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Faith, Family Law, and Finding Peace: Understanding Catholic Annulments
In this enlightening episode, divorce attorney Seth Nelson and Pete Wright welcome Father David Mowry, a Roman Catholic priest and assistant professor at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. With the recent election of Pope Leo XIV (the first American-born Pope), the conversation explores the intersection of Catholic faith and family law, specifically focusing on the church's approach to marriage, divorce, and annulments.
Seth and Pete dive deep into the Catholic Church's perspective on marriage as both a sacred covenant and a legal institution. Father Mowry explains how annulments differ fundamentally from civil divorces, detailing the extensive process and support systems the Church has in place. The discussion reveals how the Church's approach to failed marriages isn't about finding loopholes, but rather about determining whether a true marriage existed in the first place according to Catholic teaching.
Questions we answer in this episode:
- How does a Catholic annulment differ from a civil divorce?
- What happens if one spouse refuses to participate in the annulment process?
- How does the Church support children whose parents are going through divorce?
Key Takeaways:
- The Catholic Church views marriage as a permanent covenant—annulments determine if a valid marriage ever existed
- Annulment processes include extensive pastoral and legal support systems
- Local priests serve as initial guides but specialized Church courts handle the formal proceedings
This episode offers invaluable insights for anyone navigating the complex intersection of faith and divorce. Whether you're Catholic or simply interested in understanding different approaches to marriage dissolution, Father Mowry's explanation of the Church's compassionate yet structured approach to failed marriages provides a fascinating perspective on healing and moving forward.
Links & Notes
- Learn more about Father David Mowry on his website
- Schedule a consult with Seth
- Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
- (00:00) - Welcome to How to Split a Toaster
- (00:27) - Meet Father David Mowry
- (04:31) - Catholic Annulments vs. Divorce
- (05:16) - Civil vs. Church Law Around Marriage
- (12:20) - Annulments – The Loophole
- (18:05) - What the Church Looks at
- (20:27) - Counter to Catholic Thinking?
- (23:08) - A Way to Set People Free
- (24:06) - Unwlling Participant
- (25:46) - When It’s Contested
- (27:34) - Appeals Process
- (28:15) - Judges
- (31:50) - Emotional Infrastructure
- (36:55) - Working with the Kids
- (41:31) - Where the Job Begins and Ends
- (45:06) - Historical Records
- (46:47) - Pete’s Story
- (48:35) - Wrap Up
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
What is How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships?
Seth Nelson is a Tampa based family lawyer known for devising creative solutions to difficult problems. In How to Split a Toaster, Nelson and co-host Pete Wright take on the challenge of divorce with a central objective — saving your most important relationships with your family, your former spouse, and yourself.
Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, is your toaster now a pope from Illinois?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. And as always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright. Today, we're exploring the deeply personal crossroads of faith and family law. When a Catholic marriage ends in civil divorce, questions around annulment can feel like a second emotional and legal labyrinth. What does the church really ask of you? How does the process work when your ex is combative, unresponsive or worse?
Our guest today brings both spiritual and practical guidance to this conversation. Dr. David. I said Doctor, I don't know why. I'm promoting him maybe.
Pete Wright:
I know. That was awesome.
Seth Nelson:
Father David Mowry is a Roman Catholic priest, an Assistant Professor of Homiletics at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake in ... How do you say that?
Father David Mowry:
Mundelein.
Seth Nelson:
... Mundelein, Illinois. Never heard of it. He's here to help us unpack the purpose of annulments, how they differ from legal divorce and how to walk this path with integrity, especially in high conflict situations. Father Mowry, welcome to the toaster.
Pete, I am all flustered today and I'm just getting it right-
Pete Wright:
So many words.
Seth Nelson:
So many words. And I'm so flustered and here's why. We have a priest from Chicago just after we have a pope from Chicago. And being a nice Jewish boy from South Tampa, a divorce lawyer, no less, I have always been fascinated with the conclave and have been following Pope Leo recently on his latest leadership of the church. So, I'm so excited, a little flustered, maybe even a little nervous which I don't get often.
Pete Wright:
That's very exciting. Father David, I'm very excited you're here. We go back a ways, not in the context of either the church or divorce law, but I'm so excited that we have a new circle on our Venn diagram of overlap. Thank you for being here.
And is there a fandom at the university around Pope Leo right now? I mean, do you have the vuvuzelas out? How far do you go?
Father David Mowry:
So, Mundelein is within the Archdiocese of Chicago which is the archdiocese in which Pope Leo was born. So, there's a huge overlap of Catholic and Chicago pride here at the university where I teach.
Unfortunately, all of our students were already off for the summer when Pope Leo was elected. So, it was just the boring old farts like me who were around to watch the white smoke and see Cardinal Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, come out on the balcony of St. Peters.
And we were all losing our minds. We could not believe that not only was there an American-born pope, but the best kind of American, a Chicagoan.
Pete Wright:
A Chicagoan.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
Can you imagine? I'll bet you felt like you were like 13 years old. It's so exciting.
Father David Mowry:
Oh man, so excited.
Seth Nelson:
Father David, I'm so torn right now because I respect you, I respect your faith, but my family's from Wisconsin. And we have a nickname for people from Illinois which I'm sure you're aware of.
Father David Mowry:
I am. It's not something appropriate for a priest to talk about.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Do you know what it is, Pete?
Pete Wright:
I don't.
Seth Nelson:
It's FIB.
Pete Wright:
I am from Colorado. What?
Seth Nelson:
It's FIB. So, this relates to everyone I've ever known from Illinois except Father David.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. There's always an exception to the rule because it stands for Fucking Illinois Bastard.
Pete Wright:
No, [inaudible 00:04:15]. He's a priest on the show right now, man.
Seth Nelson:
That's why he's-
Father David Mowry:
I am from Chicago. Close enough to the border of Wisconsin. You just have to get used to this kind of thing. No, I knew this was coming, Pete. Don't worry.
Seth Nelson:
This nonsense. This nonsense.
Pete Wright:
This is amazing. I don't think Seth woke up ready to pick a fight. I think he just started that. That's a conversation.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. But I will tell you, I am so excited for this because this is such an important conversation. And in the Jewish religion, Pete, Jewish religions have had divorces 2000 years. And it is called a get, G-E-T. So, that's the Hebrew word for divorce. In English, you can get a get.
So, I'm so fascinated about an annulment and how it works and the emotional aspects of it. We haven't touched on this subject and I could not be more excited and thankful for having Father David on the show.
Father David Mowry:
Well, thank you for having me.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, me too, me too. So, David, where would you like to start? I mean, in terms of sort of setting the table around the foundations of where legal divorce runs into the Catholic approach to a separation?
Father David Mowry:
Sure. So, I think it's best to start with the Catholic Church's understanding of marriage and making a distinction between civil law around marriage and then church law around marriage.
For the church, marriage is a human reality first and foremost. So, the church honors the Hebrew scriptures and the Book of Genesis, which states that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. The church teaches that marriage is something so profound, so important to God's plan for humanity. Marriage itself is not undone by original sin, by the exile of the first man and woman from the garden. Marriage continues through the rest of history up to the coming of Christ.
So, the church takes marriage very seriously as a human reality first and foremost. And so, when the church sees marriage, it sees a free, total and exclusive union between a man and a woman. Free in that the two parties have to come together by their own consent. There can't be any force or violence or anything that undermines their freedom to give each other in marriage.
It is total, there is nothing held back. There is an understanding that there is a complete union of life between the man and the woman. And it is exclusive. This is a union that is for life, until death do us part.
There are serious sins against marriage such as adultery and other forms of infidelity that the church takes very seriously because of the sacredness of the marriage bond. And all this is at the human level, what the church calls a natural marriage.
Whenever you have this free, total and exclusive union between a man and a woman, the church says you have a marriage even before you begin to talk about the uniquely Christian disposition of marriage. So, if you have a Buddhist man and woman getting married together and they understand marriage in this way, that's a natural marriage. So, with anyone of any religious persuasion.
For the church, the coming of Jesus Christ and his teaching takes the goodness of natural human marriage and elevates it to something more for those who are followers of Jesus. And marriage which is already good becomes then something holy, a sacramental marriage.
In the church's understanding, created goods are capable of revealing God when they are particularly taken up by Jesus in revealing God's plan for humanity. So, baptism for instance, water is already good. It is used as a sacramental sign of God's cleansing mercy of his adoption of new sons and daughters through that sacrament. Holy water serves that symbolic purpose and not just in a kind of, this is a sign that remind you of something, but that it communicates what it signifies.
Marriage now in the Christian dispensation is also a sacrament. It is also capable of revealing God's plan. The union of a man and a woman within the church becomes a symbol of God's love for his people and especially of the love Jesus shows for us in his death and resurrection. So therefore, for two Christians getting married, the church has her own laws that govern Christian marriage, that it ought to look a particular way.
And this is part of the discipline of being a Christian. If you are a Christian, especially speaking as a Roman Catholic priest, a Catholic Christian, you get married the Catholic way. That's the understanding. If you've been baptized, that baptism covers everything about you, it takes your entire life up into the life and way of Jesus. And so, that will affect marriage as well.
Sacramental marriage builds on that human natural marriage foundation; free, total, exclusive. And-
Pete Wright:
Not a lot of wiggle room. I'm not hearing a lot of wiggle room.
Father David Mowry:
No, there is not a lot of wiggle room.
Seth Nelson:
Listen, Pete, and let me tell you, I'm an attorney looking for loopholes over here.
Pete Wright:
I know. They have locked that contract down, man.
Seth Nelson:
I have just not seen them. And there are other lawyers smarter than me, but I'm voting with Father David on this one. Okay.
Father David Mowry:
Okay. And for that reason, the church teaches that once two people are married, they cannot be divorced. The teaching of Jesus in the Gospels is that what God has joined together, no human being must separate. And that is a high bar to clear.
Seth Nelson:
And by human being, that includes the parties?
Father David Mowry:
Yes. So, for the Catholic understanding of marriage, say as a priest, I will say colloquially, "Oh yeah, well, I married John and Sally last weekend." But that's actually theologically incorrect. John and Sally married each other. As a priest, I was there to serve as an official witness of the Christian community, of the church.
In say baptism or celebrating mass as a priest, I am the minister of that sacrament. The sacrament doesn't happen if I'm not there. In marriage, the bride and groom are the ministers of the sacrament. They are the ones who commit themselves to each other because as I joke to brides and grooms when I prepare them for marriage, "If I'm marrying you, I've got to show up for the rest of your life and I'm a terrible houseguest. You don't want me."
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Father David Mowry:
Okay. And the other language the church uses to talk about marriage, it's the language of covenant, which again is deeply biblical language. It is not just a legal contract that binds two parties together around some particular point of business or a transaction. A covenant is a commitment of person to person.
This is one of the reasons why marriage in the Catholic understanding serves as a sacrament, God makes a covenant with his people. And so, the covenant between man and woman serves as this efficacious sign of the kind of love God has for us. And for that reason, because God does not divorce us, he does not give up on his promises and his people, so two men and women cannot divorce each other.
Seth Nelson:
But then we get to annulment.
Father David Mowry:
Then we get to annulment.
Seth Nelson:
That seems to me, no disrespect in anything I say here, like the loophole.
Pete Wright:
A little bit.
Father David Mowry:
Right. So, with annulments, annulments exist because the church recognizes that human relationships go wrong. Now, in the understanding of annulments, I want to distinguish that between divorce.
Seth Nelson:
Yes, please.
Father David Mowry:
So, a divorce is a declaration that a marriage has ended. There was a marriage, there was a union between these two people. There has been a declaration of divorce. These two people legally are now separated from each other and are not married in the eyes of the law.
For a Catholic annulment, an annulment is, like a divorce in many cases, is a legal proceeding undertaken by the church courts. And you will hear this refer to as the marriage tribunal. You'll hear about canon lawyers or you might hear language about a judicial vicar and that's all technical language that I can get into if you want.
But the investigation the church court undertakes is not to see if we should end this marriage, the investigation is, did this marriage happen in the first place? Because essential to Catholic understanding of marriage, consent makes the marriage. And this is something that is drilled into the head of every priest as he is going through seminary school. It is consent that makes the marriage. Therefore, if there is a defect of consent, if one of the parties or both don't understand what they're promising themselves to, then they are not freely giving their consent to be married because they don't know what they're consenting to.
Seth Nelson:
So, is an annulment entirely looking back at the time when they became married? And I'm not saying just in the ceremony because you married before and they bring that to you and you are the witness of that. So, if someone's married 30 years, do you have to look back 30 years at the moment they were entering it or could you look back two years?
Father David Mowry:
Both. You have to do both. So, if a couple is or we'll say, so the official language is you have a petitioner who is the person coming to the church asking for the annulment, and then you have the respondent which is the other party to the marriage. The petitioner is coming to the church asking for the annulment because something has gone wrong in this relationship.
Now, if the petitioner is coming forward and saying, "Well, I would like to have my marriage annulled," at least I can speak for the United States, I can't speak for the whole church, but for the tribunals in the United States, the people of the tribunal will say, "Great, please send us the divorce paperwork and that will be the beginning of the file."
And if the petitioner says like, "Oh, well, no, I haven't gotten a divorce yet," the tribunal's like, "Okay, well, so then why are you asking for an annulment? It sounds like there's still a way for this to work."
Seth Nelson:
Right. So, there has to be a civil divorce before there can be an annulment.
Father David Mowry:
The Catholic Church in the United States takes a civil divorce as a sign that, "Okay, there is something here worth investigating." If these people have gotten to the point where they have sought civil divorce, then there's enough here for the tribunal to investigate and see what's there. Because the church, the church's position, just like you're innocent till proven guilty, the church's position is that every marriage is valid until proven otherwise.
The church will always presume even after the civil divorce with that paperwork that that's enough to give cause basically. But even after the civil divorce, the church's fundamental stance is, "Okay, our presumption is this marriage is valid. It's going to bind these two people together. We're going to look for evidence to the contrary."
And for that evidence, they'll look at the relationship over the last two years. What's come up? What's been revealed that perhaps was under the surface and unresolved, perhaps some psychological issue that hadn't been identified at the time of the marriage that now with it being revealed, you look back and think, "Okay, well, that explains a lot over the last couple of decades. And these things that existed in the relationship before the wedding, now these all start to make more sense. We just didn't have this information before."
There can also be, you can look back at the moment of the marriage and see, "Oh, it's interesting. He was talking about how he never wanted to have kids and had no intention of having kids when he got married." And for the Catholic Church, that is a mark against the total aspect of marriage, that there is that gift of fertility that is presumed within a marriage. All things being equal, everyone's circumstances are unique, of course, and some couples struggle with childlessness.
But if you got one of the two saying upfront like, "Oh nope, never having kids," then what they're promising to isn't marriage as the church understands it. And so, that marriage didn't take place because what they promised to wasn't marriage.
Seth Nelson:
Wasn't full.
Father David Mowry:
Yeah, exactly.
Seth Nelson:
And I know of couples, and I don't really ask why are you getting divorced in the civil context, but people will tell me, "Yeah, I knew walking down the aisle." And that would be something like, "I went up there and I said it but it wasn't in my heart." And that would be something I'm ... It's a question, would that be something the church would look at?
Father David Mowry:
Oh yeah. I mean, that is the number one thing the church would look for and there would have to be an investigation into that. Now, you mentioned that this can be an emotional process because you're going back and looking at a lot of difficult material. It would require pulling up those memories of that bride or groom who went down the aisle. And so like, "In my heart I knew this wasn't it." You would need to get that on paper because rule zero of the Code of Canon Law of the Catholic Church is get it in writing.
Seth Nelson:
That's my favorite rule, Pete.
Pete Wright:
You guys have the same rules. It's amazing.
Father David Mowry:
It's a good rule. It's a good rule. The church has been around for a long time, she's learned a thing or two about human beings, you just got to get it in writing.
Seth Nelson:
It doesn't have to be in Latin, Pete. I know you're going to ask.
Pete Wright:
No, it doesn't.
Father David Mowry:
Some things do. I have friends who work in marriage tribunals and they have to study Latin because the Code of Canon Law officially is written in Latin. So, you have to know Latin well enough to read the law in its original language.
Seth Nelson:
Yikes.
Father David Mowry:
And then also read the English, of course.
Seth Nelson:
But we do Chaucer's English, Pete, because I can't let Father David one-up me on different languages here. Let's be honest about it.
Father David Mowry:
All I know is Tarantino's English, so it's more colorful. Yeah. So, that story about someone who knew in their heart, "I said the vows, but I didn't really mean it," that is proof positive that there was a defect of the consent. There was some withholding of the free act of the will. There can also be a defect of consent because the person doesn't really intend to enter into a marriage as the church defines it.
Seth Nelson:
Like, "I'm getting married, but I'm always going to be fooling around."
Father David Mowry:
Something like that. Or even if there's a prenuptial agreement, something that exists in writing that provides for the eventuality of the marriage ending the church takes as a sign that, well, maybe these people didn't promise themselves to a lifelong partnership with each other.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, because they got the get-out-of-jail-free card.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. So, I mean, that kind of documentation makes the marriage file, or I should say the annulment file really easy to put together like, "Okay, well, here it is. You both signed it. That's that."
Pete Wright:
The case that you laid out in your, we'll just say opening statements, David, it really felt like it encapsulated the stereotype that I have of the Catholic view on divorce that it is, as you said, a sacrament. It's a covenant. It is a sacred thing that we take very seriously. And yet the annulment process seems counter to that sort of conservative approach. It sounds to me like the church has more systems in place for helping more modern relationships come apart as they need to come apart. Is that a fair way of looking at it?
Seth Nelson:
Can I answer, Father?
Father David Mowry:
Oh please, Seth, by all means.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, let the short Jewish lawyer answer. That's great.
Seth Nelson:
See if I get this right. I don't think that's right, Pete. I think that the church takes it so seriously. They're not doing modern ways to, quote, get out of a marriage. They take it so seriously. They go look and say, "You never entered into one." How did I do, Father?
Father David Mowry:
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, notch one on there.
Pete Wright:
I'm holding up my hand over, Seth, right now and nobody's looking at it.
Seth Nelson:
It's fascinating to me. I think it shows from an intellectual and I know, Father, you come from a spiritual perspective, but just from my own intellectual perspective, it just ups the ante on how serious this is.
Father David Mowry:
It does. And the other objection I would have to your characterization, Pete, is the use of the word modern. This is not something the church has done in the last 100, 200 years. I mean, if you've heard of a fellow named Henry VIII, he was very keen to get an annulment for his marriage. Now, Canon Law wasn't as systemized in the 1500s as it is now, but this was something the church has had in her understanding of marriage law for a very long time.
And like any other law, open to abuse, again, see Henry VIII. But overall, I want to emphasize especially for any of the listeners who have been in a Catholic marriage who have not gone through this annulment process. The word I would want to give to you is an encouragement to engage with this process as a source of healing and closure.
Nobody when they get to the day of their wedding wants their marriage to end. The church certainly doesn't want to see marriage ending. The church offers this annulment process as a way of setting a person free. We stood at the altar, we made those promises, made those vows, and we can feel like the word itself binds us and keeps us from moving on with our life.
The church through this investigation will pull out, "Well, see, this is what was happening with him. This is what was happening with you. And based on our best judgment, there wasn't a marriage here." That's a release. That's a liberation the church wants to give to people because the church wants people to be free to marry, to not have to worry about like, "Well, in the eyes of church, am I still married? Am I doing something wrong by getting another marriage?"
And because that's the healing aspect, then the closure is just to be able to have the church's word to say, "Yeah, this is done. This is over. There's no going back on this. We declare the marriage to be null which is to say it never happened in the first place."
Seth Nelson:
So, what happens if someone just doesn't want to partake in the process? Because in the legal process, we're going to serve you with papers. You don't show up, I'm going to go to court and get a default and quasi, in quotes, win. What happens in the church when one party says, "I'm not doing this?"
Father David Mowry:
Well, it is similar to that process. So, the petitioner is the one applying for the annulment then there's always the respondent, the other party to the presumed marriage. The respondent is going to be notified about the annulment process starting because this is a judicial process. So, in justice, the other party deserves to tell his or her side of the story.
The respondent is under no obligation to do so. They will be mailed unnoticed. The church will do everything reasonable to get in touch with this person. And this is where the divorce paperwork is very helpful in that regard because it'll have a current address and contact information in that way because we don't have the advantage of the coercive force of the law in order to get in touch with people.
Pete Wright:
You have the coercive force of God, David.
Father David Mowry:
Well, that's a separate podcast I think anyway, right? That's fair. So, the respondent can choose to be as involved in the process as he or she wants. If he or she has nothing to add, they just want to move on with their life, that's fine. The church will note that in the file, reach out to respondent, "He didn't respond, we didn't hear from her." We're going to move forward based on the testimony of the petitioner.
Now, the respondent is free to give his or her side of the story.
Seth Nelson:
And if they show up and say, "I don't want the annulment, this is a marriage. It's always was a marriage. My wife sought a civil divorce and I'm going to contest this." And I'm not asking, I'm sort of asking, can you share with us, do the annulments ever get denied after civil divorce or is there a high percentage? And if you can't share, I respect it.
Father David Mowry:
So, two questions there. So, what if the respondent opposes the annulment and then what happens if annulments are denied? So, let me take the second question first.
The church presumes that every marriage is valid. So, if the canon lawyers look at the marriage response like, "Everyone was free, no shotgun weddings here. Everyone understood exactly what they were getting into. They meant the words that they said. They did so with a desire to give themselves to each other for life." And there has been some later decision by one of the spouses to end the marriage through divorce because of ex-reasons. The church will say, "We see that there is a sacramental marriage here."
The civil divorce will still obtain legally these two people will be divorced. For the church, that does not touch upon the sacramental bond that is there. The church takes the marriage bond so seriously because it sees it as a divinely instituted reality, as part of God's plan for humanity.
In that case where the annulment is denied, then both parties would be considered to be still married within the Catholic Church. They would not be free to enter into another Christian marriage as far as the Catholic Church is concerned.
Seth Nelson:
Wow. Is there an appeal process? Does it end up going to Pope Leo? How far up does it go?
Father David Mowry:
So, there is an appeal process. Yeah. So normally, the annulment process will start with the tribunal in your local diocese. And then the parliament says it'll go to the tribunal of second instance. It's the Court of Appeals.
Pete Wright:
Beautiful.
Father David Mowry:
Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Pete Wright:
All the names are awesome.
Father David Mowry:
And so then, the file will be reviewed usually by a panel of judges rather than a single sitting judge say at the tribunal. And sometimes the appeal is overturned because ... And, Seth, you know this, sometimes it's a delightful procedural error.
Seth Nelson:
Are these judges priests or are they laypersons that study Canon Law? Who are these judges?
Father David Mowry:
So, they can be both. So, the church grants her own law degrees. There's the license in Canon Law and the doctorate in Canon Law. When you get the license in Canon Law, you are able to sit as a judge in tribunal cases, also able to act as advocates or as a defender of the bond which is basically the defense lawyer for the marriage itself because in an annulment it's the marriage bond that's on trial. We're trying to determine does this bond actually exist or not. So, it's not that the people are on trial. It's, "Okay, are they connected?" That's what we're looking at.
Seth Nelson:
I have a friend that's listening and just texted me, "Do you have to be Catholic? Asking for a friend."
Father David Mowry:
To be a Canon lawyer?
Seth Nelson:
Yes.
Father David Mowry:
So technically, you don't have to be a Catholic to get a Canon Law degree. You do have to be a Catholic to work in the tribunal however, because you're going to be expected to operate in union with the Catholic bishop of the diocese. And that's a hierarchical position where we want to work with someone who-
Seth Nelson:
We'll move along.
Father David Mowry:
... says yes to the whole package.
Pete Wright:
So sorry, Seth's friend.
Father David Mowry:
So, you can appeal it and then if that appeal still upholds the decision of the lower tribunal, then you can appeal it to Rome. Rome is always the last court of appeals for everything in the Catholic Church. And then it goes to the Roman Rota which is the judicial branch of the Vatican state and therefore of the Catholic Church as well.
And so, those are who've just judicial all-stars in the Canon Law world. These are cardinals who have been practicing law for longer than I've been alive. And it is very rare that an appeal will get all the way to Rome these days in terms of the modern constitution of the church. Again, to go back to Henry VIII, he was appealing directly to the Pope because he was the king and he thought he was special for some reason.
But you can get that decision appealed all the way to Rome. And if Rome upholds the decision, that's it. There's no other court of appeals. In that case, it is then the pastoral branch of the church that takes over the pastors of the church. The priests and the parish are then encouraged to accompany those who are still in a marriage bond even though the marriage has entered in divorce. And to help them to find a way forward, see how they're meant to live out their Christian life in this circumstance.
Now, all that said, within the American experience of the Catholic Church, that kind of situation is rare. And mostly, that's because there is a more ... How would I put it? The American approach to marriage tends to be a little more personal, emotional, but also legal and transactional at times.
So, the divorces that come up are less about, "I have made a sudden decision and I'm just going to dump my spouse to the curb because I want to take up with the new hotness," and more because underlying issues that weren't resolved at the time or adequately addressed have now reared their ugly head which calls into question the original commitment in the first place.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. Pete, I got a lot of questions, but it looks like you had something solid there.
Pete Wright:
Well, man, I'm blown away right now. Part of the reason I asked that earlier question, and I sort of led your objection to the modern view of annulment is because I am surprised, genuinely gobsmacked at the amount of institutional support that exists for the annulment process in the church.
I had no idea there was this universe of people who exist to support people who want to. I thought it all was just handled at your local church and your priest would annul you or say, "No, you can't have that." It's astounding to me.
I want to talk about, because now we're talking about the legal infrastructure, what about the emotional infrastructure of supporting people through the hard time of just living as a Christian Catholic going through a divorce process and having to reckon with that sort of the discernment process that comes from personally being a Catholic that divorces?
Father David Mowry:
Right. And there, you step out of the legal judicial and into the pastoral realm. So, in my ministry in a Catholic parish, I would encounter people who were going through a divorce. And they were coming to me and speaking very matter of fact like, "Well, Father, I'm getting a divorce, what do I do next?"
And at that point, there's some discernment as to, "Okay, how far into the process are you? What has been happening up to this point? Is this really something that you think you need to go forward with?" Because on the pastoral level, while the church does teach that divorce is contrary to the nature of marriage, the church recognizes that there are times when legal separation is the only recourse that a person has for their emotional and physical well-being.
Like I said, the church has been around a long time, she's seen a lot. So, the church recognized that from a legal standpoint, this might be necessary. So, the priests of the church are trained to help people discern, first and foremost, how are they going to maintain their relationship with God through all of this, to help them see where God is in the midst of their grief over the end of something they thought was going to last a long time, the loss of something that has defined their life maybe for decades. And to help them sort through the relational aspects of that how-to process, talking about it with parents, grandparents. Talking about the relationship with kids, the relationship with the wider community.
While I lament the prevalence of divorce in society just because of what it says about what people think about marriage and relationships, because of that prevalence, within the Catholic Church itself, there's not a big stigma around people who have gotten a divorce in 2025. A hundred years ago would be different. But in this cultural setup in America, the community itself is not going to abandon or ostracize or alienate anyone who goes through a divorce.
People will still keep quiet about it, of course, because it's an understandable reaction to feel shame around this seeming failure that something went wrong and I could have done something if I had said the right thing. And those are all kinds of games that, of course, professional counseling helps with, but also your pastoral counseling with a priest can help with in order to make sure you're paying attention to what God is up to in that.
As someone who's going through an annulment process, the priest acts as a kind of field advocate, kind of an initial intake to help the person get started with the process. And mostly, it's asking someone to tell me the story of the marriage and how it came to the point of divorce. And to begin to identify those places where, okay, I can hear there's this concern or there's this pattern of behavior.
There's this example of maybe unaddressed mental illness. There's this pattern of addiction in this other person's life. Here are, ooh, some concerning things coming out of the family of origins. All of these point to there being something at work in the understanding of these two people that may have gotten in the way of them fully promising marriage.
And the process then is for the priest in the parish to help the person put together that initial paperwork because it's a long questionnaire that the petitioner fills out that asks for a lot of details because the church wants to be fair to the marriage bond. It wants as much information as possible so that it can make an informed judgment on whether the bond exists or not.
Seth Nelson:
So, Father, you mentioned and just to pivot here for a minute, Pete, that they're there to support the marriage, each individual in the marriage and the children that are obviously going through. I see a lot in the civil divorce world where parents will talk to children about things that children should not hear about their parents' relationship and the divorce.
How does the church work with parents and children? And let's focus on the kids. How do they work with kids when their parents are behaving improperly? Because there's so much within church teachings about honor thy mother and father. But when mom or dad's doing stuff that isn't honorable, how do you juxtapose that and help little children through teenage years and even adult children when their parents get divorced because we have great divorce over 50? How does the church struggle with those and help those individuals?
Father David Mowry:
Yeah. So, helping the children is so important in these situations. It's traumatic for a child, a young child, any child to go through the breakup of their parents because from the beginning, you just assume that, "Oh, it's mom and dad together forever." And this is one of the immovable pillars of life. And to see that come apart fundamentally changes the world of these children.
So, in pastoral counseling for those children, part of it is providing a place where those children have a place of stability, that the community of the church itself provides a sense of stability and a place of safety for those kids in terms of the liturgical celebrations, in terms of religious education, classrooms and having other relationships in the child's life, whether it's a catechist or other people who are known, just to have that sense of community so that it's not as though everything is fragmenting around the child.
And-
Seth Nelson:
And have someone to talk to.
Father David Mowry:
And have someone to talk to. Yeah. And if you have a mom or dad who is attentive to what the kids are going through, certainly, I as a priest would be totally comfortable talking with a kid about what his or her experience is of going through this divorce and beginning to help them process it.
Now, I'm not a counselor, I'm not a therapist. I can help at the spiritual and moral level and be that authority figure in a child's life just to let them know that it's okay to talk about this. It's okay to talk about the feelings that are there and there is a way forward through this.
Seth Nelson:
Even when a parent's being, let's say, not honorable.
Father David Mowry:
Well, when the parent's not being honorable, then you have a different situation. And normally as a priest, I would hear about that through the grapevine, so to speak, where someone would come to me and say, "Father, my son's getting divorced and I'm really worried about the kids."
And then I'm counseling the mom or the aunt or the friend or what have you to say, "Look, you need to make it clear to them that the two of them need to be the adults in this situation. They need to get their act together. They need to work things out amongst themselves and then be able to say together to the kids what's happening in a way that they know their kids are going to be able to receive."
Seth Nelson:
Pete, that's the same advice I give my clients and we know some of them aren't able to do that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right, right.
Father David Mowry:
And as a priest, I'm happy to help say the couple who are going through the divorce have an ear to listen to someone who is not going to be judgmental and who has the best interest of them and their children at heart to help them work through that.
But in the end, the church wants adults to be adults. And yeah, part if there is, if there has been a lot of emotional dumping by the husband and wife onto the kids, well, that's going to come out in the annulment process. It's going to be really like, "Oh, there's some emotional immaturity here. There's an inability of this person to take on the responsibilities of parenthood as they are right now," which isn't to say they can't ever. But as they are right now, they can't navigate those boundaries and that's a sign that when they said yes to marriage, maybe they didn't fully understand what it meant to be ready to be a mother or father.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. And then you can discuss that with the children to help them get through this process.
Father David Mowry:
Right.
Pete Wright:
What you were describing is it sounds like an incredible load on a divorce process. So, somebody comes to you in your parish and says, "I'm getting a divorce." Where does your, and I mean specifically your local priest, where does their job begin and end, if at all? Because I know where Seth's job ends. I mean, kids come in to talk about heartfelt issues. He hands them a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon because of the colorful can and says, "Go sit in the corner."
Seth Nelson:
It's Natty Light, dude. It's Natty Light.
Pete Wright:
So, it just sounds like the burden of support on an individual priest in an individual divorce situation can be very, very high. And I'm curious what the practical sort of machine looks like.
Father David Mowry:
Our model as priests is Jesus who speaks in himself as the good shepherd. And the good shepherd stays with the flock, whether it's healthy or whether it needs some special care. And so, for a priest in a parish, I would see my job as being there to accompany that person for as long as they want me.
And people will come in moments of crisis. You have one conversation with them and then they're off and they're living their life and I pray for them and that's it. There are other people who will come in regularly. That's where my boundaries as a pastoral minister have to come in. I have to be able to say, "Okay, I get that you want to see me again tomorrow? Why we give this some time to breathe and let's set up a time a little later on, then you can update me on what's been going on just to make sure you're not forming a codependent position."
Seth Nelson:
So, Father David, I can help with that. If you start charging by the hour, they might not want to talk to you every day.
Father David Mowry:
Why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we think of that?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I mean, the church has been around a long time. I think she would've figured that out by now.
Pete Wright:
Seems like she would've figured out how to bill on the five minutes.
Father David Mowry:
I'll run that up to Pope Leo, see what he says about that.
Seth Nelson:
It's on the six minutes, Pete. Don't [inaudible 00:43:40] people.
Father David Mowry:
So, in terms of the pastoral relationship, there really isn't an end to the relationship on the priest's part. It comes down to when does this person think, "Okay, I've gotten everything I need from Father."
In terms of the annulment process, the priest's job ends once that initial paperwork is sent to the diocesan office. And if you're not familiar, the way the Catholic Church is organized, every diocese is responsible for a geographic region in the country. And so, every diocese is going to have a marriage tribunal that will handle the annulment cases that come up in that area.
And that can be as big as an entire state in the case of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Or it can be as small as the seven counties of my home diocese or the Diocese of Joliet in Illinois. Or even smaller, Archdiocese of Chicago is two counties, but a lot of people live there, so they have a big tribunal.
So, for the annulment process, the local priest ends his responsibility once he's helped the petitioner get that all put together and sent off to the tribunal. And then, helping the petitioner process any communications they get from the tribunal and walking with them in that case. But once the file is off to the central office, so to speak, then the petitioner is interfacing with those diocesan officials.
Pete Wright:
Incredible. Do you know how far back the annulment records go?
Father David Mowry:
Ooh, that is a good question. I don't know. They go back as far as sacramental records go. So, in the church, we always note the date and place of a person's baptism. So, for instance, I was baptized at Visitation Catholic Church in Elmhurst, Illinois. And so, if you went to the 1987 register, you can look up, "Oh, yup, there's David Mowry, son of Joan and Keith."
And then in that baptismal register, there will be made, by church law, there have to be made annotations of all the other sacraments you receive. So, when I was ordained a priest, Visitation received a little notice. It's like, "Oh, David Mowry is now a Father." David Mowry. So, write that down in the register.
In case I then try to go and get married in the church, then the notice of my marriage will go to Visitation and say, "Hey, wait a minute, this guy was already ordained a priest. He can't do this."
Seth Nelson:
We got a big problem here.
Father David Mowry:
We got a big problem here. Yeah. Now, that'll come up earlier because for Catholic marriages, you need to present a recent copy of your baptismal certificate which will have all those sacramental annotations on the back, which will include any other marriages and any other annulments. So, if your marriage is in a baptismal register and then gets annulled, the baptismal parish will then get another notification like, "Okay, that marriage was annulled." So, you make that notation in there as well.
Pete Wright:
It's fascinating. I know we could go on and on, but I don't know how else I would get my last story in which I am now fascinated by even more. My parents got married. Nine months later, got divorced. Nine months after that, had their divorce annulled. Is that a thing you run into? Had their divorce annulled by the church. Technically, they were never divorced now and they have paperwork stamped with the date.
Seth Nelson:
By the church or by the civil court?
Pete Wright:
I don't know, man. I don't know. Is that a civil court thing? Can you do that?
Seth Nelson:
You can move to set aside a final judgment.
Pete Wright:
It's a big certificate of annulment of divorce. It's got curly writing and everything.
Father David Mowry:
Well, the church doesn't really ... How would I put this? The Catholic Church doesn't-
Seth Nelson:
Write curly writing anymore?
Father David Mowry:
No, we do that. Oh, we do that. Oh sure.
Seth Nelson:
So much curly writing.
Father David Mowry:
It's more that the church doesn't see divorce from an institutional standpoint.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right. It was you're either married or not married.
Father David Mowry:
Exactly. That's the record.
Seth Nelson:
You're either married or never married.
Pete Wright:
Interesting. Never married.
Father David Mowry:
Well, you could be not married. I'm not married.
Pete Wright:
True. Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Fair enough.
Father David Mowry:
That's fair, loophole.
Seth Nelson:
He's a smart Father, nonetheless.
Pete Wright:
I'm going to erase that earlier mark off Seth's chart.
Seth Nelson:
When I get one wrong, you don't take away points. I still earn the earlier points.
Pete Wright:
No, I've taken it away. I don't care.
Father David Mowry:
This is above my pay grade. I can't adjudicate this.
Seth Nelson:
Let me just point one thing out. I know we got to wrap up. We've gone along because it's been fascinating. Pete, in the Jewish religion, when you do a mitzvah, a good deed, if you do something bad, your good deed doesn't go away. You still did it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, but what about my Church of Retribution?
Seth Nelson:
Oh, right, that one. All right, wrap it up.
Pete Wright:
David, you're amazing. Thank you so, so much for being here and helping to illuminate this.
Father David Mowry:
Thank you for having me.
Pete Wright:
I have this lingering suspicion that we will have more questions. I don't know, but this may not be the last that you've heard from us because this has been great and you are a real treat to have on the show. So, where do you want to send people to learn about, I don't know, about the church. Vatican.com? Church.org?
Seth Nelson:
Well, one of the great things that Pope Leo has done is redone the Vatican website. So, it's no longer that really old papyrus background. But anyway, that's a digital nerd thing.
What I would say to folks who would want to learn more about this is simply to go to your local Catholic priest. Every Catholic priest has been trained in the basics of the church's marriage law. And if you're in a position where you are getting divorced or if you've had a divorce, I encourage you to have that conversation with your local priest and to see if an annulment is going to be helpful for you in moving forward.
The church wants these relationships to flourish and wants to do everything to set them up to succeed. And if something has gone wrong, we want to be there to help make it right in whatever way we can. So, for anyone who's feeling any fear or trepidation around it, if Father is a jerk to you when you call, let me know and I will yell at him for you.
Father David Mowry:
Nice.
Pete Wright:
That's perfect. An agent of change, David Mowry. Well, I'll tell you what I am going to plug for you. Your website, fatherdavidmowry.com is wonderful and clean and it has a massive list of all the other podcasts that you have been on. And absolutely worth checking that out and learning more about what you are up to. David, thank you so, so much.
Seth Nelson:
And I just got to say one more thing because I'd be remiss if I didn't say this. One of my favorite people ever in the world was my uncle who was Catholic. I just wanted to throw that out there. So, Aunt Julie, if you're listening, thinking about Uncle Tom.
Pete Wright:
Oh, look at you, trying to earn points all the way at the last minute, great.
Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, head over to howtosplitatoaster.com. Ask us questions. That button is right there. Just click the button, ask us a question. It'll come to us. We'll get you on a listener question episode coming up soon.
On behalf of Father David Mowry and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next time on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split a Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music, by T-Bless and the professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida.
While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.