S.O.S. Resources

The primary resource we offer is Guidance with annulment issues as Respondents go through the annulment process, primarily via email correspondence.

Two resources we most highly recommend are -
Shattered Faith: A Woman's Struggle to Stop the Catholic Church from Annulling Her Marriage by Sheila Rauch Kennedy
This book is written up on our "Shattered Faith" web page. This book can be purchased via Amazon.com

This unique publication is designed to help Respondents respond assertively and effectively in response to annulment petitions filed by their former spouses, by providing Respondents with an understanding of the annulment process conducted by the tribunals of the Catholic Church.

If you are just at the beginning of an annulment case, the first section of the guide is for you.
If you are beginning the Appeal phase, the second section (and perhaps the first) is what you need.
If you are a Respondent and lost the annulment case but wish to re-apply in order to reopen the case, then the third section will help you, along with the first two sections.
These three sections also offer step-by-step advice on how to complete the requisite paperwork.

The guidebook has five appendices:
Appendix A is a "Flow Chart" depicting the divergent paths that cases may take through the tribunals' maze. Appendix B is a short list of books that we at SOS found very helpful.
Appendix C provides a brief introduction to the Code of Canon Law book use by all tribunals.
Appendix D provides the citations of most of the canon laws cited in the text.
Appendix E contains a glossary for easy reference of many unfamiliar terms.

The Guide is registered as a non-literary work with the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. This manual is available free of charge (via an email attachment) through our not-for-profit organization, Save Our Sacrament. To obtain the appropriate section(s) and or appendices you need for your case, please contact the author, Carole Bishop, via SOS's Contact Us page. Please specify which sections you are requesting.

Recommended Resources to look up on the Web

Divorce, Annulments, and the Catholic Church: Healing or Hurtful? by Richard Jenks
... examines the use of annulment by the Catholic Church to grant divorced Catholics the right to remarry within the Church... explains in lay terms what annulments are and what the acceptable grounds are for annulment... also contains case studies of individuals who have been hurt by annulments...

Til Decree Do Us Part: The Catholic Church holds traditional marriage sacred, but it's handing out annulments by the thousands... by Joan Bryden in the Walrus (Canadian magazine)

Too Many Invalid Annulments by Msgr. Clarence J. Hettinger, Homiletic and Pastoral Review. December 1993
From the article: Obviously the United States suffers from a divorce mentality... the American divorce mentality has found its exact counterpart in the scandal of American Catholic annulment mentality, all the more scandalous because it has come to affect non-Catholics and non-Christians as well as Catholics...

The Annulment Mentality: What You Can Do About It
By Msgr. Clarence J. Hettinger at CatholicCulture.org

From the article: quoting a Rotal judge, Msgr. Thomas G. Doran: "Whenever, as it seems, priests of the Church of the first or second instance think that the only and better pastoral solution for reconciling the Catholic parties of any shipwrecked marriage with the Church of Christ is a process of nullity, ecclesiastical tribunals are going to receive an immense number of such cases which, although they proceed with the most sincere good will, must turn out to be absolutely useless, not to say void, since they manifestly lack any canonical foundation." ... "Eliminating the annulment mentality among those in the pews is not nearly so important as eliminating the annulment mentality among tribunalists."

Creative Avenues to Remarriage After Divorce by Msgr. Clarence J. Hettinger, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, December 1994
From the article: The American tribunal system is on the way to destroying almost all awareness of the indissolubility of marriage....

Marriage, Annulments, and Gobbledygook by Msgr. Clarence J. Hettinger Dec. 28, 2001
From the article: The key question for Church tribunals to answer is not whether a sacramental marriage has taken place, but whether there has been any marriage at all...

Boston-area woman confronts the Annulment process
Boston Herald, 4 / 24/ 97
Jan's experience dealing with the then Tribunal Judge of the Boston archdiocese

Annulment divides divorced Catholics
USA Today, 10/ 30/ 97
Three Catholics, including Jan, share the reasons behind their annulment decisions.

Video
"Is Annulment Catholic Divorce?" panel on annulment reform with Sheila R. Kennedy, Richard McBrien, and others

The following may be accessed online as well:
"Pope Rejects New Theory on Marriage Annulments" [Pope's opinion regarding high number of annulments by U.S. tribunals]

"Res Judicata: annulments are never considered final"

"Annulment Procedure Under Fire in Europe": proof that civil suits CAN happen to Tribunals Internal Forum information

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Pope calls for Tightening up on Annulment
by Tom Kington in Rome for The Guardian, UK January 29, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI has warned Vatican judges to get tough on couples who ask the Catholic Church to annul their marriages.

The Pope ordered the clampdown after new figures showed that the church's appeals court allowed 69 annulments in 2005 for reasons which included husbands being too attached to their mothers (or not attached enough).

The court, known as the Sacra Rota, considers petitions from couples claiming their marriages were never truly valid... the Pope appeared to take a hard line on Saturday when he told the court's 20 judges to "respond with courage and faith" to "a distorted interpretation of the canonical norms in force".
Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly criticised the Italian government's plans for a law defining rights for unmarried couples. The institution of marriage, he said, was in danger of becoming no more than a legal agreement, "manipulated at will", and "even denied of its heterosexual character".

"Tribunals should work quickly, defend marriage" - Pope Benedict XVI
Vatican, Jan. 30, 2006 (CWNews.com)
Pope Benedict XVI spoke on January 28 to officials of the Roman Rota, saying that couples seeking annulments of their marriages have a right to a reasonable fast response from Church tribunals. However, he stressed that annulments should be granted only when the evidence indicates that a true marriage never took place. The Pope strongly denied that a "pastoral" approach could overlook the requirements of the Church's legal process.

The work of the Roman Rota is dominated by marital issues, and as he met with the official of the Vatican tribunal in a private audience, at the start of their judicial year, the Pope asked them to adhere carefully to the terms of Dignitatis Connubii, the Vatican document released in 2005 to guide the work of marriage tribunals.

Pope Benedict acknowledged the lively public discussion of the Church's discipline barring Catholics who are divorced and remarried from receiving the Eucharist. He observed that the Synod of Bishops, meeting last October to discuss the Eucharist, had "called on ecclesiastical courts to make every effort to ensure that members of the faithful not canonically married may, as soon as possible, regularize their domestic situations," and thus be admitted to communion.

But the Pope flatly rejected the idea that the canonical process involved in annulment is merely a matter of "legal formalities." That idea, he said, implies "a supposed conflict between law and pastoral care in general." To counter that notion, Pope Benedict reminded the officials of the Roman Rota that the purpose of Church tribunals is to arrive at a "declaration of truth by an impartial third party."

... In assessing each case, the Pope continued, the tribunal should be guided by the search for truth. He cautioned strongly against any tendency to compromise the rigor of that search, in a misguided effort to find serve the needs of individuals. "Such attitudes may seem pastoral," the Pope admitted; "but in reality they do not respond to the good of the individuals, or that of the ecclesial community."

As he concluded his remarks, Pope Benedict said that the Church should also be working "to prevent nullity of marriage," by preparing couples more fully for Christian matrimony and by helping married couples to resolve conflicts and form a deeper mutual commitment....
The Vatican instruction Dignitatis Connubii, to which the Pope referred in his talk, was prepared as a guide to diocesan tribunals in handling marriage cases. The Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts released the instruction in response to reports of wide discrepancies between the way annulment petitions were handled in different diocesan tribunals.

Rota Appeals Court
The tribunal of the Roman Rota acts as an appeals court in marriage cases (and other canonical proceedings), hearing appeals of judgments that have been rendered by any of the 3,000 canonical tribunals around the world. In 2004 (the last year for which full statistics are available) the Roman Rota received 246 appeals regarding marriage annulments. Of these, 163 came from dioceses in Europe, 73 from the Americas, and 10 from Asia; there were no such appeals from Africa, Australia, or Oceania.
With only 20 judges hearing the cases, an appeal to the Roman Rota can be a time-consuming process; the average case lasts nearly two years. These long processes, however, involve only those cases in which an appeal is sent to the Vatican. The vast majority of annulment petitions are resolved by local diocesan tribunals.