Highlights from Pope Benedict XVI's 1/29/09 Address to the Roman Rota

"at the distance of 20 years from the Addresses of John Paul II on psychiatry's incapacity in the nullification ofmatrimony,....it seems opportune to ask oneself whether and to what extent these interventions have had an adequate reception in the ecclesiastical tribunals....

"the fact of a problem that continues to be very real is visible to everyone....of which my venerable Predecessor spoke: that of preserving the ecclesial community 'from the scandal of seeing in practice the value of Christian marriage being destroyed by the exaggerated and almost automatic multiplication of declarations of nullity,...on the pretext of some immaturity or psychic weakness....

"recall again...distinctions...between 'psychic maturity which is seen as the goal of human development' and 'canonical maturity which instead, is the basic minimum required for establishing the validity of marriage'....'only incapacity and not difficulty in giving consent and inrealizing a true community of life and love invalidates a marriage'.... the canonistic dimension of normality, that is inspired by an integral vision of the human person 'also includes moderate forms of psychological difficulty'....distinction between the 'minimum capacity sufficient for valid consent' and the idealized capacity 'of full maturity in relation to happy married life'....

"for this incapacity to be recognized, there must be a particular mental anomaly (art. 209 1) that seriously disturbs the use of reason (art. 209 2, n. 1; can. 1095, n. 1), at the time of the celebration of marriage and the use of reason or the critical and elective faculty in regard to grave decisions, particularly in freely choosing a state of life (art. 209 2, n. 2; can. 1095, n. 2) or that puts the contracting party not only under a serious difficulty but even the impossibility of sustaining the actions inherent in the obligations of marriage....

"some fundamental principles that must enlighten lawyers.

"First of all it is necessary to rediscover the positive capacity that in principle every human person has to marry by virtue of his very nature as man or woman. Indeed, we run the risk of falling into a form of anthropological pessimism....one cannot confuse the real difficulties confronting many, especially young people who conclude that marital union is normally unthinkable and impracticable with the true incapacity of consent....What is actually at stake is the truth about marriage and about its intrinsic juridical nature....

" in the reductionist optic that fails to recognize the truth on matrimony, the effective relationship of a true communion of life and love, idealized on a level of pure human well-being, essentially becomes dependentonly on accidental factors, and not, instead, on the exercise of human freedom sustained by grace.

"It is true that this freedom of human nature, 'wounded in the natural powers' and 'inclined to sin' (Catechism of the Catholic Church,n. 405), is limited and imperfect, but not for this reason does it become inauthentic and insufficient....

"some anthropological and 'humanistic' currents aimed at self-realization and egocentric self-transcendence idealize human beings and marriage to such an extent that they then deny the mental capacity of many people, basing this on elements that do not correspond to the essential requirements of the conjugal bond....

"capacity makes reference to a basic minimum so that the couple can give their being as a male or as a female to establish that bond to which the great majority of human beings are called....

"real incapacity...is always an exception tothe natural principle of the capacity necessary"