<p>What then was Ms. Rauch’s motivation for seeking a reversal of the annulment by appealing all the way to the Vatican?</p>
<p>OK I’m not Catholic, and I’m not going to argue about the quirkiness of getting your marriage annulled, whatever the grounds. But people, really…</p>
<p>I’ve been a mom for too many years- I’ve heard the “but so-and-so did it” argument too many times, I guess.</p>
<p>Can you come up with anything better???</p>
<p>anger, revenge, pride, true religious beliefs, pressure, proving a point, figures to use the church, etc</p>
<p>and if it was annulled the first time, and then they changed their minds…which is the REAL desicion by God? who is to say…</p>
<p>Is this any of our business? 
</p>
<p>no, but someone brought it up who needed to be informed of the difference between law, church “law”, divorce, annulment and the like</p>
<p>It’s only the business of people who are electing legislators or justices, or whatever, to know what kind of people they are electing. To many people, character is the most important trait- the rest resides in trusting the person to represent the people’s best interest. </p>
<p>If someone proves that they are a gamer of the system, or they take advantage of power for their own personal means, that is obviously something the electorate wants to know.</p>
<p>Well, if we use those standards, we’re pretty much left with no candidates for president in '08. :p</p>
<p>hh, you may be right but that doesn’t make it right.
The reason why we don’t have those people is that they weren’t willing to make the choices it took long ago to get them to that place (pres '08). Sad.</p>
<p>How can the official Catholic Church be so good in some ways and yet so rotten in others?</p>
<p>“Well, if we use those standards, we’re pretty much left with no candidates for president in '08.”</p>
<p>There are some who are FAR more sleezy than others. To say they’re all the same is a copout. None of them (including the other Republicans) have come close to the personal sleaziness of Rudy and Newt.</p>
<p>Do you really want a President who rails against welfare cheats, but leaves seriously ill wives (twice), and then reduces his own kids to paupery and refuses to pay child support? Or one whose standard of personal sexual behavior is so low that a judge rules he is unqualified to have unsupervised visits with his own daughter? Maybe that’s the standard for the Party of Appeasement and Family Values, but I think it fair to expect more (and, in most of the other candidates, Democratic or Republican, you actually get it.)</p>
<p>For those that think the annulment thing is the churches way to protect the children, etc:</p>
<p>By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 22, 5:41 PM ET
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - Advocates for victims of abuse by Catholic clergy on Friday urged presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to fire a priest who was suspended from the church and then hired by the ex-mayor’s security consulting business.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Giuliani said the firm had no plans to fire Monsignor Alan Placa.</p>
<p>Placa, a childhood friend of Giuliani’s, has defended himself for years over allegations in a 2003 Suffolk County grand jury report that detailed decades-old abuses by priests in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y.</p>
<p>None of the priests were ever prosecuted or even identified because statutes of limitations had expired long before the district attorney’s investigation. Days after the report, Placa acknowledged in an interview with The New York Times that he was implicated in the grand jury report but he denied that he had ever abused children.</p>
<p>“There’s ample evidence showing that Placa consistently protected predators, shrewdly deceived victims, and covered up horrific clergy sex crimes,” said a statement from David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. SNAP also contends that he abused children.</p>
<p>Placa was suspended from his duties as a priest in June 2002 after the abuse allegations surfaced. A lawyer, he currently works as a consultant for Giuliani Partners.</p>
<p>Placa was unavailable for comment Friday, said company spokeswoman Sunny Mindel. She said Giuliani was standing by his childhood friend.</p>
<p>“The former mayor believes that Alan Placa has been unjustly accused,” she said.</p>
<p>SNAP called for Giuliani to fire Placa following the publication of a Salon profile of the cleric. In the story, the online magazine quotes Richard Tollner, who testified before the Suffolk County grand jury and claimed he had been abused by Placa. Tollner told the magazine Placa molested him and at least two others, but school authorities did nothing when they were told about it.</p>
<p>Placa and Giuliani have been friends since their days together at Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. After he was suspended, Placa received special permission to officiate at the funeral of the former mayor’s mother, Helen, in 2002. He also baptized both of Giuliani’s children.</p>
<p>“You do seem to be intent on pointing out that Ms. Rauch somehow deserved the treatment she received, which seems deplorable to me.”</p>
<p>First, I’m honestly not quite sure what you mean by the treatment she received. As far as I know–maybe you have inside knowlege, but I don’t-- the only treatment she received from Mr. Kennedy was that after they divorced he wanted to marry someone else and wanted to do it in the Catholic Church. He began annulment proceedings and that in and of itself angered her. She did not want her marriage annulled and felt very strongly about that. I don’t blame her in the least—but I don’t think the fact that he sought an annulment because his second wife wanted to be able to be married in her faith is “deplorable.”</p>
<p>But in any event, I am not presuming to judge Ms. Rausch. If that’s the way it came across, that wasn’t my intent. I’m not saying that Mr. Kennedy was right and she should have commuted back and forth to DC with twin babies every week and left them with a nanny while she was out speaking to constituents or eating rubber chicken at fund-raising dinners. I am saying that issues like whether the wife will work at a full time job after children are born, how long she will stay at home, the extent to which the wife of a politician and his children will be involved in his campaigns, what Faith the children will be raised in, etc. are issues that should be discussed before a couple marries. The fact that some issues which to me at least seem ones that would obviously face them were not discussed is unfortunate. The fact that they were not discussed–according to what I recall of Ms. Rausch’s statements–is her fault AND his fault. Neither of them is more at fault that the other, as far as I know.</p>
<p>Put the Kennedys to one side for a moment. Assume that we have a regular non-famous couple. The wife has a very successful career as a CPA. The husband is a struggling actor. They decide they want a child and have one. AFTER the child is born, they discuss who will take care of the infant for the FIRST time. They disagree. The wife says she wants to be a stay at home mother. The husband says that’s insane–they can’t possibly live on his earnings. She says he’s right–that’s why he has to quit acting and get a regular job. She also says she’d always assumed that if they had children she would stay at home with them and he would do what he had to do work wise to make that possible. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t you think that both husband and wife were a trifle foolish not to discuss these issues before they married or at least before having children? And if those issues lead to the end of this marriage because the husband was unwilling to give up his acting career, would you say that he left her because he “got bored with her?”</p>
<p>Obviously, neither you nor I know what really caused this marriage to fail. But Ms. Rausch has said and written publicly as to why she thinks it failed. I believe her story.</p>
<p>And a marriage tribunal is not a US court of law. It is, however, very much a court of law–it’s just that Canon Law governs. If Ms. Rausch was not informed of the proceeding and given a chance to introduce evidence in opposition to Mr. Kennedy’s petition for an annulment–and it is my understanding that is her claim–then, yes, an annulment would be reversed on appeal. The appellate panel wouldn’t need to consider evidence about any issue other than whether Ms. Rausch was contacted and invited,so to speak, to participate and introduce evidence. </p>
<p>If you don’t believe me, I would suggest that you discuss this issue with a cannon lawyer.</p>
<p>Rudy married his third or fourth cousin–I forget which—not first. NY state law bars you from marrying anyone who is a second cousin or more closely related. Canon law says you cannot marry anyone who is a fourth cousin or more closely related. (If Rudy had married his first cousin, he could have gotten a civil annulment and not have had to go through divorce proceedings.)</p>
<p>The “beauty” of this ground is that all Rudy had to prove is that he and Regina were third or fourth cousins. Once he established that, nothing else mattered. Even if Regina had wanted to fight the annulment–I’ve never heard that she did–she couldn’t have blocked it.</p>
<p>While I think Rudy thinks with the wrong end, I’m more turned off by his reversals on major issues. As mayor of NYC, he was every bit as pro gun control as Mike Bloomberg is now. Now, he’s opposed. He flip-flopped on abortion and the flying of the Confederate flag too. Rudy has no political compass. “Survey says” most registered Republicans have X position, and X is Rudy’s position.</p>
<p>Sorry. We are both wrong. Regina Perugi was his SECOND cousin. After 14 years, the sleazeball decides to “get religion” and annuls as if it never existed. </p>
<p>(To be honest, I wouldn’t care if it was a divorce or an annulment; but to be honest when it comes to matters of sex, Rudy is rather craven. The annulment didn’t come at taxpayer expense, unlike his later squeeze, with his 8-year-old daughter in the house. To his credit, he eventually abandoned the Mayor’s Mansion and moved in with his two gay friends. Must have been a “broadening” experience.)</p>
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<p>Are you married? I ask this in a non-confrontational way.</p>
<p>The one true thing about marriage is that it changes over time. People change, situations change, finances change – everything changes. After almost 27 years of marriage, I can tell you that neither my husband nor I are the same people we were in 1980. We DID go through all the discussions you just outlined regarding kids. We planned that we would both work in our promising careers, and would just “hire a babysitter” for whatever kids we had. HA! The best laid plans of mice and men change when children enter the equation. The love affair between a mother and her baby has a life of its own.</p>
<p>So for the past 17 years, I’ve been primarily a SAHM, although my income would probably match my husband’s if I had continued to work. So we live on much less than we could have. This was not the plan BEFORE we had kids, but it’s what worked best for us.</p>
<p>What’s the point, you may ask? My point is that a marriage commitment should override all the vagaries that occur in life. You seem to describe marriage as a purely contractual agreement – she agrees to this, he agrees to that. It just doesn’t work that way, imo.</p>
<p>I would not vote for Newt for president, regardless of his family life. As for the Rudy soap opera, I didn’t follow it at the time. Perhaps I will do some research on it, although if he’s the candidate I’m sure Hillary’s War Room will get the work done for me, so maybe I won’t waste my time. I have no doubt it will get very, very ugly–cgm will cover the reporting in that area for cc. :)</p>
<p>From a NYT article of 1997 </p>
<p>Regina Peruggi had not accompanied her husband to Washington. In 1982, Mr. Giuliani filed for a legal separation and, within a year, divorce. After 14 years, the marriage would also be erased in the eyes of the church through annulment.</p>
<p>The grounds for annulment, the Mayor said, involved the couple’s unintended failure to obtain a dispensation – necessary at the time for ‘‘second cousins once removed’’ to marry.</p>
<p>‘‘This has been painted as, well, something sneaky,’’ Mr. Giuliani said. ‘‘But I was under the impression that we were third cousins because I never calculated the lines of consanguinity. I can’t tell you what Gina thought. I don’t think we ever discussed it in any great detail.’’</p>
<p>After his divorce, the Mayor said, he inquired about a possible annulment to Alan Placa, his longtime friend, who had entered the priesthood.</p>
<p>''He said, ‘You were related, you must have gotten a dispensation,’ ‘’ Mr. Giuliani remembered. ''I said: ‘Alan, I don’t recall doing that. I don’t recall realizing that I had to get one.’ He said, ‘Well, you know, the priest may have gone ahead and done it anyway’ ‘’ because – as church experts confirm – approval would have been routine.</p>
<p>But a search through church records found none of the required paperwork, said the Mayor, who, like his former wife, had previously refused to discuss the matter. Ms. Peruggi, also a person of accomplishment, has been the president of Marymount Manhattan College since 1990.</p>
<p>Divorce and annulment had become matters of immediacy for Mr. Giuliani. In early 1982, a friend had met Donna Hanover, a divorced Miami newscaster, and later played matchmaker.</p>
<p>Mr. Giuliani ordered his secretary to phone her, arranging not a date but an interview. The couple then began a two-month courtship before Mr. Giuliani proposed, at Walt Disney World.</p>
<p>On April 15, 1984, Father Placa presided at their church wedding. </p>
<p><a href=“http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402E4D61E3FF93AA25753C1A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=6[/url]”>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402E4D61E3FF93AA25753C1A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=6</a></p>
<p>Sheila’s book was compelling. I couldn’t put it down. She was 4 years ahead of me at our small womens’ college where apparently she’s now teaching. I wrote her after I read the book (years ago) and she said she was still waiting to hear of her Vatican appeal. I can’t imagine fighting the Kennedys over this. She’s got guts.</p>
<p>I personally find the whole annulment thing absurd…and hypocritical on all sides…the church has granted annulments ALL the time… but decided in this case to give a warning out to Catholics that it will get more difficult</p>
<p>This Vatican decision was made not just for this couple, it was a symbol of a much broader approach to going to the more fundamentalist form of the church</p>
<p>Look around you, 75% of Catholic marriages that ended in divroce have been annulled, that is a pretty high number, this reversal was to make a point, and a very public one, that the church is going to get stricter in that regard</p>
<p>that 75%, is the church saying that 75% of those that wanted an annulment, that ALL of those marriages were invalid in their eyes…wow…</p>
<p>I think this will backlash on the Vatican, and people will just not care anymore whether they got an annulment and will marry outside the church when they remarry and thus leave te church…just a hunch</p>
<p>and while many claim to be Catholic, many Catholics ignore much of church doctrine- and stll take communion…this is gonna be interesting</p>
<p>think about it, if 75% were annulled, why was THIS one reversed…hmmm…</p>