VATICAN CITY, 29 JAN 2009 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, Benedict XVI received the dean, judges, promoters of justice, defenders of the bond, officials and lawyers of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, for the occasion of the inauguration of the judicial year.
The Holy Father focused his remarks on questions concerning mental incapacity in causes of nullity of marriage, which were raised by John Paul II in his addresses to the Roman Rota of 1987 and 1998.
John Paul II's words, he said, "give us the basic criteria, not only for studying the psychiatric and psychological examinations, but also for the judicial definition of the causes".
In this context Benedict XVI recalled how "the Code of Canon Law's norm concerning mental incapacity, and the application thereof, was further enriched and integrated by the recent Instruction 'Dignitas connubii' of 25 January 2005. ... In order for this incapacity to be recognised, there must be a specific mental anomaly that seriously disturbs the use of reason at the time of the celebration of the marriage, ... or that puts the contracting party not only under a serious difficulty but even under the impossibility of sustaining the actions inherent in the obligations of marriage".
"We run the risk", the Pope went on, "of falling into a form of anthropological pessimism which, in the light of the cultural situation of the modern world, considers marriage as almost impossible. ... Reaffirming the inborn human capacity for marriage is, in fact, the starting point for helping couples discover the natural reality of marriage and the importance is has for salvation. What is actually at stake is the truth about marriage and about its intrinsic juridical nature, which is an indispensable premise if people are to understand and evaluate the capacity required to get married.
"Such capacity", he explained, "must be associated with the essential significance of marriage - 'the intimate partnership of married life and love established by the Creator and qualified by His laws' - and, particularly, with the essential obligations inherent to marriage that must assumed by the couple".
The Holy Father pointed our that "certain 'humanistic' schools of anthropology, which tend towards self-realisation and egocentric self-transcendence, idealise human beings and marriage to such an extent that they end up denying the mental capacity of many people, basing this on elements that do not correspond to the essential requirements of the conjugal bond".
"In principle, causes of nullity through mental incapacity require the judge to employ the services of experts to ascertain the existence of a real incapacity, which is in any case an exception to the natural principle of the capacity necessary to understand, decide and accomplish that giving of self upon which the conjugal bond is founded".
AC/.../ROMAN ROTA VIS 20090129 (470)
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