Scottish National Party leader John Swinney’s wedding in late July was overshadowed by his decision to have his first marriage annulled by the Roman Catholic authorities. He is himself a “practising member of the Church of Scotland”, but his wife is a Roman Catholic, and the only way for them to marry in a Roman Catholic church was for him to obtain an annulment of his first marriage – a declaration that it had no legal existence.
Mr Swinney’s divorce was as a “result of his first wife’s infidelity”, which is a legitimate reason for divorce if we follow Scripture. But Rome rejects the validity of divorce under any circumstances; in the words of anmerican canon lawyer, “the Church does not acknowledge the right of civil authorities to dispense from vows taken in church”. In this way Rome can maintain a significant degree of control over her followers; the exercise of power is what is important to her, not faithfulness to Scripture.
Clearly no marriage is valid if one party is already married. But there are other grounds for annulment: (1) A lack of due discretion. This applies if a woman “married in haste. In other words, she lacked the discretion necessary to spot his personality disorder. Her husband promised to take care of his family, but clearly he did not have the character or the desire to do so. She claims that if she had known what kind of a misfit he really was she never would have married him.” (2) Defective consent. When, for instance, the bridegroom “kept a lover before, during and after the marriage”. (3) Psychic incapacity. “If a person is incapable of fulfilling the burdens and obligations of marriage, the marriage can be annulled. You cannot make a promise to do something you are incapable of doing. For instance, a paranoid schizophrenic may have behaved normally at the time of the wedding, but later, when the illness becomes full-blown, the marriage falls apart.” Effectively, all this is an exercise in providing grounds for divorce, and only in the second case, where adultery comes in, do we have a scriptural ground. It is clearly only playing with words to speak of annulment rather than divorce.
“When an annulment is granted,” the canon lawyer claims, “the Church is not saying that there never was a marriage. The union certainly was a sociological fact, and the memory of it may even be cherished, but the legal contract on which it was based turned out to be invalid.” This is Jesuitical nonsense; either there was a marriage or there wasn’t. Thus Rome seeks to maintain her power over the lives of her followers, and even of those who would marry them.
But what about the children of an annulled marriage? Actually, we are told, “canon law declares that all the children born of an annulled marriage are legitimate”. Again this is to play with words. If there was no marriage, the children are illegitimate; if the children are legitimate, there must have been a marriage. But Rome has never been willing to bow to common sense.
And if there are children from the Swinney marriage? They will, of course, be brought up as Roman Catholics. Yet some people wonder why we are so anxious to see the rule maintained which prohibits the monarch of the UK marrying a Roman Catholic. Apart from any other reason, to marry a Roman Catholic would almost inevitably lead to the children being brought up as Roman Catholics – and therefore to a Roman Catholic monarch in the next generation, with no prospect of an heir being brought up as a Protestant at any stage in the future. Rome has indeed found marriage to be a fruitful area for the exercise of her power.
caltonjock 