Living together before marriage is no guarantee of a successful marriage, and actually militates against it, according to a member of Dublin’s Regional Marriage Tribunal.‘We have quite a bit of experience of couples who lived together for three to even seven years, and the marriage is gone within six months of marriage,’ said Fr Paul Churchill, Assistant Judicial Vicar at the Dublin Regional Marriage Tribunal.
Fr Churchill said that in some cases this is because a couple use marriage to try to solve a difficult problem, thinking it is a magic wand. In other cases, the couple sit back a bit in their relationship, and do not think of the adverse situations they may face.
‘People often think that because they are getting on well they can relax a bit, and they leave out the central point of commitment in marriage. They don’t think enough of the words “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” In other words to realise that when you marry you say to your partner, “I take you even if you end up in a hospital as a vegetable after a car accident, or we end up with four very disabled children,”’
Fr Churchill, was commenting on recent remarks by Pope Benedict about nullity in the Catholic Church.
In late January the Pope met members of the Roman Rota, the Vatican’s court of appeal, and urged them to presuppose the ‘truth of marriage,’ before considering annulment.
Pope Benedict warned against ‘a distorted interpretation’ of canonical norms that may have led to a massive rise in the number of annulment cases being considered by church courts.
Fr Paul Churchill, Assistant Judicial Vicar at the Dublin Regional Marriage Tribunal, said that the Pope’s words were a useful reminder. ‘God created marriage. He is the boss and we have to respect what he says. Where there is evidence that “God has joined together”, we have to uphold that,’ he told ciNews.
Nullity, in both civil or canon law, means that there was something wrong at the time of the marriage, and so the marriage never existed.
Last year there were 247 applications for nullity to the Dublin Tribunal, but over half of the cases did not go ahead. 135 cases came to adjudication, and 113 were granted nullity decrees.
Nullity figures for the Armagh, Cork and Galway Regional Marriage Tribunals are not available
Fr Churchill said that over the years, the number of applications has dropped. He attributes this to the introduction of divorce, and to the smaller number of marriages.
In Ireland the main ground for nullity tends to be a ‘grave lack of discretionary judgment concerning essential matrimonial rights and duties’.
‘Basically this means that people are not able to understand what they are doing when they get married.’
According to him, in Ireland a typical case would be of a person coming from an alcoholic home.
‘The relationships are dysfunctional, and so the image of a balanced relationship is distorted,’ he said.
Other common factors giving rise to nullity in marriage, are when a pregnant woman is put under pressure to get married, and also marriages affected by drug taking.
‘We are aware that drugs like cannabis are having adverse effects on marriage.’
When the Church is considers a case for nullity, it looks at the circumstances at the time of the marriage. Drink, drugs and hallucinatory drugs affect the way people think and their contact with reality, said Fr Churchill, and so they can invalidate consent.
However even drug taking that occurs years into the marriage, can form part of grounds for nullity.
‘Drug taking is a symptom of a deeper problem in a person, for example a poor self image, or level of maturity.’
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