A marriage annulment tested my will and my finances, but sustained my faith
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Version 0 of 1. I was raised in a very strong Italian Catholic family: it wasn’t just that we went to church on Sunday, but that the activities of the Church were a whole part of my daily life. We only lived blocks away from the school, and the church was right next door to the school, so I went to mass every day growing up. Being Catholic was a real part of my identity beyond just being my religion, and I wanted my daughters to have the same thing – that basic spirituality, that anchor, that base. Related: Pope reforms Catholic church’s marriage annulment process But once I was divorced from their father, I wasn’t able to receive the sacraments – Communion or Reconciliation, and I wouldn’t have been able to receive Last Rites – and that was still really important to me. I wanted my girls to be raised in the Church and, if I couldn’t receive sacraments, then I felt that I wasn’t being a very good role model for them. Then, when I got remarried, my second husband decided to convert to Catholicism – and they’re the best Catholics in the world, you know, the people who convert. So he was really strong in his faith and we both wanted the girls to have that with us. As it was, we were bringing the girls up in the church: they were going to Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes, they were in the choir, we did the socials and everything. In probably 1988, I contacted my parish priest about annulling my first marriage. He then got in touch with our local diocese, which is the diocese of Steubenville, Ohio, and from there, I was put in touch with the tribunal. Our priest basically acted my attorney: he got the initial paperwork for me, and then helped me with the paperwork that the tribunal sent – it was a series of questions, probably 10-15 pages long, plus $250 for the annulment. During the process, we discovered that the Catholic Church recognized my second husband’s first marriage, because he was married in the Methodist church. So, in order to be married in the eye of the Church, we also had to have his first marriage annulled – and pay another $250. In 1988, though, $500 was a lot of money – we were young, we had two girls at home and he had a daughter, so it wasn’t easy to carve out that much from our household budget. The church let me pay in installments, $50 at a time, and I couldn’t get the annulment until it was paid for. I know there were people that the cost probably stopped, because they couldn’t afford it. When I first got the paperwork, the priest who was working as my attorney basically said, “We don’t expect the other parties to really fill theirs out. You’re the one that’s seeking it. It’s nice if they do, but if they don’t, they don’t really expect it.” But I was very friendly with my second husband’s ex-wife, and she told me to put anything I want to put down. I told her, “Well, I’m going to blame him, so don’t worry about it.” He was the reason they got divorced, so we just kind of filled hers out for her, I told her what we put and she said, “That’s fine.” My ex-husband, he said, “You don’t really expect me to fill these out, do you?” and I said, “No, I really don’t.” So I don’t know if he ever really sent his in or not. We didn’t have a real good relationship. What I used for grounds for my annulment was that my first husband was actually an alcoholic, but I didn’t know that when we got married. Thus, I was able to file that the marriage was never really binding because he came into it under a falsehood: he didn’t reveal to me that he was an alcoholic and there was also adultery and domestic violence involved, so I threw that in on top. But the one the Church cared about was that we never had an actual bind because he came into our marriage not revealing himself to me. We never had to testify, or anything: I just sent in the forms, gave them $500, they had my parish priest answer some questions and I just waited. I wasn’t worried: in those days, if you had the $250, you got an annulment. I didn’t really know anybody who was turned down, and I had several friends who had gone through the same process. After we got the annulment, my second husband finished the process of converting and he got his first Communion and Confirmation, and we had our marriage recognized in the Church all the same day. We were full of grace that day. I haven’t looked into a whole lot of the new rules for annulments laid out by the Pope, but I am married now to my third husband. I said to my daughter, Rachel, laughing, “Maybe I should go for another annulment.” I mean, if this is the Year of Mercy, maybe this is what I need to do because, again, I can’t receive sacraments. I’m not as active in the Church as I once was, I don’t agree with a lot of the tenets of the Catholic Church, but I have the same faith. I don’t know if they’d want me and my liberal thinking, but the possibility is there, perhaps, for me to finally return. As told to Megan Carpentier. |