Wow. Idaho. Jerry Brady and Butch Otter running for governor. I'm in a quandary. Both men are Catholic. Both have had first marriages annulled so they could remarry. I was raised a Catholic but have not followed the faith since my highschool days. One, I didn't like to be told not to question and two, there were matters that made no sense to me - like annulment. You're married, you usually pay big bucks to get an annulment and then, if successful, according to the church, the marriage never was. What does that make the kids? Illegitimate? Non-existent? I don't know.
What bothers me is the expediency of it because the church doesn't sanction divorce. At least an outright divorce recognizes the marriage did in fact occur. There is a degree of hypocrisy to it; a sense of dishonesty. That's what troubles me. The culture of dishonesty and denial of truth is so prevalent in today's society.
I am not criticizing either man for his faith nor how he has practiced it. I just thought it interesting how what in the purview of the church is perfectly appropriate behavior seems not to be to me. It's one of those clashes of reason one goes through life rarely thinking about. But in our current climate - I've been thinking about a lot.
2 comments:
Revisionist history has always been a tool of propagandists and those who can't handle challenge. Who was it who said that anything repeated enough times becomes fact?
Put in simple terms, I don't believe it's possible to unring a bell.
Thailand Gal
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Mari,
I posted this on HBO, but am unsure if you saw the comment.
it is sometimes troubling. But it is not the same as divorce. In an annulment, there must be something that invalidates the union. For example, having no intention of fidelity at the time of marriage.
Now that isn't to say that abuses don't happen in the canon legal system of the Church.
But our reading at Mass this weekend was where Jesus rebuked those trying to trick him about marriage. Moses granted divorces because of the hardness of their hearts, in the eyes of Jesus, "From the beginning" there is was no such thing as divorce.
Bottom line, the annulments from the Church are along the lines of what Moses allowed for because the people demanded it. Because of the hardness of our hearts, the Church grants mercy.
So I try hard not to judge those with annulments. I have my own logs in my own eyes to remove.
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