Canon 1592.1 confides in us that if good respondent is actually summoned but goes wrong to look, and you will cannot supply the court that have an adequate reason for which incapacity, the latest judge will be to claim that people absent, plus the situation is always to proceed to the brand new definitive judgment.
You don’t need a degree in canon law to appreciate that this is only common sense. After all, there are one or two parties to a marriage-nullity case-and if one party doesn’t feel like cooperating, that doesn’t mean justice is automatically going to be denied to the other! It will base its decision on the evidence collected from the petitioner and his witnesses. So what Craig’s pastor and the tribunal official told him is correct. If Craig can show that (for example) his own consent at the time of the wedding was defective-a concept that has been discussed numerous times here in this space, in “Contraception and Marriage Validity” and “Canon Law and Fraudulent ong many others-then the marriage is invalid regardless of whether his ex-wife submits her own evidence or not.
Remember that it takes two people to marry validly. This means that for a valid marriage, both spouses have to get it right-but for an invalid marriage, only one spouse has to get it wrong. If the marriage is invalid due to defective consent on the part of the petitioner and he/she can prove it, then the tribunal can find it has all the evidence it needs to render a decision, without any input from the respondent.
Yet even when the petitioner desires argue that the wedding are incorrect because of bad agree on the part of the new respondent, it could be you’ll be able to to prove this without having any respondent’s collaboration. There is multiple witnesses-sometimes even and additionally bloodstream-loved ones of one’s absent respondent-that able and ready to testify towards tribunal regarding the brand new respondent’s complete conclusion, or particular tips, offering the tribunal making use of facts it will require.
If your respondent can be so vengeful on believe that low-cooperation have a tendency to stall the fresh petitioner’s instance, and come up with your/their own waiting prolonged with the need annulment, that isn’t fundamentally thus. With respect to the private issues, the fresh new respondent’s inability to participate the procedure could possibly create this new judge so you’re able to issue a choice even more quickly. In reality, periodically the non-collaboration of a beneficial spiteful respondent may even make it possible to buttress the petitioner’s claims: imagine that a petitioner are claiming the respondent features rational and/otherwise emotional issues, and this prevented your/their own regarding giving complete accept to the marriage. Brand new tribunal e-mails good summons into respondent… whom intensely runs the new summons as a consequence of a paper-shredder and you will e-mails the brand new fragments returning to the newest tribunal as a result. Do this type of immature, irrational decisions really damage this new petitioner’s instance?
Let’s say that the marriage tribunal ultimately gives Craig a decree of nullity, which will mean that he is able to marry someone else validly in the Church. So long as his ex-wife really was informed of the case by the tribunal, and knowingly chose not to participate in the proceedings, she will not be able to claim later that her rights were violated and have the decision invalidated as per canon 1620 n. 7. That’s because refusing to exercise your rights does not mean you were denied your rights.