Why I want my mom to get an annulment

We all grow up with this image of what we perceive marriage to be. We might have to hearken back a couple of generations, but almost without exception, when young people imagine marriage it is in an ideal, almost sacramental sense. Where does this feeling come from? Why do people have it? Because marriage IS a sacrament. In the eyes of Holy Mother Church, marriage is supposed to last a lifetime. Married couples are supposed to love one another, sacrifice for one another, raise a family, and not go to bed angry. The goal is to provide a secure environment for the family to go on, something the kids can come back to.

Whatever you believe about divorce, whether you agree with the Church's teaching that a true sacramental marriage can never be dissolved by any human authority, or if you believe no-fault divorce must be available on demand for the sake of all concerned, most people would agree that divorce is not the *goal*. Divorce is what happens when something goes wrong. In my mom's case, there are a lot of factors that could be to blame for what went "wrong." You could say that the economy and the times were against them, they were too poor and life was too hard. You could cite the abuse that went on. You could make a convincing case that my father was struggling with undiagnosed mental illness and that my mother couldn't live with that. Most of the reasons, however (with the exception of the mental illness, perhaps) do not constitute grounds for nullity in the eyes of the Church.

Well, what is annulment? A decree of nullity issued by the Catholic Church declares that there was never a valid marriage to begin with. It's not a "Catholic divorce," and it's definitely not a get-out-of-jail-free card for troubled marriages. The Church doesn't say that just because marriage is hard, there are grounds for nullity. The Church says many beautiful, profound, and sensible things about marriage, but she does say that it IS hard. That's why you have pre-marriage counseling--and that's why the Church says no to premarital sex and contraception because, among other reasons, they introduce fatal flaws into the marriage that practically ensure failure. However, there are cases when one or both of the parties concerned enters the marriage under pressure, or without consent, or in haste, or without a true idea of what marriage is and what it requires, or without the intention to live up to the marriage vows. And there are many, many marriages involving baptized Catholics that do not follow the proper form--i.e. by a priest in the presence of at least two witnesses.

Such a marriage was that of my parents. I don't know when and how they were married, but it wasn't by a Catholic priest. And they certainly didn't have the necessary knowledge, consent, and intention to live their married life in accord with Church teaching. In fact, my mom told me that my dad told HER that he would never marry a Catholic. So their marriage began with a rejection of the Church. Since my mom is a baptized Catholic, it would be fairly easy for her to obtain an annulment on the technicality that since the marriage didn't follow the proper Catholic form, it could be declared null.

Now why do I want her to do this? A lot of people want a declaration of nullity for a past marriage because it impacts their relationship to the Church now, in most cases because one or both of the parties has remarried or wants to remarry in the Church, and the prior marriage is considered valid until proven otherwise (remarriage, in the eyes of the Church, isn't possible, but the misnomer sticks). But my mom has never sought remarriage. She can't trust a man enough, after my Dad. And I think that, deep in her heart, she's still a good Catholic girl who pinned all her hopes on that marriage ideal--and once it fell apart, she can't seek another one, because in her bones she knows it's only possible to be truly, sacramentally married once. The greatest aspiration of a young woman's life is often the hope of a good marriage. And she has been living with that cruel disappointment for twenty years.

It is because of the divorce, I think, that her relationship to the Church is poisoned. She believes the Church punishes divorced people and once told me that "they [the Church] try to control your personal life." Despite the fact that Christians are called to obey moral authority (whether of the Bible, if you are a "Bible alone" Christian, or of the Church, if you are Catholic), she has come to see self-control, serving others, and obeying moral strictures as an echo of the oppression under which my father forced her to live. And so with a cry of "Never again!" I see her as not only enduring the great hurt of a shattered marriage, but also cutting herself off from any chance of help or healing.

I would love to see my mother reconciled with the Church. I don't see a lot of hope for that, but I must pray and hope anyway. I keep stuffing information about the annulment process into envelopes and sending it to her in the hope that she might one day realize that if it's true the marriage never existed in the first place, then she can re-write the story of her life, and instead of seeing her marriage to my father as a betrayal and a failure, she can say to herself, "that was never a marriage in the eyes of God." Her whole view of marriage, her life, God, and even the Church, could change. I know she wishes I'd just shut up and leave her to live her own life, but how many people who've had a change of heart, come back to God or the Church or changed their minds or lives profoundly, have said, "If that one person hadn't stopped bugging me, I wouldn't be where I am today."

Finally, why do I personally want her to petition for an annulment? Because most of the great pain and trauma in my life stems from that same divorce. The way I view my life and my identity, the reasons I've done the things I've done, go right back to the drama that took place in a trailer in Idaho in the 70's. For me the divorce was a betrayal of everything a kid wants the story of their lives to be. The divorce makes their marriage, their love, my life, into a lie. If that lie were erased, if God could say to me--through the Church--"Your life is not about this," then maybe I could finally heal something I've been dragging around for twenty years.