[Question:]{.underline} Why is it that the priests of the Society do not send faithful who have grounds of annulment to the local diocesan tribunal?
[Answer:]{.underline} Not infrequently the priests of the Society are contacted by faithful who have been previously married, but whose marriage failed. They will sometimes present convincing evidence of the nullity of their previous marriage, such as the refusal of children on the part of one or both parties. They are there placed in a difficult predicament:
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On the one hand the Society does not have jurisdiction to establish tribunals that could give a certain judgment in such a case;
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On the other hand, the diocesan tribunals do not grant certitude either, for even when there are solid potential grounds to truly question the validity of the marriage, they will always resort to the easy grounds of “lack of due discretion”, provided for in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1095, §2.
Consequently, if a traditional priest were to send his faithful to a diocesan tribunal, he would effectively condemn them to uncertainty, to never knowing for sure their marriage status. However, the whole purpose of an annulment tribunal is to establish moral certitude, on the basis of which a person can act. A tribunal that refuses to do this, does not perform its duty and is worthless. The modernist tribunals almost always consider exclusively psychological reasons, such as lack of maturity that make the marriage imprudent. They call this “lack of due discretion”. However, this is no way proves that the marriage did not happen, and that the vows were without any object, as when one of the couple refuses true consent. Consequently, the decision of the modernist tribunals gives no certitude at all, and certainly do not give the person the ability to act as if he or she were not married and to enter into another marriage. This is why the Society of Saint Pius X refuses to marry people who have decrees of nullity from modernist tribunals.
The faithful who have an upright intention, who are seeking true certitude, and who would never dream of entering sacrilegiously into a subsequent doubtful marriage, consequently come to the Society asking us to resolve their doubt. Our priests know full well that it is not because there seems to be some good grounds that the marriage can be considered as null and void. It takes a tribunal to make such a declaration, after due consideration, following all the norms of canon law. The salvation of souls requires that the Society have such tribunals, and consequently the Church supplies jurisdiction for such judgments, as it does for marriages themselves.
Sometimes it is objected that the Society should study the case first, and then send it to a diocesan tribunal. The problem is that simply studying the case will not obtain the required moral certitude. It is only a canonical judgment, following the norms of marriage tribunals that can do this. We can only study it by erecting tribunals to treat these cases. Any other way of studying them would be misleading, unjust and would perpetrate the uncertainty.
Another reason why Society priests refuse to refer their faithful to the Novus Ordo tribunals is to avoid confusion and scandal for the weak. How can the faithful be expected to accept our firm rulings, protecting the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage, if we were to send our faithful to tribunals who do not at all, in practice, accept them? Human nature is such that they will listen only to the answer they want to hear. It is only years later, after entering into a second, and possibly invalid second marriage, that they will have to grapple with their compromised conscience. It would be a total contradiction of all that we are doing to restore all things in Christ, and to save souls, if we were to do this. The continued worsening of the crisis in the Church has made it more necessary than ever before for us to be very firm on this point.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.