I have mixed feelings about Pope Francis’s reforms of the Church’s attitudes towards gays, abortion (discussed a few days ago) and now the anullment of marriages, which of course gets around the stricture of “no divorce” by pretending that the marriage was never valid in the first place. Previously annulments were laborious processes, which required applications, often years of waiting, and (of course) lots of dosh paid to the church.
As announced on CNN this morning, and now in The New York Times, here are the changes (my words)
- A shorter waiting period: only 30 days before a case is heard if it’s uncontested.
- Judgments from only one church tribunal instead of two.
- Tribunals can be established by bishops and will consist of three members. Two of these can be lay Catholics rather than Church officials.
- As the New York Times notes: “Francis is also instructing Catholic bishops to be more welcoming to divorced or separated Catholics ‘who have abandoned the church.’ Local dioceses will be asked to establish commissions to reach out to couples seeking annulments.”
If you’re a Catholic and want to remain in the Church, this is a good thing. For previously Church law prohibited you from getting remarried or even cohabiting without an annulment; civil divorces weren’t recognized. That put many Catholics in a bind. The response of many, however, was to leave the Church, either formally or informally (by stopping going to services), and, as we know, membership in the Catholic church is dropping precipitiously.
That, in fact, is why Francis is doing this, and to pretend otherwise is foolish. By fixing the Church’s retrograde attitudes and catching them up to modernity, he’s hoping to retain believers. I don’t think for a moment that this strategy comes from the Pope recognizing that Catholic dogma was hurtful; but perhaps I’m being overly cynical.
Apropos, there’s a new article in The Atlantic (brought to my attention by reader Don) that describes the attrition of fully-believing Catholics and the growth of a phenomenon I thought was limited to Jews: “Secular Catholicism.” An excerpt:
There is a basic assumption about religion at work in the claims cultural Catholics make about their identity. Even though about 13 percent of them occasionally attend Mass, they do not consider that practice sufficient for them to claim Catholicism as their religion. Instead they say they are Catholic “because of their Catholic background,” which mostly means that they were raised in Catholicism as children. They feel they have inherited a Catholic identity, but have made a conscious choice not to embrace Catholicism as their religion.
When asked what it means to be a Catholic, some people say that it is “a matter of religion,” others that it is a matter of “ancestry or culture.” Religion and religious identity are seen as distinct from the cultural identity.
Well, if they want to eat fish on Friday, just as I like to eat corned-beef sandwiches and pickles, more power to them—so long as they don’t try to enforce Catholic-derived beliefs (such as the prohibition of abortion and assisted suicide) on others.
Meanwhile the attrition continues, at least in the US. As a Pew Survey taken this May showed:
A report released Tuesday by the Pew Forum finds that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007, now comprising about 20 percent – or one-fifth – of the total population.
And perhaps more troubling for the church, for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the church. Taken a step further, Catholicism loses more members than it gains at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13 percent of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”
Here are the data in graphic form. Check out the “unaffiliated” (“nones”) growing rapidly in the first box!
Is it any wonder that Francis is desperate to keep the sheep from leaving the flock?
Hey… I like to eat go to a fish fry on Friday evening! It is one of the few Catholic traditions I appreciate. Maybe the only one.
I once read that the invention of McDonald’s Filet o’ Fish was inspired by a McDonald’s franchise owner who lived in a Catholic part of Cincinnati. He had a hard time selling burgers on Friday, so invented the fof for his Catholic customers.
I just googled it to make sure I wasn’t spouting non-truths. Sure enough, my memory served me well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filet-O-Fish
I’m trying to remember the last time I had a McDonalds anything. I think it was about 2008 and I was dashing across Seoul without either a word of Korean, or a mobile phone signal.
Oh yeah, they were still using some bizarre non-GSM phone system, that was it.
McDonalds – is it food, or is it a violation of the Geneva Conventions?
I don’t remember the last time I’ve eaten at McDonalds…it’s been years for sure. Though when I did, I almost always got the Filet-o-fish and fries.
I don’t know about the Geneva Conventions, but I’m pretty sure they’ve all been classified as Superfund sites. And, if they haven’t, I want to know why.
Last time I set foot in a McDonald’s…a couple years ago, on a road trip, to buy a cup of coffee. To keep from falling asleep and driving off the side of the road (or worse). It wasn’t the worst cup of coffee I’ve had…indeed, it was better than typical Starbucks fare.
I do believe that may be first time I’ve been in a McDonald’s since Reagan was in office.
b&
I haven’t been able to look a frozen fish stick in the Birdseye™ since having to eat them every Friday from the ages of 6 to 16.
Color me lucky, though; all that time, including a stint as a stumble-bum alter boy, and those fish sticks were the only real abuse I suffered at the hands of the Church.
It could be worse, you know. You could have ended up like like poor William Farley.
There was supposed to be a link in that last comment. If it doesn’t work, go to http://tinyurl.com/qfxqxnx
I never knew I actually liked fish until well into adulthood when I discovered that seafood consists of more than Long John Silvers fish sticks. What’s with Catholic mothers and horrible seafood?
I can understand how a diet of fish sticks might torment anyone!
What you need is some nicely fried fresh perch, lightly breaded, accompanied by a couple of excellent potato pancakes, apple sauce, and a pint or two of fine craft beer.
It would purge that Birdseye™ logo from your memory.
I think you’re absolutely right. This is a marketing move by a desperate corporation that is losing its customers. And nice words to gays and divorcees cost nothing to manufacture and cost nothing to ship. But I don’t think we’ll see changes in the catechism anytime soon.
I can’t help wondering if it’s also fear of the rising number of Muslims.
The number of Catholics claimed is based on baptisms, so there’re lots of atheists and members of other denominations that the Catholic Church are counting as “theirs.” The number of Muslims is likely far more accurate, as in many countries people are too scared to leave, or don’t have the knowledge or ability to make that choice.
About like it was for Catholics in much of Europe 600 years ago, at least outside of Russia and the southeast portion ruled by the Ottomans. Will it take a series of truly horrific wars, with millions of deaths, between Muslim factions to bring about a serious reformation and revolutions to replace theocracies with secular republics?
Any organization that loses 10% of its workforce or market needs some restructuring to stay afloat in the long term.
Because organized religion is based on a closed knowledge system, it has a distinct economic burden: workforce and market are intrinsically coupled and both acutely susceptible to external influence.
Catholics must secularize or become extinct in the same manner than some protestant faiths are evolving. That is, when members and clergy become too educated, the epistemological monopoly evaporates.
I prefer the term “recovering Catholic”.
“Recovering Catholic” (or “Former”) has been called the fastest-growing religious group in the US.
It seems it has taken them 500 years to learn the lesson from their refusal to grant an annulment to Henry VIII, which lost them most of the population of England from their flock.
That’s even longer than the 400 years it took them to realise that Galileo was right!
Just one question, Mr. Holy Pope Man, if I may.
What’s changed?
I mean, Jesus is perfect and his message is timeless and eternal, right? So what’s changed such that today annulment is a monumental deal but yesterday it had to be nigh insurmountable?
Don’t worry. I’ll understand if you can’t answer that to anybody’s satisfaction. I mean, even your own toadies don’t understand, and instead just take everything on faith.
b&
Progressive revelation?
Emergent phenomena, like, uh, I don’t know, internet+free speech and the fact that Jesus relied on and only had 0.001beta_G wireless.
That bandwidth bottleneck musta been a bitch…
I think the term ‘pragmatism’ has just been drastically re-defined.
There’s a long sad history of Catholic mental gymnastics trying to redefine the meaning of early assertions by the church to construe them to mean something different from what they obviously meant at the time.
Protestants actually believe in progressive revelation, but Catholics claim it is closed, so they have to play this game.
Baptism used to be necessary for salvation. Now good non-believers are “baptized by implicit desire”, etc. etc. The headache inducing list goes on.
Seems like an effort to increase the appeal of buggy whips by offering them in a variety of decorator colors.
Great analogy! 🙂
Well this is certainly the first time I’ve ever heard that specific term, and I’ve never heard ‘secular Christian’ or ‘secular Protestant’ used as an analog to ‘secular Jew’ either. But in terms of behavior, I’d guess the ‘secular Christian’ phenomenon is both common and historic. There’s a lot fewer true believers than there are people who simply put up a Christmas tree, do Easter egg hunts for their kids, and got married in a church because hey that’s just what you’re supposed to do.
How can you get an annulment without a divorce? How can you get remarried in the Catholic church without first getting a divorce and then an annulment? This does not make sense. Everyone knows that you are married once you have a marriage licence. To get unmarried, you have to break the contract, legally. An anullment is not legally recognized by the state.
Assuming that wasn’t a rhetorical question: The Church doesn’t recognise divorce, hence the “adulterer” if you re-marry after divorce. The few people I know who got annulments were divorced first.
Most Catholics who divorce don’t worry about the annulment until they want to remarry. If they have moved sufficiently far away from churchiness, the annulment doesn’t matter. If they want to remarry within the church, however, the issue becomes one of more substance.
As a retired mackerel snapper of nearly 50 years standing, it gives me great joy to see the RCC in its current state of decline. I spent my grade school years being persuaded to the Catholic world view through the lens of the Baltimore Catechism under the free swinging ministrations of Bernardine nuns, who never met a back of the head they didn’t like to smack all in the name of bringing kids to the light via a concussed state. Nothing like a Catholic education to bring out the inner atheist.
As I understand the process, a Catholic does have to get a divorce before seeking an annulment. Catholics are allowed to divorce; they just aren’t permitted to remarry with the church’s blessing without the previous marriage being annulled. The process gets complicated in the case of Catholics who were married multiple times outside the church and the confusing way the church holds that sacraments are sometimes illicit yet still (somehow) valid and are sometimes illicit and invalid.
This was meant to be a reply to daniel bertini.
Yes, I have a friend who got divorced then, because she’s a good Catholic, went through the whole annulment process with the Church. My less-good-Catholic friends say if they got divorced, they’d just never remarry in the Catholic Church and I’m sure the Church has noticed this as it is probably a slippery slope to leaving the Church completely and joining the “nones”.
Thanks for the replies to my post. And so, can you imagine, the catholic church does not recognize divorce, yet a catholic must get a divorce before they can get a annulment. Typical religious hypocracy!!
A sticky situation for the Catholics.
First of all, they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they don’t secularize they face extinction (or, at least, losing a huge amount of their rational base.) But if they DO secularize, a humanist Catholicism can get by without believing anything which distinguishes a person as a Catholic by religion. Instead, they’re left with food, community, holidays, and art. It’s like the way I celebrate Christmas.
The Catholic Church is also stuck with a particularly bad product. I first came across this “What religion am I?” test many years ago, and have taken it several times, tweaking responses where I’m not sure. And yet my percentage of ‘Roman Catholic’ routinely manages to come out in the bottom five. According to this (admittedly unscientific) test, a secular humanist is more similar to a Scientologist or a Mormon than a Catholic. That to me signals a very high intrinsic level of baloney indeed.
And apparently most of it is becoming optional. Once it starts to unravel then, watch out.
I did that test and my top three results were:
1: secular humanism (100%)
2: unitarian universalism (86%)
3: non-theist (85%)
I have the least in common with:
24: Roman catholicism, Eastern orthodox, Islam, orthodox Judaism, Seventh Day Adventist, all at 6%.
26: Hinduism (3%)
27: Jehovahs Witness (0%)
Good God! Looks like you’re doomed to a life banished from Him and of involvement with reality and all it’s hedonistic pleasures!
All the interesting people seem bound the same way.
See you there!
100% secular humanist, of course, but where the hell did 3% JW come from?
It was 3% Hinduism. Quite frankly, I haven’t the faintest bloody clue.
Interesting test.
Secular humanism 100%
Unitarian universalism 88%
Non-theist 74%
Quakers 73%
Liberal Protestants 54%
Taoism 54%
Neo-pagan 50%
(Probably because I ticked ‘yes’ on a social-type question and an environment-type question)
I can live with that.
I’m more Protestant than neo-pagan? – I’m sooo disappointed!
At the bottom, all on 5%:
Eastern orthodox
Islam
JW’s
Orthodox Judaism
RC
Which makes me very happy 🙂
cr
It seems to be accurate enough, though I knew some Christians who felt uncomfortable taking the test, since it treats the Truth as one option among many (while exposing them to the idea that yes, it’s one option among many.)
Atheists also raised objections to the test, since it puts ‘secular humanism’ and ‘nontheism’ (it used to be ‘atheism’) in separate categories. They wouldn’t do that with RC and Christianity. Bottom line, any positive stance on social justice issues at all lowers the nontheism score. Given that the general population tends to misunderstand atheism, doing that just seems to open up a can of worms.
One glaring omission…it didn’t have any questions along the lines of, “Do you actually want to join a group at all?” Secular humanists may be fellow travelers, but, honestly, I have about as much interest in going to regular secular humanist meetings as I would in going to church.
b&
Agree, but presumably you wouldn’t be interested in taking the test in the first place with those (our) beliefs. (I did, but just to see what resulted.)
The test isn’t about joining a group; it’s supposed to help identify what group you’re already in. Religious/philosophical classifications don’t necessarily entail the need to belong to an organization.
Some people take the test to see if the test can get it ‘right’ because they already know how they self-identify. They also find it interesting to see which of the many religions out there are closer to what they believe than others. It can also be fun and enlightening to argue about the validity of the test.
But some people really don’t know what they are. A couple of my spiritual-but-not-religious friends fell into this category. They took the test and ended up “neo-pagan.” That not only gave them something to think about; it also helped me.
When you run your eye down over the multiple ways people think of God, it helps expand your ideas concerning the multiple ways people think of God.
I seem to be following the trend.
1. Secular Humanism (100%) 2. Unitarian Universalism (87%) 3. Non-theist (80%) 4. Liberal Quakers – Religious Society of Friends (75%) 5. Mainline – Liberal Christian Protestants (60%)
[…]
23. Hinduism (7%) 24. Eastern Orthodox (5%) 25. Jehovahs Witness (5%) 26. Orthodox Judaism (5%) 27. Roman Catholic (5%)
b&
My top five are:
1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (87%)
3. Non-theist (81%)
4. Liberal Quakers (69%)
5. Taoism (62%)
At the bottom of the heap:
20. Mainline Conservative Protestant (8%)
21. Mormons (6%)
22. Islam (6%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (1%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (0%)
25. Jehovahs Witness (0%)
26. Orthodox Judaism (0%)
27. Roman Catholic (0%)
I’m somewhat surprised that Islam got as high as 6%, and rather pleased that none of the conservative Christian cults…er…denominations got into double digits. Unitarians are okay, but their services are still a bit too churchy for my liking.
How did you get 0’s on the bottom five? I thought I was doing well to get ’em down to 5%. I’m jealous 😉
cr
The conservatives within the church are livid. One bishop warned the pope that he can’t change dogma. This could get interesting for the rest of us.
This article from the Washington Post might interest you: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-conservative-revolt-is-brewing-inside-the-vatican/2015/09/07/1d8e02ba-4b3d-11e5-80c2-106ea7fb80d4_story.html
Thanks. That says it all.
It’s not like annulments were that hard to get in the past. A female relative of mine who was married in the Catholic church got one simply because while her ex was in the army, his dogtags read, “No Religious Preference” instead of “Catholic”. There were other circumstances that led to the civil divorce, but the tags were the #1 issue for the church. She eventually remarried, to another Catholic who also had received an annulment. My father also had an annulled marriage in the 1940s. That makes four voided marriages in a single family, leaving my non-religious marriage the only one in the family that was not preceded or followed by a Catholic annulment.
“…not preceded or followed by a Catholic annulment.”
I should also add “…or civil divorce.”
“dogtags”
I think these flimsy grounds are an indication that many Catholics are searching for ways to circumvent the harshness of the old rules. Mainly because parishioners will no longer tolerate them. A friend who is Catholic got an annulment for some other lame reason and it was just a formality to shuffle the papers for a couple of months before it came through.
My youngest brother is going through the annulment process despite never having been Catholic nor being so now, but his finance is and although she is more of a cultural than active Catholic, she does want to get married in a Catholic Church in New Orleans (they live in Houston). I barely knew my brother’s previous wife, but the church sent me a questionnaire to describe their marriage and I dutifully completed and sent it in last week. I think my brother is more agnostic than theistic in outlook. Last year, after visiting with our mother in the hospital, he went with me to the monthly meeting of the freethought society I belong to.
Come to think of it, I got one of those letters when my brother-in-law divorced. My wife filled it out.
There’s a whole set of Catholics who have some sort of theistic belief, but whose overall beliefs are very way out in left field but still defend remaining Catholic on the grounds that they are “culturally Catholic”, although belief wise there are a lot of other communities that would be more accommodating.
The article actually uses the phrase “cultural Catholic” rather than “secular Catholic”.
But I think the application of these terms may be a bit loose. Those who identify as “secular Jews” tend to have a wholesale rejection of Abrahamic God belief, and view Spinoza as a major founder of their thinking.
By contrast, there seems to be some vestigial theology in at least some cultural Catholics.
I have had recommended to me the book “Belonging: A Book For The Questioning Catholic Today” by Lucinda Vardey but I have not looked at it. Vardey seems to have a definite belief in deity, but be in other respect very out of touch with the beliefs required by her church. (She’s also a fan of the much over-lauded Mother Theresa).
(The movement that calls itself “secular Buddhism” embraces the ethics and philosophy of Buddhism on human nature, but does not believe in reincarnation.)
In tomorrow’s news: Pope Francis decrees that Jesus is now gluten free with new communion wafer options. Now in three fun flavors, these whole grain or gluten free crackers come in cheddar, sour cream and chive, and, for those who were always wondering, bacon! For gluten free cheddar, just shout “Cheese and Rice”!
There was a time when the Pope claimed to consult God on these matters; now, presumably, the Pope has decided God reveals the eternal and inerrant truth through opinion polls and the bottom line on the profit and loss account.
Well put…God’s CFO and CEO all in one.
I think secular Catholics were called C&E Catholics.
For nearly 2,000 years, the Roman Catholic church held to the ‘resurrection of the body’ that would occur at the end of Christian time. So it was cemetery or mausoleum for the Catholic dead.
Then, during the late 20th century, some Vatican bureaucrat must have noticed the growing popularity of cremation. Et voila, funeral masses over small boxes of ashes. One of the oddest experiences of my life happened when I attended the funeral of a colleague who was Catholic: the priest swinging his smoking censer back and forth over the ashes of the deceased.
It was only relatively recently (in the 1980s or 1990s) that the Catholics accepted cremation, but there are a number of provisions attached. Originally (but this may no longer be true – it’s been a while since I paid attention) the cremation could not occur until after the funeral mass. A condition that still is in effect is that any Catholics who want cremation for themselves must sign an affirmation of belief in bodily resurrection, which was previously held to be impossible for cremated remains.
I often wondered why it was possible for an omnipotent deity was able to reanimate a bunch of bones but was absolutely helpless when it came to a pile of ashes. The old policy regarding cremation was the basis for executing heretics by burning and for cremating witches after execution by hanging (which was the most common form of execution for witchcraft if the torture didn’t get ’em first) – to deny them resurrection.
I gotta wonder…what about somebody, a saint even, who gets trapped in a fire and is burned to death? Is Jesus not going to bodily resurrect that person? Does Joan of Arc have a problem?
b&
My wife is definitely a cultural Catholic. She disagrees with the Church on just about every point, but when we discuss such things, she still seems to like to think that there’s some kind of nebulous higher power out there. When pressed though, she readily admits there’s no evidence for any such thing.
My parents are devout Catholics, my father an ordained Deacon. Earlier this summer when we met them for a vacation, they headed off to the Saturday night vigil Mass and the look of mixed horror, condescension, and superiority on her face when we said we’re not tagging along was amazing. On another occasion this summer, we did tag along and the priest gave a sermon about atheist celebrities and proceeded to explain how it is an abomination that Jodie Foster teaches her kids about many religious traditions and says it is up to them to make up their own minds. My wife thought this approach was great when the priest described it and left the church nearly as angry as I was that he then reversed direction and said this is a terrible way to raise your kids.
What does this mean for myself? I only fully embraced atheism in 2012 after a decade plus of not attending Mass regularly and both my kids were baptised. I still decorate my house for the holidays and enjoy Christmas music. I’m not sure that my rare appearance inside the walls of a Church qualifies me as culturally Catholic or not; either way, you’ll sure as hell never find me putting money in their coffers. Happily, my oldest son, already seems to see directly through the bullshit that Catholicism has on offer.
“the look of mixed horror, condescension, and superiority on her face when we said we’re not tagging along was amazing.”
Ditto times elebenty — a common experience for all Catholic adult children and their spouses when visiting one or the other’s Catholic parents.
The leadership and the membership who take great pleasure from making people unhappy and punishing them are very unhappy. You can see them all over – middle age women with no lips all knotted up. The men with them looking more unhappy and knowing that if he went home and played cribbage with the boys he would never even get a peek again.