POPE Francis received overwhelming support among Filipinos in America on the reforms he will implement in the Catholic Church to make marriage annulment faster and cheaper for Catholics.
100 percent of the viewers who voted in the online opinion poll of The Filipino Channel’s daily newscast “Balitang America” agreed that the following changes announced last Tuesday, Sept. 8 will become part of
Catholic canon law on December 8, 2015 — the beginning of Francis’ declared “Year of Mercy”:
1. Eliminating a second review by a cleric before a marriage can be nullified;
2. Giving bishops the ability to fast-track and grant the annulments themselves in certain circumstances — for example, when spousal abuse or an extramarital affair has occurred;
3. The process should be free, except for a nominal fee for administrative costs, and should be completed within 45 days.
Even the Catholics back in the Philippines embrace these changes, with words of support coming from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
“It is so clear to all of us by now that indeed the principal and all-embracing vision of the papacy of Pope Francis is mercy and compassion. It is mercy and compassion that explains his action and work,” CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a Facebook post, as reported by ABS-CBN News.
Annulment is granted by the Church and the marriage is ruled to be null and void from the beginning if through evidence, it can be proven that certain prerequisites, such as free will, psychological maturity and openness to having children, were lacking.
Archbishop Villegas said the Pope is reaching out to those who suffer from invalid marriages.
“This new Apostolic Letter reaches out to those Catholics who suffer quietly from the bond and obligations of what they thought was a marriage; when the truth is there was no marriage to speak of from the very start because the requirements for the valid reception of matrimony were not present,” he said.
Echoing the spirit of Pope’s stand that “charity and mercy demand that the Church, as mother, be close to her children who consider themselves separated,” Villegas said the matrimonial tribunals must be brought closer to the people.
“The services of the Church must be more accessible to the people; the process to receive those blessings of new peace for those who have suffered long, must be simplified. Indeed, this is another proof of the old adage in Church pastoral ministry — the salvation of souls is the supreme law,” he said.
This recent move is part of a series of reforms by Pope Francis “as he seeks to make the Church more responsive to the real needs of lay Catholics, especially those who have long felt marginalized by the hierarchy”.
The CBCP welcomes these reforms. ”There is a lot of fresh air entering the windows of the Church. More doors are being opened in welcome. ‘Come to me all who are weary and find life burdensome and I will give you rest,’ says the Lord,” Villegas added.
The CBCP president, however, stressed that while the process for declaring marriages null and void from the beginning is now simplified,
Pope Francis’s affirmation that the teaching about the indissolubility and unity of marriage remains.
“The doctrine about the sacredness of marriage and family life is unchanged. The declaration of nullity of marriages is not divorce,” Villegas said.
Legal books explain that divorce acknowledges that there was a valid marriage but it did not work out that is why couples choose to legally sever the ties. In contrast, an annulment does not recognize there was a marriage — even if the couple lived together as husband and wife for years, or for decades — because the aforementioned prerequisites to make the marriage valid from the beginning were not met.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
