Pope addresses Roman Rota

(January 29, 2010) In dealing with the Catholic Church’s marriage annulment cases, tribunal lawyers must ensure that truth must not be sacrificed to a false appearance of charity and justice. Pope Benedict XVI made the point on Friday while addressing the members of the tribunal of the Roman Rota at the start of the judicial year. The Roman Rota mainly deals with marriage annulment, a process by which the Church effectively declares that a marriage never took place because of the lack of certain requirements. The Catholic Church does not recognize divorce for Catholics, only annulments, and does so only under specific circumstances. Pope Benedict called on lawyers not only to be particularly mindful of respecting the truth of evidence, but must also carefully avoid advocating cases which according to their conscience are objectively unsustainable. The Pope denounced the widespread and deeply rooted tendency that depicts justice as opposed to charity, almost to the point of excluding each other. He condemned the belief that pastoral charity could justify every step towards marriage annulment in order to meet the needs of persons in irregular marriage situations. In such cases truth would be seen only as an instrument that changes according to situations. Pope Benedict reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of Christian marriage saying that judges must not give in to subjective demands leading to annulment at any cost. It would be false pastoral care to satisfy subjective requests to achieve annulment at any cost in order to overcome obstacles to receiving the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist.