Power to Dissolve: Lawyers and Marriages in the Courts of the Roman Curia

In his introduction to this compelling study, Mr. Noonan writes that Power to Dissolve "looks to the role of the law within a religion founded on commandments of love; it looks to the place of love in an institution molded by law. Jurisprudentially, it is the examination of a legal system, arguably the oldest and certainly the most universal in the world. Theologically, it is an investigation of the contents of Christian marriage."

Six principal case studies dramatically illustrate the legal process through which Catholic petitioners have sought papal annulment of their marriages. Spanning the years from 1653 to the present, ranging geographically from the Old World to the New, involving such dissimilar characters as Charles, Duke of Lorraine, and his Duchess Nicole, Governor Parkhurst of Maine, and the Rospigliosi of Rome, they resulted in a series of often surprising decisions which help illuminate the history and meaning of marriage in Western society, while suggesting lines of future development.

Power to Dissolve has three themes: the theory of marriage as it is fashioned by the interplay of theology and society; the policy of the Roman Curia as it balances the demands of theory and the needs of administration; and the impact of theory and policy on individual persons. In focus, it is a book about the persons in whom the law lives - the married couples themselves, their lovers, their lawyers, and their judges.

This intriguing analysis is strengthened by the author's ability to obtain access to the files of the Roman Rota, the records of the Congregation of the Council, and the contents of the Secret Archives of the Vatican. His intensive examination of this information and other such raw material of litigation as the briefs of the parties' own advocates and interoffice correspondence within the Curia itself has enabled him to form this cogent account of a legal system at work.