On Tuesday, the Pope will release new modernized procedures for annulling marriages after thousands of Catholics protest against the present cumbersome and costly process the church has in its system. According to Catholic Doctrine, a church marriage is considered a lifetime commitment and therefore annulment or the "decree of nullity" is a ruling granted only when a marriage is null from the start because prerequisites such free will, psychological maturity and openness to having children, were not present. According to NBCnews.com, 1.2-billion member church does not consider divorce and therefore treats the Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the church as adulterers and living in the state of sin, forbidding them from receiving other sacraments such as communion.
According to Yahoo News, many Catholics have complained that it can take years to get an annulment and if they get it the expenses have reached hundreds of dollars. Now the Pope has already declared that annulments must be free as Catholics have the right to justice from the church.
Furthermore, according to Yahoo , the Vatican-appointed commission of canon lawyers have already spent the previous year studying ways to simplify the annulment process while safeguarding the principle of the indissolubility of marriage and finally the Pope will be officially releasing the new rules this Tuesday.
Some of the proposals for streamlining the annulment system include taking away the mandatory appeal for each annulment granted. Furthermore, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, one member of the study commission has agreed to the proposal of granting individual bishops to make the decision instead of the three-member tribunal, which is still not present in many dioceses in developing worlds.
Lastly, as stated in NBC News, progressive bishops would prefer that the church be merciful to Catholics whose first marriages have failed. It has also been noted the new rules would only make the procedures easier but the criteria for getting annulment will remain the same.
