Elena 
A couple of years ago I read Shattered Faith
News today is that they upheld her appeal, the marriage is NOT annulled and Joseph Kennedy and his new wife are not married in the eyes of the church.
Some more links on the topic:
The annulment was the subject of Rauch’s 1997 book Shattered Faith, which lambasted her ex-husband and was severely critical of the Catholic Church’s proceedings, which made the marriage (which had produced twin boys) null and void in the eyes of the church. Rauch argued that Kennedy was able to unilaterally “cancel” nearly 12 years of marriage because of his clan’s influence in the church. Kennedy argued at the time that the annulment was the right thing to do in religious terms. Few observers thought the appeal to Rome by Rauch, an Episcopalian, had a chance against the well-connected Kennedy. With women’s groups loudly on Rauch’s side, the controversy may have contributed to Kennedy’s decision to give up his plans to seek re-election to Congress in 1998.
Reached by TIME in her Massachusetts home on Tuesday, Rauch said that she had just recently been informed by Boston Archdiocese officials of her successful appeal. “I am very pleased,” she told TIME. “There was a real marriage. It was a marriage that failed, but as grown-ups we need to take responsibility for that. The [annulment] process was dishonest, and it was important to stand up and say that.” But Rauch says she worries that the practice, particularly in the U.S., of giving what she called “easy annulments” will continue. “They don’t give people a fair defense. The Boston Archdiocese doesn’t even tell you that you can appeal to Rome.” Reached by TIME, Kennedy’s office provided no reaction from the former congressman.
Erroneously dubbed “Catholic divorce,” an annulment in fact holds that a failed marriage was never valid in the eyes of the Church. With divorce strictly prohibited in Catholicism, annulments allow Catholics to remarry before a priest and continue receiving the sacraments. Several years after his 1991 civil divorce to Rauch, Kennedy obtained an annulment from a Church tribunal in Massachusetts so he could have a Church ceremony with Kelly. The couple had already been married in a 1993 civil ceremony, but needed the Roma Rota appeals tribunal at the Vatican to uphold the Massachusetts annulment verdict before they could be married by a priest. Now with Rauch’s successful appeal, that cannot happen, unless Kennedy wins a counter-appeal.
The Roma Rota’s ruling, written in Latin, was reached in 2005, and had been kept secret while the official written notice was being prepared, said a source in Rome familiar with the case. Rauch’s successful appeal effectively reinstates the Kennedy-Rauch marriage in the eyes of the Vatican. The case once again highlights this unique Catholic Church proceeding. Some 75% of annulments each year are from the United States, where there are an estimated 8 million divorced and remarried Catholics. The subject came up in the 2004 presidential campaign after word spread that John Kerry had obtained an annulment of his first marriage. Another prominent Catholic who has had a marriage annulled is former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is now running for the Republican Presidential nomination.
At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI has indicated that he wants to streamline the Roma Rota to respond to the desire of divorced Catholics to stay inside the Church. But there is also concern that some Catholics, particularly in the U.S., abuse the practice. “People think it’s their right,” says one Rome-based canon lawyer. He adds sternly,”It’s not a right.”
Giving hope to Bai MacFarlaneWESTLAKE, OH, JUNE 20, 2007 – Time magazine announced yesterday that Sheila Rauch Kennedy was able to successfully defend her marriage with the intervention of the Roman Rota, against the Boston Archdiocese Catholic Tribunal. The Boston Tribunal had mistakenly decided that her marriage was invalid making her husband free to remarry. Sheila stated, “The [annulment] process was dishonest, and it was important to stand up and say that.” Another wife, Bai Macfarlane of Cleveland, Ohio, also has a case pending at the Roman Rota in which she is seeking the intervention of the Vatican and challenging a US Catholic Tribunal’s failure to uphold marriage, but Mrs. Macfarlane is asking the Church to uphold it’s own canon law regarding separation and divorce, not remarriage and annulment. In May of 2004, Mrs. Macfarlane had asked the Cleveland Tribunal for an investigation of her marriage praying that the Church would advise her husband that he never had a licit reason to abandon her to seek a civil no-fault divorce. According to the Catholic code of canon law, there are limited reasons to separate from one’s spouse (can 1151-1155). Those who agree to marry following canon law can never seek a civil separation or divorce unless it is foreseen that the civil judgments would not be contrary to divine law (canon 1692). Before every Catholic exchange of vows, both parents promise to raise children according to the law of Christ and his Church (Rite of Marriage sec. 59). Mrs. Macfarlane is defending her children against her husband’s requested no-fault divorce, in which children are forcibly separated from the dedicated spouse much, or most of the time; children and the dedicated spouse are financially devastated because they lose the benefit of two parents working together to maintain one household for life; and the dedicated spouse who loses the children is typically forced to pay for the upbringing of his own children with whom he is not even allowed to live. Macfarlane states, “Anyone with a heart, would recognize that this routine is contrary to divine law.” When Mrs. Macfarlane asked for the Tribunal’s intervention in May of 2004, the Cleveland diocese would not even accept her petition, and she, like Sheila Rauch Kennedy appealed to Rome for help. In January of 2005 the Roman Rota accepted her case, and on May 9th, 2007 her advocate submitted a written argument on her behalf. Way to go ladies!
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