Dialog Editor
Diocesan judicial vicar is happy about the pope’s revisions to the annulment process
The annulment process in the Diocese of Wilmington has taken on average a year or longer to complete in cases that aren’t complicated, according to Msgr. George J. Brubaker, judicial vicar for the diocesan Tribunal.
However, Pope Francis announced Sept. 8 revisions of canon law on annulments to simplify and quicken the judicial procedures, so couples aren’t oppressed by the “prolonged process.”
The pope’s document, “Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus” (“The Lord Jesus, the Gentle Judge”), is “revolutionary,” Msgr. Brubaker said.
“I’m very happy about it,” Msgr. Brubaker said. “I’ve worked in this ministry for many years and I’ve always thought it’s a burden for people who always deserved to be helped but still had to go through such a long process.”
Msgr. Brubaker called annulments “a way of bringing resolution to many couples who have wanted to reconcile with the church over a failed marriage but have been discouraged by the length of time it has been taking to go through a formal process of a trial of the marriage bond.”
Msgr. Brubaker a canon lawyer, has headed the diocesan Tribunal since 2001. When discussing the coming changes to the annulment process last week, he still hadn’t seen the document’s English translation but he expects the revisions to help the church be more straightforward about annulments, he said.
The judicial vicar isn’t surprised annulments granted in the United States surpass the number in all other countries.
“Our civil law doesn’t support marriage,” he said. “There’s no-fault divorce; it’s streamlined. You can get it the same day you apply. How does that encourage people to live out their marriage as a sacrament?
“We live in a divorce culture now and the whole world has become a divorce culture.”
Msgr. Brubaker noted that the pope has said his experience in Argentina was “the majority of marriages there were invalid” because people didn’t enter marriages with a sacramental commitment.
“Our people are not marrying with the idea it’s a sacrament for life,” Msgr. Brubaker said. “It takes an extraordinary couple to understand that they’re making a covenant, not just a contract, but a covenant of a partnership of their whole life together.”
Find ‘moral certitude’
An annulment “is not a Catholic divorce,” said Msgr. Brubaker. “It’s a reconciliation of what [people] experienced in a failed marriage in order to help guide them along a path that may or may not include marriage in the future.”
The new judicial process can emphasize the pope’s theme of mercy, the judicial vicar said.
“Yes, we can grant an annulment, but what we most want is for your heart and soul to be reconciled to Christ and, in this community, to be able to move forward in your life and grow from this experience, rather than (an annulment after a divorce) being a trapdoor that shuts you out of the church.”
Msgr. Brubaker, who is also pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Church in New Castle, said the process of reconciling with the church in the past has often ended after just one visit to a Tribunal where the applicant was given a long questionnaire requiring details about his or her marriage.
“They get about a 30-page packet with pages of explanation of all kinds of possibilities, definitions of this and that. You have to study the thing to begin to answer it.”
At that point, some applicants give up and don’t fill out the forms.
Pope Francis’ new process will enable the Tribunal to develop an initial application that’s more streamlined for marriage cases “that are clearly invalid and that neither party is opposed to the granting (of an annulment).
“We’ll still need more information, if it’s a contentious situation,” Msgr. Brubaker added. “So we’ll still have a questionnaire but we don’t need to apply that to the beginning for everybody, if initially (applicants) can self-identify” that their case doesn’t need extensive details.
Pope Francis has granted diocesan bishops the ability to decide on annulment cases that are eligible for the streamlined process.
Msgr. Brubaker said the Tribunal will still have to find that “no valid marriage” existed to provide the bishop with “moral certitude” in granting an annulment.
The pope’s new guidelines won’t go into effect until Dec. 8.
The vicar general agreed that it’s a big order for the Tribunal to develop a new short-form kind of questionnaire that fits the pope’s call to simplify the annulment process.
When the uncontested method begins, however, Msgr. Brubaker said he thinks the process will take about 45 days.
‘Not bothering’
While the Diocese of Wilmington once saw 90 to 110 annulments granted each year, according the Msgr. Brubaker, “that number has been coming down in the last few years to the point that last year I think we did 45. It was almost half of the number that we used to do.”
The decline, the vicar general said, is reflected in the decline of the number of Catholics getting married in the church.
“We know that just as many Catholics are divorcing as were previously,” he said.
“It’s that they’re just not bothering” with getting an annulment, he said. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth from their perspective.”
Msgr. Brubaker hopes the new process encourages Catholics in need of annulments to bring their petitions forward.
“We know there are a lot of people out there who have never asked (for an annulment) because it seemed impossible to them,” he said. “We want them back in church and we want them back at the Eucharist.”
