently neither of you do, nor do you seem to care about the truth, other than as you define truth.
You both would do well do find a person, like myself who was willing to show you the truth and who had the time to do it. A good place to start would be a person who had been a respondent in an annulment proceding, who was a faithful Catholic, who had a working knowledge of the mortality behind the process and a Catholic respect for the teachings of the Catholic Church.
The annulment process has many weaknesses, not the least of which is its openness to falsehood, as you have pointed out. But it is common sense not to hold someone to a contract which they were deceived into or forced into in the first place. Marriages can be similar, contracts, if you look at them as a “deal”. So there is a firm moral and truthful basis for findings of nullity, when they actually reflect the truth/facts.
The problems come from the fact that in many, not all, instances, for reasons too plentiful to list here, the ultimate decisions are untrue and what is done about the consequences of these decisions is usually very superficial. The result is confusion and injustice.
People like myself care very much about the Catholic Church and its vested interest in teaching its adherents about marriage, but many people calling themselves Catholic do so only for tangential reasons and have never commited themselves to actually learning and adhering to all the teachings of the Catholic Church, hence the term “Cafeteria Catholic”. These folks, their opinions and their actions create huge confusion and injustice.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I’ve been dealing with the Catholic Church and an annulment from my ex-husband (actually, his wife) for the last eight months. About a year ago, my ex-husband’s wife asked me if I minded if she had this done so she could become a “full Catholic” again. Well, I was thinking we would sign a few papers, she would pay her fees to have this done, and that would be it! HA! Was I wrong! Bear in mind that my ex-husband and I have been divorced for over 15 years and they have been married for over 12 years, and she suddenly needs this done.
This has been very disturbing to me in many ways. First and foremost, my ex-husband or I are neither one Catholic and never have been. So my very first thought after the initial papers came to me in the mail was how the Catholic Church can say the marriage of my ex-husband and I needs to be annulled so the church can recognize his marriage to his current wife after they are married in the Catholic Church… what??? Ok, why would they recognize my marriage to him when we were not married in a Catholic Church and neither of us were or are Catholic, yet they don’t recognize the marriage of him and his current wife? Baffling to me…
Next, and also very disturbing to me is the initial letter I got from the Tribunal Office of the Catholic Church in Cincinnati Ohio VERY clearly states “Please know that all information received is held in strictest confidence and is available only to members of this tribunal staff, yourself, and your former spouse.” OK… my ex-husband and his wife both told me SHE was filing for this annulment. My ex-husband specifically told me and my daughter that he would sign the papers she filled out to “shut her up”. So, after reading this in the letter, I immediately called my ex-husband (we are still friends by the way) and asked him if he had filled out the papers from the church or if his wife did, and he told me his wife did. I told him I really didn’t appreciate all the things we were going to have to go through for this and that I was going to respond to the correspondence I got from the Catholic Church in Cincinnati. So I called the Tribunal Office and asked them what happens if I know that my ex-husband’s wife is in fact the one who filled out the papers and not my ex-husband… after a bunch of nonsense, they finally said that if he thought his handwriting wasn’t legible or for other possible reasons that it is common to have someone else fill them out for him… I said she did not fill them out for him, she filled them out and he signed them, which is actually beside the point because either way she still had full access to them. I never got any other answer regarding this question or their confidentiality statement in the letter they sent me, but obviously that right there should have been enough cause to throw this annulment out of their so-called ‘courts’, don’t you think?
After many other phone calls to try to find out exactly what is happening, and receiving what I believed to be very vague answers on some things, I get a form saying if I want to participate in this annulment that I have “the right” to ask up to eight witnesses to fill out forms asking personal questions about me and my ex-husband. And that he also has the right to do the same. Ok… this is a little crazy to me… I was with my ex-husband for 21 years total, and have been friends with him for 15 years since our divorce (we have two kids together and have remained very civil for the kids and now grandkids). We went together all through high school and had the same friends throughout pretty much, but you know… no one knows what really goes on in a relationship except the two people who are in it. So… what good would it do to have friends write personal things about you when you were a teenager 20 or 30 years ago? And my biggest complaint is what business is ANY of this to the Catholic Church??? I’m not Catholic, my kids are not Catholic and my ex-husband is not Catholic… yet they are digging into our past as if we are criminals or something.
I could write a book on this process and what my kids and I have gone through the past several months because of it. After going through battles trying to view documents that were filled out about me and my past, etc… I only had so much time to view them and I live out of state so by the time I got the letter telling me I had a week or so from the date on the letter to view them, the week was up! It was crazy! I called the Tribunal Office where I currently live and told them I work from 8 to 5 Monday thru Friday and the nice Catholic Sister on the other end of the phone said, “well, we are open Monday thru Friday from 8:30 to 4:30 so that is very unfortunate for you, isn’t it?”… So I asked her if there was any way I could view them after a certain date and she said they do not bend any rules!!! HA!!! That took me back to their “confidentiality” rule! I did finally get in to view the papers and I again responded to them, and within only a few days, I got two letters, one stating they are working on the final decision in our case, then only days later I got another letter stating that ‘the Tribunal gave an affirmative decision to the petition of my former spouse for a declaration of nullity of marriage. That is, that this marriage has been declared invalid or non-binding by this court.’ And get this… this letter says that I have the right to appeal this case to the Roman Rota, however this appeal (they call it an extraordinary appeal) can involve additional financial responsibility of $850!!! You’ve got to be kidding me, right???
I have a very different view on the Catholic denomination after going through this craziness; that is for sure.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Karl,
Hmmm, you left the church over divorce/annulment, then criticize those who take issue with the process. Interesting logic. And I doubt that starting out your comment with an insult conforms to any religious tennant, so you may want to dissect your own life before you start dissecting the lives of others. And you claim WE are the ones with ego issues…