A Quick Detour

on the matter of annulments. Someone sent me an e-mail recounting his experience of going into the Catholic Church and noted that it took his wife three years to get an annulment from a previous Catholic marriage. Curious, I looked up the question of how long annulments (strictly speaking, of course, "declarations of nullity") take and found this site, which says, "The complete process of an Annulment, without the involvement of an appeal, can easily take two years." My correspondent implied that his wife's three-year annulment process had been on something of a fast track, however, and these things apparently vary among dioceses.

At St Mary's, there were informal discussions with parties who would be affected by Catholic policy on prior marriages, but the only general discussion of the topic was an e-mail that went out in December 2011 basically saying that if we haven't gotten to you yet, and you have a potential impediment, you'd better get on it. I'm not sure if anyone fully understood then that they were talking about a two- or three-year process. My wife and I married late and married once; I suppose God's grace was involved.

While informed reflection can lead to a conclusion that nobody can say, "Poof! You're Catholic!" to individuals, parishes, or a whole denomination, I think this is one area where neither Cardinal Wuerl nor Msgr Steenson made the issues sufficiently clear from the start: Anglican annulments wouldn't be recognized. Annulments take several years. The Ordinariate was not going to be a free ride for anyone. Clearly there were misunderstandings about these sorts of issues from the start.