Experts in church courts: a role not sacred.

The increasing number of marriage annulments granted by the Catholic Church in recent years is gaining considerable public attention and arousing some controversy. I Members of the church's clergy2 and hierarchy3 have also expressed concern. This is not surprising in view of the actual data, as shown in Figure 1. Such data give the appearance of a decrease in the emphasis being placed on the permanence of marriage, a well-known church doctrine. Moreover, it is a significant change for some eight million divorced American Catholics that divorce, especially when combined with remarriage, might not mean separation from the church. Some have attributed the striking increase to the rising divorce rate; others to the renewal in church life associated with the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. This renewal encouraged an enrichment in understanding of marriage as well as a flourishing ministry to the increasing number of divorced Catholics. In addition, a much earlier and less widely known trend is of more fundamental importance. Shortly after World War II, the Sacred Roman Rota, the church's court of final resort in marriage cases, began to emphasize the psychologic requirements for a valid marriage6 and to encourage the use of psychiatric experts in the hearing of marriage cases. The public's increasing attention to the phenomenon of growing annulment rates stands in contrast to the psychiatric literature's virtual silence on the expert's role in this process. Thus, there is a need for this significant use of professional expertise to become both more widely known and more carefully appreciated. Accordingly, we report here on pertinent church law literature and on our study of a church court in the northeast. This study included discussion with its officials and experts, participation in its workshops, and observation of its annulment hearings. Our purpose is to focus forensic psychiatric attention on the work of church courts and the role of their expert consultants, in support of both the quality of this work and the development of this role.