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Product Description
In 1993, Sheila Rauch Kennedy received a letter from the Boston Catholic Archdiocese announcing that her former husband, Congressman Joseph Kennedy, was seeking an annulment of their marriage. If the Church granted the annulment, the marriage, which had lasted twelve years, would be rendered nonexistent -- not simply ended, as was stated in the divorce decree, but invalid from the start. And their two sons would be regarded as children of an unsanctified union. Joseph Kennedy needed the annulment to remarry within the Church, and he encouraged his ex-wife to ignore the details. Stunned by the hypocrisy of the process and the betrayal of trust it involved, Sheila Rauch Kennedy was determined to defend the legitimacy of her former marriage.
Shattered Faith is the fascinating chronicle of that struggle, and of what Kennedy uncovered about the uses and frequency of annulments in the United States. Interweaving her own experiences with those of other women whose trust in the Church was shattered by annulment, she tells a story that will surprise, anger, and move readers of every faith.
Amazon.com Review
Shattered Faith is a fascinating look at divorce within religion. The Roman Catholic Church still does not recognize divorce. Instead it resolves a couple's incompatibility by declaring a marriage illegitimate from the outset. While divorce ends a marriage, annulment erases it--a distinction not lost on a Sheila Rauch Kennedy and many other women with similar experiences. When Rauch Kennedy is forced into annulment proceedings by an ex-husband who seeks to prove that their marriage was based on false presumptions and therefore never really existed, what can she do? Despite the high profiles of the protagonists, this is a down-to-earth account of a woman's attempt to maintain her sense of worth in the face of a church bureaucracy blinded by pride and incapable of compassion.
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