Examining the Family in the Light of Marriage Annulment as a New Research Perspective

The aim of this article is to outline a new research perspective, allowing for an in-depth reflection on the condition of contemporary marriages and families. Of course, the problem itself is not new, but in order to analyse it, we propose to adopt a perspective which has not been present in the literature so far and which will consist in analysing the condition of the institution of marriage through the prism of the process of declaring a marriage null and void, i.e., the canonical procedure in force in the Catholic Church. The proposed research perspective is based on an interdisciplinary approach, taking into account the broad context in which, in our opinion, the functioning of the contemporary institution of marriage should be considered. In this approach we try to integrate sociological and demographic premises and inspirations with legal, theological and canonical premises, which is a significant novelty. The integration of these approaches will make it possible to consider the problem of the break-up of the marital bond in a different way than has been presented so far. Thanks to this, it is possible to make a comprehensive diagnosis of the situation of marriages in moments of crisis and to capture those aspects of spiritual and social life which have not yet been taken into account in the research, and which play a particularly important role in initiating proceedings to declare a marriage null and void.