A Catholic marriage advocate asks a diocese in Virginia to clarify church law on a case of divorce.What are the rights of an ex-spouse and children of a divorced Catholic under canon law?
While Catholic leadership is commemorating the 25th year anniversary of the current Catholic Code of canon law, I am asking the Diocese of Arlington to apply the law to a particularly scandalous divorce case.
The Catholic Code of Canon Law is to be followed by all Catholics and diocesan tribunals or bishops who judge canon law cases. While canon law tribunals handle thousands of annulment cases in the United States, they appear to ignore the canon laws designed to protect children and spouses from separations and divorce.
We are not supposed to let the civil court system decide how our families are torn apart because when we marry, we promise to be married according to our own Church law. For the last thirty years, the Catholic canon law tribunal system in the US has had an unapproved policy in which it points distressed spouses to civil divorce court.
In the Arlington case, a Catholic husband with seven young children had an affair with a college student and is now living with the young women after she gave birth his baby. I presented the civil divorce documents to the diocesan Promoter of Justice, Fr. Rev. Robert J. Rippy because he has the authority to initiate a canon law case and apply the separation laws and penal code.
Pope Benedict XVI, on January 26th, just gave his annual address to the tribunal of the Roman Rota. He warned against “local forms of jurisprudence” which are contrary to the universal church teaching. According to Pope Benedict XVI, the Universal application of canon law is necessary for the “interior life the People of God and for their institutional testimony to the world".
How can we, the mystical body of Christ, be a testimony to the world when our own brother is abandoning his wife and impregnating a college girl – and our shepherds are silent? Does this man think he is following God’s plan? If he is engaged in serious sin, might he be rationalizing and justifying his behavior – as do we all?
This husband may even think he’s done nothing wrong because the Catholic church in the US remains silent. He may have lost hope in the graces of the Sacrament promised to him by God, which can give him the courage to do the right thing and benefit of experiencing the natural consequences of following God’s plan.
Benedict XVI reviewed the activities of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and touched upon bioethics and inherent dangers of artificial fertilisation.
But if we really trust God’s plan for marriage and family, isn’t it more likely that this adulterous husband is a lost soul?
Shouldn’t he separate from his adulterous partner?
Catholics have the right to moral correction for the sake of our interior life.
By applying the canon laws on separation, there could be an investigation of this marriage.
Both husband and wife could definitively learn if either have a moral obligation to restore their intact family.
Further an ecclesiastic separation decree could be provided which protects the wife and children from scandal and financial devastation.
I asked the Arlington Promoter of Justice to clarify emphatically:
a) The duties of an adulterer toward the faithful spouse
b) The rights of the offended spouse and children in regard to material support from the adulterer and protection from scandal
c) The rights of the wayward soul to receive medicinal fraternal correction or sanctions from the Church (Code of Canon Law Annotated. Navarra. MTF. ©2004. can. 1312. p. 1020)
d) The rights of the faithful to have scandal prevented by adjudication of canon law regarding separation of spouses.
In the current civil divorce routine, the seven children are scandalized when they are forced to leave the home they’ve always known to visit daddy and his adulterous partner and the new baby.
Nearly half their weekend and vacation time is violated.
The children are financially devastated because their father no longer provides his full contribution to the family home, instead he’s setting up a household with his new sex partner.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce