!!!!
A couple notes on John Allen’s notes |
John Allen, semper legendus, has several interesting notes on the Synod. I react to just a few, modo Fr. Z.
Allen: An annulment is a declaration that even though two people had a Church wedding [careful: a ‘Church wedding’ is not a prerequisite for an annulment petition, tribunals hear many non-Catholic cases], the sacrament of marriage [careful: annulments cases are about validity, not sacramentality!] didn’t exist because one or more of the tests for validity wasn’t met [careful: tribunals don’t prove marriages valid, they find some marriages null]. People seeking one go through a detailed process under Church law that some find cumbersome, lengthy, and invasive, not to mention occasionally [careful: very, very occasionally] expensive.
Allen: Erdő floated the idea of creating an “extra-judicial” process, allowing bishops to issue an annulment by administrative fiat without the necessity of a legal verdict [that idea addressed here], in order to speed things up. During a Vatican news conference, Erdő said he included the idea in his talk because many bishops’ conferences around the world had suggested something like it, suggesting fairly strong support. [Interesting: to me, that reads as if the canonist included the idea because so many people are talking about, not because it’s necessarily good in itself.]
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
Journalist John Allen is a danger to one’s faith, so why are we surprised when his theology in this article is so far off from the truth. For years and up until quite recently, John Allen was paid and employed by National Catholic Reporter, a sorrowfully dissident quasi-Catholic rag that promoted sodomy, married priesthood, women priests and anything else that came down the liberal pike. John Allen, speaking on March 4, 2005 at the Los Angeles Archdiocesan [Cardinal Mahony’s] awful Annual Religious Education Conference, told the dumbed-down audience that priests should be allowed to marry, that there should be women priests, etc. For years, in print, Allen has confused and mislead Catholics. He studied in Kansas with then Fathers Sean O’Malley and this prelate today wrongly promotes John Allen out of a misguided liberal friendship.