Vatican moves to stem divorce, U.S. style

Press, 23 September 1980, Page 17

Vatican moves to stem divorce, U.S. style

By

WILLIAM SCOBIE,

“Observer,” London

Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly are starring in a row within the United States Roman Catholic Church about soaring annulment and divorce rates which has the Vatican hopping mad. Last year, a record 40,000 "“quickie” annulments were granted to American Catholics. In 1969, the total was just 338 —all hard-won. "Rome thinks we’re running a divorce mill,” said a prelate of the Los Angeles archdiocese. And Rome, casting a baleful eye over an ongoing liberalisation process that has enabled so many divorced United States Catholics to remarry, re-enter the Church’s favours, and take Communion again, is moving to-stem the tide. A new set of ground rules for annulments is being worked out in the Vatican. They will be tough. Ten years ago the Vatican allowed the United States Church some “streamlining” of the annulment procedures which, today, remain the only official exit for a church-wed couple from a Catholic marriage. Since the 1970 relaxation began, both' annulment and divorce figures have risen yearly until there are now an estimated eight million, divorced Catholics, about half of whom have remarried. "Psychological bases -

for granting' annulments have broadened. “Some dioceses hand them out like sweepstake tickets,” a Los Angeles marriage counsellor said. The time required to get one has fallen from eight .to 10 years to weeks. The cost is reduced to a small fee for; paperwork. . . Monsignors on marriage tribunals from southern California (where both Si-

natra and his former wife live) to New Jersey (where they wed in 1939) began asking who had granted the. annulment. To this day no record has been found. (Annulment of his second and third marriages to Aya Gardner and Mia Farrow would be uni necessary since they were not recognised by the Church.)

01’ Blue Eyes brusquely refused comment. Had he been granted special dispensation, direct from Rome? “Extremely unlikely,” says Mgr August Moretti, head of the Los Angles Archdiocesan marriage tribunal. So Californian churchmen now believe, that Sinatra, in line with many remarried Catholics, has taken canon law into his own hands, perhaps with the blessing of some liberal Californian priest. . “Thousands are making

• this decision for themselves,” says Father James Ratigan, president of the 1 National Federation of > Priests Councils. “Priests are telling the faithful f they can obey their own • consciences in deciding I whether he or she is guilty of grave sin and ■ can therefore receive the • Eucharist.” Gene Kelly figures in

the controversy because he is outspoken; the fourtimes married Frank Sinatra because he is the reverse. Some months ago the Catholic press reported that Sinatra had been granted annulment of his 12-year-long sacramental marriage to the former Nancy Barbato, who bore him two children. Then the mult i-millionaire entertainer and his fourth wife, Barbara, began taking Communion at a

church near their Palm Springs home. When photographs of Sinatra receiving the Eucharist appeared in newspapers, there was an uproar. “The picture of Old Frankie receiving The Host made me sick to my stomach,” one Catholic wrote to her diocesan weekly. “It mocks everything we were brought up to believe.”

Gene Kelly entered the lists with a recent interview in a Catholic journal. “If you can get absolution for murdering a guy, or for adultery,” he pondered, “why not for divorce?” Mr Kelly and his second wife attend Mass regularly but do not take Communion. “We haven’t left the Church," he says. "We feel the Church walked away from us. Millions feel the same way.” With four out of five people who seek annulments in many United States dioceses now receiving them, and the United States Catholic db vorce rate close to the national average, any Vatican crack-down on special United States privileges seems ■ destined to meet strong resistance from American priests, high and humble. “Some United States canon law specialists have said they’ll walk off the job if the older, slower, judicial process were restored,” says Father Donald Heintschel, the executive co-ordinator of the Canon Law Society of America. The treatment of divorcees will thus be a fiercely debated topic at this month’s International Synod of Bishops on marriage and family. The Pope himself may preside, — Copyright. London Observer Service,