Sir, Under the heading "Vatican tries to plug holes in Spain's canonical colander" (June 12th). Lorraine Bacchus writes about a recent criticism by the Vatican of Spain's top ecclesiastical tribunal for being too lax in granting nullities. She says that the Vatican itself is at fault for urging divorced and remarried Catholics to regularise their situation by whatever means, annulment included". She adds that "with an increasing number of new grounds for nullity being recognised by the Church, the Spaniards now have no need of legal trickery".
"Emotional immaturity" is mentioned as one of these grounds. She brands such nullities as "Catholic divorce" and says that the new canon law "has so many loopholes that it is known in Church circles as the colander".
The real colander, I feel, is her own article. The only grounds of, nullity recognised by the Church are those listed in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. No new grounds can be or have been added. There is no ground of nullity called "emotional immaturity". The Pope in his 1988 address to the Roman Rota said that "only the most severe form of psychic illness can invalidate a marriage". This is binding on all tribunals.
The Church has never proposed nullity as some pastoral solution for the divorced and remarried. It is a strictly juridical process aimed at protecting the essence and stability of marriage. It would be a travesty to uphold as marriage the type of situations specified in the grounds of nullity acknowledged by the Church. These grounds must be objectively proved beyond any reasonable doubt. If any such doubt exists, the validity of the marriage must be upheld not the freedom of the individual.
Furthermore, the specific task of the Defender of the Bond in a marriage tribunal is to defend its validity and any party has the right to appeal directly to the Rota. When Church authority corrects abuses in marriage tribunals, it is correcting distortions and not plugging loopholes. - Yours, etc., (Rev) MICHAEL MANNING,
Millstreet,
Co Cork.