Boris Johnson in marrying as a "Catholic" has annulled his previous marriages and delegitimesed his children - these are the ethics of our current prime minister

[stumbledin]

On one level I dont care either way about this but thought it strange who could get married in a Catholic ceremony. But as ever our resourceful PM has "negotiated" a path that suits him - and insults his formes wives and their children. As someone on facebook said, this is how Etonians learn to rule the world! What an utter w*er!!

" ... Catholic canon law does not permit the marriage of a divorcee whose former spouse is still alive.

However, the church confirmed that as neither his six-year first marriage to Allegra Mostyn-Owen, nor his second 27-year marriage to Marina Wheeler were Catholic ceremonies they are not recognised in the eyes of the church.

... In order to marry in a Catholic church, Mr Johnson could have had his two previous marriages recognised as annulled.

(or) ... his previous marriages, for which he would have required special dispensation from the Catholic church, those marriages would have "had a lack of canonical form" and could therefore be considered invalid. ... "

Interestingly these comments are from a Telegraph article late yesterday www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/29/boris-wedding-did-prime-minister-marry-carrie-symonds-catholic/ which has now disappeared and been replaced with this much less questioning article www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/30/boris-johnson-carrie-symonds-catholic-church-wedding-married/

Wonder if some Telegraph Tory leaders got in touch and said dont be so mean!

As they say, one rule for the rich, one rule for the poor.

He's not Henry VIII - she isn't the first lady.

Canon Law doesn't mean squat diddly when it comes to 'legitimacy'.

I divorced my first husband - no children. Married my second husband, three children. My first asked to go go through an annulment given there was a 'blessing' in a Catholic ceremony - we had previously married in a registry office. I put down non consummation. The annulment was given as there were no issues within the 'blessing'.

To put it more succinctly: It's all a load of shite and total bollocks.

@Piglet89

Baptism is a universal sacrament. Every church that baptises children believes that infant baptism makes the child a church member. Parents and godparents say vows on the child’s behalf.

Can't you see the illogicality of this?

The all the Christian Churches witch hold to the scramental view of baptism see it like being born into a family. You don't get to pick your family, but it has a profound effect, materially, on the kind of person you become, and you can never really break away from them, even if you become estranged.

So sure, if biology is illogical, this is illogical too.

Baptism is a ceremony. It means squat diddly in later life.

I was baptised a catholic. I'm not lapsed. I just don't believe in religion and haven't done since a teenager, therefore the baptism means nothing to me.

I just don't believe in religion and haven't done since a teenager, therefore the baptism means nothing to me.

You say that now, but it looks as though if you wanted to get married again in a Catholic Church, the baptism would mean that like Boris you would fulfil the criteria.

I didn't though.

And it makes it all the more ridiculous. Rather in keeping with this sham of a prime minister we have.

I don't know the technical minutiae of what is and isn't permitted under Canon law. My own parents had to marry in a registry office because my Dad was Catholic, and my mum was a divorced Protestant, but that was many years ago.

The thing is: the Catholic Church could probably easily have withheld permission if it wanted to. It does for many others.

I think it might depend on how you view Boris Johnson and his cabinet of scoundrels. For me, a combination of the chumocracy, ennobling donors and family, spending £37bn on Track and Trace while paying nurses a below inflation pay increase, refusing free school meals, unlawfully proroguing Parliament, calling human rights lawyers "do-gooder activists", refusing to act on a report calling out bullying, creating a hostile environment to EU visitors and residents, denying Erasmus, lying in Parliament, etc, etc, etc.... to me that means that the Catholic Church should have remembered its central mission.

They agreed to marry an adulteror who had an affair while his wife was battling cancer, whose previous lover had publicised a selfie taken in his marital home, whose earlier previous lover's child he has nothing to do with, and his earlier previous lover he bullied into having an abortion. Never mind that he engineered his exit from hospital last April to coincide with the Easter Monday resurrection, and announced his shitty Brexit deal on Christmas Eve.

His government is eroding democracy, undermining civic rights, and making this country a harsher and poorer place to live. I have not much skin in this, as I am not a Catholic, but to allow them to marry in their Cathedral is the act of terrible hypocrisy, when they had an opportunity to make a stand.

‘Baptism is a ceremony. It means squat diddly in later life.’

Well indeed. And by that token for non believers a church wedding is just a ceremony no different from a civil ceremony so why does it matter to non believers who gets married in a church?

I have not much skin in this, as I am not a Catholic, but to allow them to marry in their Cathedral is the act of terrible hypocrisy, when they had an opportunity to make a stand.

I don't think they could though, and if they did that would create a precedent where they could refuse to marry people for all sorts of subjective and political reasons. While many people dislike Boris Johnson, he is an elected head of state in a functioning democracy. It would be a bit odd for the Church to refuse to marry him simply because they didn't like his politics.

I do not for one moment think that Johnson takes Catholicism seriously, and I do think that , given his behaviour, it was graceless to get married in a Catholic church on the basis that his 25 year marriage to Marina Wheeler was not fully recognised. However, I also think that she is well shot of him.

@LibertyMole

‘Baptism is a ceremony. It means squat diddly in later life.’

Well indeed. And by that token for non believers a church wedding is just a ceremony no different from a civil ceremony so why does it matter to non believers who gets married in a church?

Obviously it matters to Mr and Mrs Johnson.

i don't think they could though, and if they did that would create a precedent where they could refuse to marry people for all sorts of subjective and political reasons.

They’ve been doing that for decades, to be fair.

Centuries..probably millennia.

...it was graceless to get married in a Catholic church on the basis that his 25 year marriage to Marina Wheeler was not fully recognised

It was fully recognised, and the RC church would not have married Boris and Carrie if he hadn't been legally divorced. The RC church is not saying this marriage never was. The issue was Johnson's flouting of the rules. His seriousness in entering the marriage is in question.

Didn't it do exactly that via the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s? Or am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing something.

One has no capacity to make such a grave vow as a child. So, he never actually agreed to become a member of the Catholic Church, if you really think about it.

Correct, hence Confirmation about 14 years later if you want to go through with it.

@ScrollingLeaves, yes, free will, without which all the rest of it is moot.

Catholics are obliged to maintain an informed conscience.

@mathanxiety probably missing some complicated interpretation of the rules that means the second Vatican counsel didn’t change any doctrine, or some such other nonsense.

Honestly, the contortions of apologetics, meaning one needs to be a Doctor of Divinity to understand it all: it’s all such complete and utter bollocks to any right-thinking person.

Correct, hence Confirmation about 14 years later if you want to go through with it.

Ok, Johnson wasn’t confirmed in the Catholic faith, though, so he presumably didn’t actually “want to go through with it”.

His seriousness in entering the marriage is in question.

I’m not criticising the RC church here, I am criticising Johnson.

I can follow through the logic of the argument and I accept that whether or not I believe the same things, they are being consistent.

The point is that Johnson clearly wasn’t serious about either Catholicism or his marriage vows, in any sense of the words, religious or secular. To then have the traditional white church wedding was bleurgh, and looks like exploitation of ecclesiastical law to get the right wedding aesthetic.

However I’m not marrying him and Marina should have shown him the door years ago. On the other hand I can judge his moral character as PM.

it’s all such complete and utter bollocks to any right-thinking person.

But other churches aren’t necessarily much better.

I can get married in my local C of E Church (if I weren’t already married), regardless of previous behaviour or religious affiliation, as long as I am marrying somebody of the opposite sex. The reason for that isn’t particularly logical. It all comes down to belief and church law.

mathanxiety I understand that the church recognise his first marriage as a civil marriage. If the Catholic Church had a habit of marrying people who were already married they would be breaking the law.

libertymole said:

“Johnson’s marriage was never two people joined by God because he already vowed to God that he would marry in the Catholic Church, hence he was not married in the eyes of God as far as the church is concerned.

Thus spiritually this is his first and only marriage and he is entitled to the sacrament of marriage.”

Therefore his previous marriage was not recognised as a spiritual marriage.

• “Johnson’s marriage was never two people joined by God because he already vowed to God that he would marry in the Catholic Church, hence he was not married in the eyes of God as far as the church is concerned.

Thus spiritually this is his first and only marriage and he is entitled to the sacrament of marriage.*

This is really just smoke and mirrors.

Yes, smoke and mirrors and casuistry. It reflects well on no one.

[quote Piglet89]@mathanxiety probably missing some complicated interpretation of the rules that means the second Vatican counsel didn’t change any doctrine, or some such other nonsense.

Honestly, the contortions of apologetics, meaning one needs to be a Doctor of Divinity to understand it all: it’s all such complete and utter bollocks to any right-thinking person.[/quote]
That's rather like saying physics must be bollocks because you need to know a lot of math to really understand it at the highest level.

Theology is a subset of philosophy, it should be no surprise that the people who do it at the highest level are trained in theology and philosophy.

The people who are experts in canon law are, typically , trained lawyers. Just like other forms of law.

The question of form in this is really not all that complicated.

From a Catholic perspective, there are two elements to marriage. There is the underlying "thing" the actually nature of the bond of marriage. Between two Christians this is considered to be a sacrament, but it's still a real, physical reality for non-Christians as well.

The canon law element is just the regulations around administering the whole thing. These are related to the underlying understanding but they can and do change over time. For example today a priest won't normally marry a couple who is not also legally married with the civil authorities, but that rule didn't make sense 500 years ago and didn't exist.

But these rules only apply to people who have been baptised Catholic or later joined the Catholic Church, in much the same way that the laws of a country you are not a citizen of don't apply to you. Two non-Catholics who marry according to civil law are not in breach of these kinds of rules as they don't apply to them, so it doesn't mean that their marriage is in question.

But a Catholic who breaches these rules, by say marrying in a registry office without permission, is like a person who has married without bothering to get a licence properly. The marriage is considered legally invalid in a very similar way. It's a technical distinction, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't matter, any more than not bothering to get a marriage licence doesn't matter when you want to do something like claim a death benefit.

Given that his previous wives didn't care to have a Catholic marriage I don't see why they would be bothered that the Catholic Church says that they failed to perform the marriage in the way that the canons required.
It's obviously true. It would be like someone saying they didn't believe in legal marriage and then complaining that the state didn't recognise cohabiting as the same.

That's rather like saying physics must be bollocks because you need to know a lot of math to really understand it at the highest level.

It’s totally distinguishable from that. When I say it’s “bollocks” what I mean is that it is laughable that there is such a complex and unclear human overlay on Christ’s teachings. Ambiguity like this can be bent and manipulated by human interpretation at will (and that’s what actually happens, as also happens with state law). Laws of physics are objective, evidenced truths - patently not the case with moral laws.

Being a lawyer myself, I fully appreciate that the only people who could really understand the complexities of Canon Law are, indeed, lawyers. But Canon law comprises the rules and ordinances governing the Catholic community. It’s supposedly a moral law that determines matters of faith and affects people’s lives in fundamental and important ways and it should be clearer and easier to understand by the ordinary person.

The policy behind much of it doesn’t make much sense, but that’s neither here nor there now I’ve used my common sense and decided to leave the Catholic faith (even if, officially, it won’t even let me leave).