Splitsville? Catholic Church will not accept divorce
The church maintains that even if by mutual consent, the couples do seek a civil separation, the church will not recognise it as legal
By : johanna deeksha
Update: 2015-10-07 06:24 GMT
Chennai: Even as Pope Francis made an appeal recently to the Catholic clergy to device ways in which they can become more accepting of families going through divorce, Chennai’s Catholic clergy continues to believe that divorce will remain an unacceptable choice. The church maintains that even if by mutual consent, the couples do seek a civil separation, the church will not recognise it as legal.
Even though a few amendments in the Christian Divorce Act have relaxed some rules for getting divorce, couples still have to approach the church for a separation before or simultaneously as they file for divorce in court. However, there is no assurance of being granted a separation by the church even if the court does.
Fr Anthony J, judge at Ecclesiastical Tribunal, Diocese of Chengalpattu, who is in charge of granting permission to nullify a marriage said, “In our tribunal, we do not use the term “divorce”, we say nullifying a marriage. We do not declare a marriage null only on the basis of incompatibility or misunderstanding even though a court can declare divorce on these lines.”
He explained that permission would only be granted for extremely serious reasons. “If a marriage was conducted by force or fear or if the spouse is impotent or if there was some kind of a vested interest such as to gain a green card. Basically, if the marriage was void from the beginning, which means that it was conducted without proper consent, then we grant permission to nullify the marriage,” he explained.
“We do not ostracise them or treat them badly but like the Pope has said, we do treat them with compassion, but we have to follow what the doctrine says. While we do not forbid them to come to church we do not encourage them to obtain communion because that would mean that we are forfeiting the laws of the Catholic Church,” he added.
When asked whether a person seeking divorce had approached them to seek permission, Fr Immanuel Stephen, St Patricks Church, said while he regularly counselled couples that were having troubles in their marriage, he had not met any couple seeking divorce.
However, Cliff Briggs (name changed), a member of the Catholic Church, said he did know of couples who were divorced and remarried attending the church he goes to.
However, Fr Anthony did accept that the number of couples seeking nullification of marriage had increased over the years. However, their code of rules for granting annulment was still strict.