It’s not divorce, but…

The Catholic Church is rethinking the marriage annulment process.

Not only is the Vatican about to reduce the time it takes legal cases to make their way through ecclesiastical courts, the Roman Catholic Church has recently turned its attentions to the upswing in annulment petitions by practicing Catholics, which have literally exploded in recent years.

“Marriages nowadays are probably invalid more often than they were previously,” Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in the Osservatore Romano last autumn.

The trend is so glaring that it is expected to be at the centre of the extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops that Pope Francis has called for October 2014, to discuss the family along with the controversial matter of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments.

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