Edward Condon, an English canon lawyer, reports that the annulment reforms introduced by Pope Francis are already having unintended effects.  The Pope called for free access to marriage tribunals, but at the same time said that the tribunal staff should receive adequate pay. The result, Condon notes, forced “tribunals, already stretched thin to the point of breaking in many places, to renounce their only dedicated source of income and, at the same time, increase their operating cost.” One consequence of the ensuing budget crunch, the canon lawyer observes, is that tribunals are less likely to seek testimony from psychologists who could help to establish whether one party to a union lacked “due discretion.” As a result there has been a noteworthy drop in the number of annulment cases centered on an alleged lack of “due discretion”—once the most common grounds for a finding of nullity. A strong case can be made that the “due discretion” criterion has been invoked too readily, Condon concedes. But if the standards for granting annulments have changed, it shouldn’t be because of financial constraints.

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