cormacburke.me.ke

[English version: Studia canonica 32 (1998), pp. 243-252]

I. The Facts

II. The Law

[English version: Studia canonica 32 (1998), pp. 239-243]

I. The Facts

1.         Five years after their first meeting, followed by an acquaintance and engagement marked by a very harmonious relationship, the parties in this case married in April 1975. She was then nineteen years old, he a year older. Despite the absence of children due to medical difficulties on her part, their married life for at least ten years was serene and happy. Then he got involved with another women, and after two years (i.e. in 1987) left his wife. This was an immense blow to her; in her sorrow she did everything possible to bring about a reconciliation; but to no effect.

I. The Facts

1.         When Carole, an Australian Catholic, and Dietmar, a German Lutheran, first met in 1974, the girl was not attracted to him. On their second meeting however in Sept. 1976, her feelings changed, perhaps also because he had gone down very well with her father. The two then began to go together, starting to have sexual relations from early in 1977. They were engaged at the end of that year; and after a dispensation from the impediment of mixed religion, were married in August 1978 in Los Angeles, California. Their married life seemed to go wrong from the start; not even the birth of a daughter after two and a half years, helped to improve the situation. They were civilly divorced in 1983.