Why do some view questioning of how annulments are handled as out-of-bounds?
On the web site of the Diocese of Brooklyn, there appears to be a thinly veiled, ad hominem attack on Sheila Rauch Kennedy, as well as of a sociologist who has been critical of how annulments are handled in the dioceses of the United States: "Sheila Rauch Kennedy... exhumed some old myths about annulments, not without help from a complaisant chorus of commentators. More recently, a writer with a background in the behavioral sciences, though perhaps with as many personal reasons as Ms. Kennedy to give vent to anger, published an extraordinarily one-sided indictment of the process ('The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism' by Robert H.Vasoli)" <www.dioceseofbrooklyn.org/ministries/tribunal/myths>.
One has to wonder whose own anger was being vented at the expense of Rauch-Kennedy and Vasoli! Unlike the Brooklyn Diocesen writer, Pope John Paul II himself seemed to have growing concern about the manner in which annulments were being handled (See <http://catholicinsight.com/online/church/family/printer_647.shtml>
- "the Vatican has reversed the annulment of former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II's first marriage, which had lasted 12 years and produced two sons....Sheila Rauch had sharply criticized the Catholic Church for annulling her marriage to Kennedy....Rauch appealed the annulment to the Roman Rota....Rauch was told of the decision to reverse the annulment by officials from the Boston Archdiocese in May, although the decision was actually reached in 2005" <www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=80048>.
- "The most controversial 'marriage that never was' in recent U.S. political history is back....The annulment was the subject of Rauch's 1997 book Shattered Faith....Rauch said that she had just recently been informed by Boston Archdiocese officials of her successful appeal....Rauch says she worries that the practice, particularly in the U.S., of giving what she called 'easy annulments' will continue.....The Roma Rota's ruling, written in Latin, was reached in 2005, and had been kept secret while the official written notice was being prepared, said a source in Rome familiar with the case....Some 75% of annulments each year are from the United States, where there are an estimated 8 million divorced and remarried Catholics"<www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1634956,00.html?cnn=yes>.
- "Here, in brief, are the facts as we know them:* In 1991, while serving as Congressman from Massachusetts, Joseph P. Kennedy II divorced his wife Sheila Rauch Kennedy.* In 1993 the Congressman sought a decree of annulment from the Boston archdiocese. Without waiting for the result of his petition, he entered into a second marriage with a former aide, Beth Kelly; that wedding did not take place in a Catholic church.* In 1996, Sheila Rauch Kennedy learned that the Boston archdiocesan tribunal had proclaimed that her marriage to Joe Kennedy was a nullity....* Nine years later, in 2005, the Roman Rota reversed the Boston tribunal's decision...."The final decision by the Roman Rota lends weight to Sheila Rauch Kennedy's argument that she and Joe had a real, albeit unhappy, marital union" <www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jun/07062101.html>
