When is a marriage not a marriage? When it's a Catholic annulment of course. Catholics don't do divorce. Catholics can't do divorce. Marriage in a Catholic church is a one-time-only deal - once you're married in the sight of God, it's permanent, until death (and not divorce) do you part.

Yes, you can legally divorce in the civil court, but for Catholics that's not the same, because of course there's a 'higher law', invented by the beardy man upstairs. So even when you get your divorce papers through, sell the house, arrange a settlement, sort out who the kids are going to live with, chop the dog in half... all the stuff you have to go through to get yourself as far away from your ex-spouse as you can... you are, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, still married.

Damn.

That's a bit of a problem really isn't it? Because if you want to get married again, and people do, but you're a Catholic, you can't. Ever. At least, not in a Catholic church ceremony.

Hmmm, what to do? If only there was some loophole in God's Holy Law that Catholics could use to wriggle out of this awkward situation. Come on, Herr Pope, think hard. You have thousands of people wanting to get re-married and you must be able to think of something. After all, didn't you just tell people that limbo no longer exists? If you can wipe out centuries of unquestioning belief in a special place for the souls of dead babies, surely divorce is going to be a doddle - for one thing, all parties are still alive and obviously willing and able to side-step the divorce rules if it means getting another white wedding out of it. I mean, just think of all that extra champagne and cake on offer.

So the pope (not this one, one of the dead ones), thought for a while. And lo, there was a loophole, and the loophole was called a 'Declaration of Nullity', and it was good. For yea, although it was a bit of a cheat, at least it got lots of people out of a tricky situation, which is what mattered. And the people gave thanks, and formed an orderly queue. A long, hypocritical, snake-like queue, because what they were signing up for was a way of saying that their marriage wasn't real, when they knew all the time that it was, and just wanted a divorce by the back door.

In a Declaration of Nullity, or annulment, the Roman Catholic Church can look at a marriage, examine the cirumstances under which it happened, and then declare that the marriage wasn't valid at all. And if it wasn't a real marriage, you don't need a real divorce. In other words, you're free of that bothersome 'no divorce rule' on a technicality. How incredibly convenient!

But wait, if the marriage wasn't valid, surely the children are illegitimate? Nope, they've thought of that one too. There's a rule which says it's okay, so hey, who are the parents to argue? They've got their divor... er, annulment, and they're free to marry again, er, for the first time.

The Catholic annulment rules are more evidence that religion isn't the rigid, unbending word of God after all. It's a set of ideas designed by men (and it's invariably men) to (a) keep the faithful obedient and coming back to church with their donations and (b) manoeuvre out of difficult places where the rules are likely to upset the very people they were designed to keep on their knees. If you don't like the old rules, just make new ones!

In other words, even if 'God said so', and even when it's in the Bible, the people running the God business in the real world are the ones who make the rules. And if they can make the rules, why are they even bothering with the Bible in the first place?

Organised religion is a set of rules by which people lead their lives... until such time as they wish to selectively abandon any or all of them and do what they damn well please. While still claiming to be more righteous than the rest of us, of course.

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Links:
The rules of annulment (Chicago Sun-Times article)
Annulment in the Catholic Church
Pauline privilege (more weasel words)
Petrine Privilege (ditto)
Limbo is no more