SOURCES OF SUPPORT

Initiatives to care for Catholics who have experienced the breakdown of a marriage include counselling, peer support groups, bereavement support for children of separation and divorce and the annulment process.

Individuals as well as couples can approach Marriage Care for counselling. Rainbows is a peer-support programme for children to help them cope with the loss of a parent through death, marital breakdown or imprisonment. For some Catholics the opportunity to review their marriage through the annulment process can be very healing. There are of course other services available locally which diocesan coordinators of family ministry would be able to signpost.

NBCW GUIDE TO THE ANNULMENT PROCESS

In January 2018 the National Board of Catholic Women (NBCW) published a revised 4th Edition of their Guide to the Annulment Process. First issued in 1998, the Guide seeks to de-mystify the annulment process, making it easier to understand, and hopefully less stressful. The 4th Edition also takes into account Pope Francis' 2015 Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus, ‘The Gentle Judge, our Lord Jesus, the Shepherd of Souls’.

In his foreword to the 4th Edition, Bishop Peter Doyle, Chair of the Bishops’ Committee for Marriage and Family Life, commends the Guide as,‘a resource to assist all those in our communities whose marriages have failed, and those accompanying them; and restore to them, with the mercy of God, hope and confidence on the journey of faith in the light of the Gospel.’