The real scandal of annulments

Letters to the Editor of The Tablet

I was surprised to read in the article by Abigail Frymann Rouch (“The annulment conundrum”, 13 December) the comment attributed to Canon Kristian Paver that if a Catholic has grown up seeing several marriages around them end in divorce it cannot be presumed that they understood that marriage is for life, and that abuse or alcoholism in a family background is also relevant.

Is this really all it would take for someone with the task of determining whether two individuals entered into a “perfect contract” at the time of their wedding to conclude that their marriage should be declared null?

Rouch makes reference to the fact that people (like myself) who are outside the Church are often scandalised when Catholics try to explain the annulment process.

I am scandalised that in the 1980s my late brother-in-law, who had “done the decent thing” by marrying an ex-girlfriend who had become pregnant and the two had later grown apart, was denied an annulment after the divorce when he met someone whom he wished to marry; the result was that he lost his job as a headmaster.

I am scandalised that the lady I have built a loving and lasting marriage with over the past 51 years will have to go through the expense and intrusiveness of the annulment process if she is to be in good standing with the Church and so be able to take the Sacrament of Communion with a clear conscience.

As described in the article, some priests already exercise discretion on an ad hoc basis. Could this not be formalised so that parish priests in conjunction with their bishop could determine whether a divorced person’s present behaviour now demonstrated a commitment to life-long marriage?

(Dr) Les May
Rochdale, Lancashire

Having served in senior leadership positions in English Catholic schools where Catholic Education Service contracts were the norm, I several times came across situations where otherwise well-qualified external candidates had to be ruled out because of complicated spousal situations.

These awkward irregular situations could sometimes be avoided in the case of internal candidates where they became aware well in advance of possible solutions through annulment.

Alan Whelan
Killarney, Co. Kerry, Ireland

Your article on annulments does not make easy reading, offering nothing to dispel the idea that it is nothing but Catholic divorce by the back door.

Implying that “seeing several marriages around them end in divorce” can be a contributory factor in granting an annulment beggars belief.

The whole tone of the article is that the Church should look for ways to satisfy those seeking an annulment. I wonder what earlier popes would have thought of Francis “being delighted that his niece married a divorcee in a civil ceremony” because the annulment case was stuck in Rome.

John Fryer
New Mills, Derbyshire

Future for women

It appears that the institutional Church is duplicitous and in no way synodal where the issue of admitting women to the deaconate is concerned (News and Letters, 13 December).

How many of us realise there have been three groups studying this issue? One in 2016 did not reach a consensus and has never been made public. Why not? The second, the Petrocchi Commission set up in 2020, has not been transparent about any of its processes.

Three years later the Synod on Synodality set up a study group to consider women deacons. Its membership has not been revealed, but in October 2024, it was admitted that the work of this group on women deacons had been incorporated, secretly, into the Petrocchi Commission, and that the study group’s final report would exclude this part of their original remit.

Three weeks ago, the Petrocchi Commission’s letter to the Pope was published. The lack of transparency is astounding. We don’t know what they did with the “substantial and significant written material” received, or if it was even read.

It seems synodal decisions can be undermined at will by the Vatican bureaucracy. The letter states, as a consolation prize, that women might be able to participate in unspecified non ordained ministries.

What happened to St Paul’s instruction in Galatians 3:28, “nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”?

The gate to female ordination is barred and padlocked by the few. It’s time that those of us who believe that women are worthy of full equality in the church got out our wire cutters. Enough is enough.

Mary Varley
Stockport, Cheshire

The Vatican pronouncement on women deacons is disappointing, but indicative of the serious underlying issue of widespread (and mostly unselfconscious) misogyny in the Church.

The reduction of the argument to mere physical characteristics – i.e. that a woman simply by being female cannot represent the image of Christ, who is male – is bad theology and is refuted in scripture (Galatians 3.28).

Nevertheless, women have for centuries been routinely cast as “occasions of sin”, ensnaring an otherwise saintly band of clerics. Simultaneously women’s labour – both as child bearers and as workers providing the elbow grease for so much of the Church’s ministry – has been not so much taken for granted as totally ignored.

A new and positive theology of women could open unimagined prospects for fulfilling the joy of the Gospel in the lives and ministry of the faithful – both men and women. But until we have such a sea change, it is difficult to see why any woman would want to be ordained in this profoundly dysfunctional climate.

Andrea Kelly
London N1

Some argue that ordaining women deacons would be a necessary foot in the door for priestly ordination. But in the Church of England it took 30 years from the first female deacon to the first female bishop – and another 10 years for an archbishop of Canterbury. Do we really need to wait that long?

The Pontifical Commission has thrown the ball back to the supporters of women’s ordination. They have rightly recognised that ordaining women to just one of the three degrees of Holy Orders creates more problems than it would solve.

The next move is clear – the campaign should be to ordain women to the fullness of Holy Orders – i.e. to create women bishops as a first, rather than a last, step. The orders of presbyterate and diaconate flow from the order of bishops, so the episcopate is where change needs to happen.

All campaigns for women’s ordination should focus on this goal, not on the senseless concession of diaconate that will push women’s ministry into the long grass for decades.

We already have many women who are ready to serve as bishops. They have the theological training, the pastoral skills, and the life experience and vocation. So, let’s get on with it.

(Fr) Philip Dyer-Perry
Staines, Surrey

BBC and Trump

I’m afraid Mr Bransby misses the point (Letters, 13 December). He chastises me for accusing the BBC of cowardice by editing a phrase out of this year’s first Reith Lecture, as broadcast, on legal advice.

The undoubted cause of this deletion was that Donald Trump was threatening to sue the BBC for between one and five billion dollars for making it look in a Panorama TV documentary as though he encouraged the violent invasion of the Capitol in Washington.

The deleted phrase said he was the most corrupt president in US history. It was included in the lecture as delivered to a live audience, therefore the BBC lawyers must have been satisfied that if Trump sued in a British court, they could defend it as either fair comment or true, or both.

So why did they think they could not rely on that same defence in a US court, even without appealing to the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech? That would have been the courageous thing to do.

The conclusion has to be that the BBC let the threat of legal action over the Panorama documentary lead it to an excess of caution over the unrelated Reith Lecture issue – which I called cowardice. Trump had bullied the BBC into an act of self-censorship. That’s what he does.

Clifford Longley
Orpington, Kent

No homophobia

I was surprised to read (Word from the Cloisters, 13 December) that Fergus Kerr turned down an article for New Blackfriars on homosexuality on the grounds of the homophobia of the brethren. I have been a member of this Province for 60 years and I have never observed any homophobia (or misogyny) among the brethren.

Fergus did publish articles on this subject by Gareth Moore OP and others. I suspect that Fergus must have decided not to publish the article for other reasons.

(Cardinal) Timothy Radcliffe OP
Oxford

Open house

I am delighted that Tom Grufferty (Letters, 22 November) has brought up the question of locked churches. I have been a parish priest for 35 years, responsible for seven churches, four of them in inner-city Liverpool; I have always kept the churches open every day, with no incidents of vandalism or theft.

If a church is close to a school, as are many of our churches, it is wonderful to see parents bringing their children to light a candle on the way to or from school. Our churches are one of our greatest assets; a closed church is not the sign of welcome we should be giving.

John Southworth
St Paul & St Timothy, Liverpool

Bullfighting nuns

I’ve been enjoying Joanna Moorhead’s articles about repurposed religious buildings, particularly the one about Ashdown Park (“Cloistered opulence”, 22 November). It brought back memories of visiting my aunt, Sister Catherine Hughes SND, in the early 1960s.

I recall eating chestnuts after a walk in the woods, the mystical feel of the chapel during Benediction and the magical island in the lake (in reality, a mere pond). But mostly I remember the terrifying bull.

Occasionally, we were told, he escaped and the nuns, in full habits, would have to cajole him back into his stall. I never knew who to be more alarmed for, the nuns or the bull.

(Prof.) Julian C. Hughes
Bristol

Supermarket sermon

I wonder whether seminarians are being taught to avoid in their preaching any hint of contemporary relevance? Newly ordained priests appear to continue in the pulpit the habit of their elders: simply retelling the stories we have all just heard in the Scripture readings.

It has meant that in 27 years of listening attentively to sermons at Sunday Mass I am able to remember the precise words of only one piece of advice relating to everyday life: “Ignore the use-by dates on food bought at supermarkets.”

Francis Brown
London E3