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“I can understand your wishes and concerns when dealing with your annulment. You have no rights as being a EX-WIFE of Rick’s through the eyes of the military or any other legal matter. The only way that you would have any rights through the military and legal is if you had a child with Rick. Which you don’t! I am not going to sit here and fight with you through emails. You have pissed me off, as I am sure that I done the same. I will leave it up to Rick on what he decides to do about you and your

I wish you the best…. MAY GOD BLESS… “

First let’s address the legal matter – a divorce does NOT sever all legal ties. Most of us wish they did, but they don’t. So she needs to get a grip there.

We didn’t do the annulment before because Rick was dealing with supporting Wife #2 while she was sleeping around (he wanted to help her get back on her feet … somedays he is too nice for his own good.) I didn’t have the money to pay the fees, which I discovered recently are negotiable. Also, I was dating someone who wasn’t Catholic at the time (the Insignificant Other) so it wasn’t a big issue for me either. Now that I am back in the dating world, it is an issue because I have dated two Catholics, and both have expressed that they want to be able to marry in the Catholic church.

The funny part is the whole part about how much Rick is supposedly learning from her, “all out of the Bible”. While a lot of people don’t realize it, the majority of the Catholic beliefs come directly from the Bible. (No, priests not being married is not in the Bible, I realize that AND I don’t agree with it. One of my few issues with the Catholic church) MORE IMPORTANTLY … this is the chick who was sleeping with Rick within a month of dating him! (Where is that in the Bible?) She was pregnant before they got married. (I am sure that is not in the Bible.) And what will she teach her children about these issues? This one will obviously be able to figure out that Mom was prego before July 15 when they got married. In a civil union, which is also going against the Bible! (I am sure no ordained minister married them at 12:10am.)

Yep, she sure is teaching Rick a lot about what is in the Bible. By doing everything that is NOT in the Bible. Sigh… Oh well. He’s married to her, and because I care about him I want them to have a good marriage. So after sending her my initial reaction e-mail (telling her that she is far from biblical) I sent a nicer, pseudo-apology e-mail. She caught me off guard yesterday, but prior to that she has had nothing but my support. I was just very upset to be told that I was “up to something” when the worst thing I was up to was wanting to mail him his stuff, to send them baby goodies, to maybe even send her some mommy pampering goodies, and so forth. Yeah, I am pure evil after all. Sigh… I just want everyone to love everyone! I am too much of a Libra. I want everyone to be happy, all the time, and if they aren’t happy I want to make them happy. Ugh. It sucks, it really does.

Oh well, hopefully she will figure out that I am not about to attempt to steal her man. He asked me back in January (the day of his second date with her) if I ever thought that there was a chance between us. I laughed and asked if he had grown 3-4 inches … see, I have this height issue, and I can’t stand to date men who are my height, which he is. (Yeah, yeah, get your mind back out of the gutter!) He said no, he had not … and I said that no, I didn’t think there was a chance. We laughed about it and moved on to the next topic. He has always been one of my best friends, and I love him dearly. That does not mean I want him back though!

After reading Sabby’s comment to my earlier post, I started to do a little research. From The Roman Catholic Diocese of Erie – Marriage Tribunal – A Letter from Bishop Trautman, I found this information: (I am taking what I consider to be key points, there is more to the full letter)

The Church takes seriously its responsibility to promote and protect marriage and family because these institutions contribute to the good of each person, society, and the Christian community.

According to the teaching of Christ and the Church, the vow which husband and wife make to each other at their wedding is permanent and so is their union. It is indissoluble. They are to be faithful to each other for life. They are to be open to children and are to be ready and willing to nurture and educate their children. By God’s plan, marriage is an intimate partnership of life and love in which the husband and wife give themselves to each other completely and accept each other unconditionally. Their love and faithfulness to each other is in turn shared with their children. They become a family.

Every marriage (whether it involves Catholics, Protestants, Jewish persons or others) is presumed to be binding once it has been entered into by a man and woman. The good of all concerned, including children, society, and the Church, demands this presumption.

Unfortunately, many good and sincere people find themselves in conditions or circumstances that result in separation or divorce. Their faith and their membership in the Church are still important to them and often they would like the chance to marry again in the Church.

The law of the Catholic Church directs the Bishop to establish a Tribunal whose purpose is to investigate those broken marriages at the request of one of the parties in order to determine whether there is any possibility of an annulment.

The goal of the Tribunal’s investigation must always be the truth about each marriage that it studies in light of the Church’s teaching and discipline. An annulment can only be granted if there are sufficient proofs that the marriage was not valid from the beginning.

The priests that I have talked to were previous members of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston’s Marriage Tribunal.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (our secret codebook) is actually online at Christus Rex, and the Sacrament of Matrimony is outlined here and under line 1650 we find this: “In fidelity to the words of Jesus Christ – “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery”[Mark 10:11] the Church maintains that a new union cannot be recognized as valid, if the first marriage was. If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God’s law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation persists.” They are not separated from the Church, but they cannot receive Eucharistic communion. This is because you are living in a state of sin, and as long as that is the case you are not allowed to receive sacraments – this is from Old Testament law. It also goes on to say that the person who has remarried should still bring up their children in a Christian manner, so that answers my baptism question. There is more on the Offenses Against the Dignity of Marriage too.

I know it seems “harsh” in our free love, open minded society. But is our world truly a better place? Are people happier after getting divorced? NO. Sure, there are situations of violence and abuse where the victim should get out. That is not the same as the situation that most divorced people find themselves in. I am one of them, I *know* I am far from perfect. I don’t claim to be. And I have heard so many other people say it too … “I still love him, but I am not in love with him…” or “I am just not happy…” Why do you think I stayed in a bad dating relationship for almost 8 years afterwards? Because I don’t think you should just give up. It hurts not only the spouses but also the children.

Here is the key line that applies to me in this situation: 2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Considering ALL of the circumstances surrounding my marriage – I did not “freely consent” and therefore I can request an annulment. I was in a shattered, depressed state of mind after losing one ovary to a massive multiloculated tumor. (which was fortunately benign, but we didn’t know what would happen to my other ovary in the future.) In the process of the surgery, I lost the child that I was pregnant with. I was terrified that I might not ever again have the chance to have children. (Jason was born afterwards, but I would still be at great risk if I was to be pregnant again.) I was clinically depressed. I was NOT thinking clearly or freely, all things considered. We had known each other for less than a year when we were married, and there were MANY things I discovered just weeks after we were married that showed me immediately how incompatible we were. Which brings me to one of the items evaluated in the annulment process – “whether you engaged in a cognitive or mental evaluation of what marriage is and whether you engaged in a critical evaluation of yourself and your spouse, asking whether your or your spouse were able to undertake and fulfill the essential rights and obligations of marriage. In other words, it is being asked if you knew what you were doing and you sufficiently knew yourself and your former spouse.” (From Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston which has an interesting “Q&A” format to answering questions about annulment.) Did I engage in those evaluations? No. So… time will tell, and I have a lot to learn. Should be an interesting road ahead.

As for the whole address issue, according to this, “the address of your former spouse would be a real necessity, unless you could prove an absolute inability to locate him.” So we can do it the easy way, or the hard way. Yeah. Like I have money to blow trying to locate him? Isn’t an e-mail a lot easier?

Thank you for tuning in to Christine’s Religious Network. I promise, we will now return to our normal broadcast.

Libra: If you find yourself feeling a little moody today, this could really trip you up a bit. Just be careful that you don’t react to things in a more emotional manner than is really necessary right now.

Wow, now isn’t that funny? Well, tonight the power went out. Shortly after I got home – boom! And immediately after that – no lights. No air conditioning. It’s amazing how silent it is when there is no electricity. My parents still had power, so it must have been just our transformer. So I lit all the candles, found the flashlight, and Jason and I read. No computers. No television. Just reading. Probably the best thing for me. The lights came on 45 minutes ago, so I came out and caught the end of Judging Amy. I got something to eat – no electricity meant no cooking, and all of my dinner options required heat! I guess I could have left and gone out to get something to eat – I could tell that 1960 still had power, it was just a small grid that was dark. But I felt safe, quiet and calm. I didn’t want to leave the comfort of home.

I am more calm now that I have had time to think about my rants earlier. I still feel that way, and I could be easily worked up over it. I am somewhat thankful that neither one of them e-mailed me tonight. I am going to work on tweaking photos for a different site, and then I am going back to reading the “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”. (Thanks to Kymberlie for loaning me the book!)

I am sure there is some way to do this, but I have no idea how. If I had something that was part of a defined class in CSS, and I tell my style sheet to insert text in front of it? I other words, I have “items” on the sidebar. Right now on every sidebar they have “::” in front of them – but what if on one skin (and therefore one CSS file) I wanted “::” but on another I wanted “.:” or “-” or nothing at all? Can it be done?

I sent her a long e-mail telling her how I felt, and he was cc’d on it. I don’t agree with the thought of “if he talks to you that’s none of her business…” – everything he does is her business, she is his wife. I do however think that I am a non-threat, and that it should not be an issue if he talks to me. That is neither here nor there now … I have been there for 12 years, and I will be there forever, even if just a silent person back in the wings. They will be in my prayers, I will always care. Even when Rick & I have lost touch, we have found one another somehow – the last time he called me back in January. He had lost my e-mail address. Whatever. I am not worried about that – my feelings were just hurt because I do care. I wrote a more direct & too the point e-mail regarding the annulment issue. Should I want to marry in the Church again, I want that option. I don’t know how it effects them – if they wanted to baptise the baby in the Catholic church if they could … it is my understanding that once he remarried he lost the right to the sacraments, but baptism is for the baby, not him … so I don’t know about that. He may not even consider himself Catholic any more. I don’t know nor do I care – that is between him & God. I have to look out for myself though, and I want the annulment.

I would NEVER want to jeopardize his relationship, and that was NEVER my intention. I wrote because I care about him and his family. My family still cares about him – all of my aunts & uncles that have met him ask about him. My grandfather even asked about him this summer. 12 years and a marriage don’t just disappear…