He mentioned that the vast majority of those who get married in the NO do not believe in the permanence of marriage (go in with the attitude of, "I'll give it a try, and if it does't work I can always get divorced." or else go into it deliberately planning on limiting children). That is probably true ... in which case they're just fornicators or adulterers (as the case may be). But the GROUNDS for NO to grant annulments are borderline absurd.
Both of those scenarios are specifically mentioned by pre-Vatican II theologians as not invalidating a marriage. I'd have to look it up. For the former, I read that not knowing or even rejecting the concept of marriage lasting until death does not invalidate the consent as long as the person believes marriage is a somewhat permanent union.
The second idea really stumps me where it came from, but a lot of people in the new church seem to believe it, the conservatives, particularly. This is just a distortion of a somewhat related idea, that any restriction placed on the right for sex in marriage invalidates the matrimonial consent. Thus, if someone were to say, "I only give you the right to sex in this marriage if we are using contraception," that would invalidate the consent, but just to have the intention to use contraception -- even to intend not to have children at all, or to intend always to use contraception -- does not invalidate it unless the nature of the consent is distorted.
Topic: Adults In Limbo (Read 28260 times)