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Manchu wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

Manchu wrote:People who want to marry someone of the same sex are simply not eligible for sacramental marriage.

Which is a sad thing for Catholic homosexuals who wish to be married.

I suppose it's sad in the same sense of any definitionally impossible desire. ::shrug:: Like a man wanting to be a mother, I suppose.

Like interfaith marriage?

Well, I guess you can shrug. It doesn't affect you, after all. Or me, for that matter. I'm not Catholic or gay. Maybe it's silly of me to care.

Melissia wrote:Technically speaking, that's almost possible using science.

Technically, it's possible to use science to wipe out vast portions of the human race.


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Mannahnin wrote:Like interfaith marriage?

Is that a question for me?

Manchu wrote:

Melissia wrote:Technically speaking, that's almost possible using science.

Technically, it's possible to use science to wipe out vast portions of the human race.

Irrelevant.

You said it was impossible, I said that's not quite true. If you would read my post again, you would notice that I never attached any right or wrong attribute to it (aside from simply saying "science works!")

sebster wrote:I think at one time it would have been a hell of stretch to think of a church that condoned divorce, and yet here we are today.

That doesn't describe Catholicism.

I edited my post to clarify.

Melissia wrote:You said it was impossible, I said that's not quite true.

Sure it's true.

Regarding the comment about science, I made a point in addition rather than in contradiction to yours.

The tone you put in wasn't anywhere near the same, though.

Manchu wrote:That doesn't describe Catholicism.

Sure it does. It might argue against it, but in terms of practicality the only thing it could do to stop divorce and remarriage is to refuse to remarry divorced people, and it most certainly does not do that.

Simply put, they've moved on. Drawn up the battlegrounds on some other issue, and just quietly conceded on divorce.

Mannahnin wrote:Well, I guess you can shrug. It doesn't affect you, after all. Or me, for that matter. I'm not Catholic or gay. Maybe it's silly of me to care.

It's not a matter of caring, at least not in a manner that would implicate me as meaningfully callous.

When I was a small child, I saw a picture of Superman flying through space. Later on, I learned about the effects hard vacuum would have on the human body in the absence of an EV suit. My inability to ever fly through space like Superman is sad in some sense, I suppose. It does not mean that my sense of wonder at the image itself is not meaningful. Similarly, the impossibility of same-sex sacramental marriage does not obliterate the real love that same-sex couples experience.


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sebster wrote:It might argue against it, but in terms of practicality the only thing it could do to stop divorce and remarriage is to refuse to remarry divorced people, and it most certainly does not do that.

Actually, a divorced person whose former marriage was not declared invalid may not remarry in the Catholic church.

sebster wrote:

Manchu wrote:I thought he made a pretty good point. I mean, how do you organize of the absence of belief in a particular thing? It's obviously more than that. I reckon it's a worldview, although not a particularly coherent one.

Atheism is a belief, and also a worldview, though one with scope for tremendous variation.

It just isn't a faith, because that word ought to mean something far greater. I know religious people, and I know what their faith inspires them towards, and I myself have faith of a sorts, just not of a spiritual kind. I think religious people do themselves a great diservice by making that claim, they diminish the thing that makes religion wonderful, all for the sake of trying to score a point in the culture war.

I think we're loading atheism with more than it needs to contain. Sure, there are atheistic belief systems, just as there are theistic belief systems, but when its all boiled down theism and atheism are really just positions regarding the belief in the existence of God. Theists believe God exists, and atheists don't, though many of them believe that he doesn't exist.

Theism generally requires more organization, regarding beliefs, than atheism because it necessarily entails making a positive claim that begs further questions (How many gods are there? What are they like? etc.) whereas the absence of belief doesn't really beg any additional questions of its own accord. Because of this, theism naturally lends itself to the kind integrated approach philosophy and morality proffered by religion, while the most you're see an actively atheist organization do is develop a series of positions on how nasty those religious folk over the hill are.

sebster wrote:Simply put, they've moved on. Drawn up the battlegrounds on some other issue, and just quietly conceded on divorce.

No they haven't.

Has the process changed or streamlined at all for invalidating a marriage? Has the rate at which it happens maintained or decreased?

The process involves an investigation and declaration by a tribunal. Of all the elements of valid Catholic marriage, the intentionality of the parties is the most vulnerable. One party might testify for example about not being open to having children going into the marriage. Anecdotally, the tribunal is unlikely to accept a unilateral declaration like this, however, in the absence of compelling corroboration. Like most things, it's easiest if both parties want the marriage declared null -- at that point, they can simply tell matching lies, if necessary. But most people who consider it important to remarry in the Church are not given to lying to the tribunal.

Does it happen more often nowadays than in the past?

I don't have data tracking the rates. On the one hand, I suppose it could have steadily rose as people generally no longer hold lifelong marriage to be a worthwhile ideal in itself. On the other hand, it may well have decreased as nominally Catholic people seeking civil divorce who could not care less about remarrying in the Church (or indeed marrying in the Church to begin with) has increased.

But the rate has no bearing on the Church's attitude toward divorce. There is no divorce in the Catholic Church. A declaration of nullity is a statement that no valid marriage ever occurred because the attempted marriage was defective for some reason. You could sum it up as, a defective marriage is no marriage at all.

That doesn't sound at all like a way of having the same thing while calling it something different?

No it's actually not. The distinction is also present in the civil law of the states. In order to be valid in law, a marriage must meet certain requirements. For example, in both civil and church law, consanguinity is an obstacle to marriage. If a justice of the peace married you to your mother, you would not actually be married under the law. There would be no need to file for divorce because no valid marriage ever existed.

So I could get married, live together for months or years, cohabitating as husband and wife, with shared property, etc., and then negate that marriage by mutual agreement if one of us told the tribunal that we were never actually open to having children?

Can a man and woman who are known to be incapable of having children be married in the Catholic church?

If the allegation is supported by compelling evidence, yes. The tribunal cannot respond to what would seem to a reasonable person to be a truthful statement with "you're a liar," after all. I'm not sure what you're driving at.

See below.

I took a class on canon law, and my professor said that lack of intent is a big issue, and the biggest subset of that is concealed mental illness.

Meaning, if a woman marries a man, and he turns out to be abusive, addicted, etc, she can argue that the person she agreed to marry was substantially different.

Essentially, marriage is a contract, and if it was entered to by fraud, the Diocese is much more willing to annull.

Mannahnin wrote:So I could get married, live together for months or years, cohabitating as husband and wife, with shared property, etc., and then negate that marriage by mutual agreement if one of us told the tribunal that we were never actually open to having children.

Sorry, let me correct that with reference to phrase I put in bold above. No, there is no "negation" of a marriage. A marriage never existed if the statement is true.

It still sounds to me very much like divorce by another name.

Can a man and woman who are known to be incapable of having children be married in the Catholic church?

BaronIveagh wrote:
I always find atheists funny. Mostly because, as my father would say, you never find them in a foxhole.

Of course you do.

There's an entire organization of atheist combat veterans out there.

Polonius wrote:Essentially, marriage is a contract ...

Yikes! Nope. That's just an analogy.

Mannahnin wrote:It still sounds to me very much like divorce by another name.

Because it is?

Mannahnin wrote:It still sounds to me very much like divorce by another name.

I'm sorry Mannahnin but whatever it may seem to you, in reality they are different things. As I mentioned, this is the case both in terms of the civil law and the law of the Church.

Can a man and woman who are known to be incapable of having children be married in the Catholic church?

Yes, as long as they are physically able to consummate the marriage.


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Melissia wrote:Because it is?

No, please see above.

It's like a contract in that if one or both parties are materially misled, the marriage didn't exist.

Which is the whole point of an annulment: it doesn't end a marriage, it simply finds that the marriage never properly existed.

Shredsmore wrote:Sooner or later these people will be saying the pledge of allegiance discriminates.

The Pledge of Allegiance was just fine until they added "under God" in the 1950s.

Manchu wrote:Yes, as long as they are physically able to consummate the marriage.

So the aformentioend soldier whose junk was cut off by shrapnel wouldn't be allowed to marry cause he isn't physically capable of consummating the marriage?

Polonius wrote:It's like a contract in that if one or both parties are materially misled, the marriage didn't exist.

Which is the whole point of an annulment: it doesn't end a marriage, it simply finds that the marriage never properly existed.

Yes exactly so.