Irregular Marriages and the Apostolic Constitution

Article 6.2 of the Apostolic Constitution states that those "...who are in irregular marriage situations may not be accepted for Holy Orders in the Ordinariate." While this may sound like it puts the kibosh on certain divorced and remarried Anglican clergy wishing to take part in this, I would not be so quick to make that judgement. While there are indeed divorced and remarried Anglican clergy, most have no doubt had annulments, which declares that a sacramental marriage never existed - hence they were never "married" before. The presumption of course is that those annulments were authentic and accurately done in the first place.

Interestingly, the same situation of divorced and remarried clergy exists in the Roman Church. When I was in seminary I had a classmate (a Roman Catholic seminarian) who was divorced. He said "divorced" - I think he meant that he was granted an annulment. He obviously had to be granted an annulment, because when one is ordained in a Roman Catholic priest he "marries" the Church, so he can't at the same time be married to another woman.