News

VATICAN CITY, Oct 21 (LSN)  Seeing the large number of annulments granted in the US, Pope John Paul II re-instructed US Bishops Saturday on the Church 's teaching on the “indissolubility of marriage—a teaching that comes from Christ himself.”  He reinforced that the Church teaches that nullity of a marriage (the marriage covenant was invalid) exists only when the marriage covenant was not made freely or honestly.  “The first duty of pastors and pastoral workers is therefore to help couples overcome whatever difficulties arise, he told the Bishops of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. “The referral of matrimonial cases to the tribunal (to ascertain if conditions for annulment exist) should be a last resort.”  Catholic World News reported that the pope warned that abuse of the declarations of nullity could cause even the faithful to misunderstand annulment, thinking of it as “divorce under a different name.” He stressed that existence of nullity must be a “moral certainty” not just a probability. Further he insisted that the determination of mental or psychological problems rendering persons incapable of contracting a valid marriage be undertaken by a professional “who shares a Christian anthropology in accordance with the Church’s understanding of the human person.”