The appointment of Maria Montserrat “Montse” Alvarado, a 39-year-old single lay woman, as the new prefectress of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication is not just a revolutionary move that upends the divinely established roles of men and women in Church leadership. It brings to light some of the less obvious aspects of the Vatican II coup that have been wreaking havoc for decades.
Integrity Magazine’s exposé on Alvarado uncovered parts of her background that others in mainstream Catholic media ignored, including her marital history. In April 2024, during an interview with Renewal Ministries, Alvarado revealed “I have a failed marriage behind me. I say that often to remind people that nothing is going to be perfect … My sister said ‘praise God for that moment in your life … because you’re finally relatable.’”
Alvarado elaborated on her “relatable-ness” in a March 2025 interview with the A Reason for Hope Podcast,
“I’m not married, but I’m annulled in the Church, and I think it’s important to talk about that too for people to realize that annulment brings you closer to the Church and closer to Christ,” she said.
“A lot of people think that divorce and annulment necessarily separate you from the Church; those are opportunities to really walk into the heart of Christ and let him heal whatever was broken in that relationship. The annulment process for me … was a healing ministry; one that allowed me to encounter my own failings with courage with compassion with joy.”
Alvarado continued: “A lot of people say the annulment — it’s judgy, it’s uncomfortable. No, it’s your mother loving you … you could learn from it so that the next time that you do it [get married] you do it informed and capable of loving and giving yourself as a gift to the other person.”
“I truly think annulment is one the best kept secrets of the Church,” she added. “I would do it again. I learned so much about how much He [Christ] loves me. I would do it again. I’d make that mistake again just to rediscover how He loves me.”
A stunning admission
What Ms. Alvarado seems to be saying is that annulments — which were once understood to be the outcome of a dispassionate, objective legal process — provide the means for an emotionally satisfying rationalization for separating from a spouse after making a “mistake.”
She also seems to be of the opinion that an annulment is not a “judgy” process but an example of a mother loving you so that the next time you do decide to get married, you are more informed.
Alvarado further admits that the process was so spiritually uplifting that she would “do it again.”
Do what again, exactly? Marry the wrong man just to be able to experience the consolation of the annulment process?
This is striking: a future prefect of the Catholic Church who is set to oversee the Church’s communications and public messaging to billions worldwide does not appear to understand the true nature of annulments. It is especially worrying that neither interviewer challenged Alvarado’s troubling views. Instead, both praised her as a beautiful witness — a perfect illustration of the state of Catholic media, of which Alvarado has risen to the top.
An annulment crisis or a blessing?
Authentic Catholic teaching on annulments is straightforward. An annulment is a colloquial way of referring to obtaining a declaration of nullity, which, as a legal judgment, is morally neutral. Indeed, because the Church requires certain minimal requirements for a valid marriage to be established, it makes sense that she would provide tribunals to examine cases where those conditions may not have been met. It is a “very judgy” process — and it needs to be.
An annulment is a formal determination made by the competent ecclesiastical authority, in accordance with canon law, that a marriage was never validly contracted between a man and a woman. This determination has massive implications for the material well-being of the couple, their children, the community in which they live, and the eternal souls of all involved.
The primary issue is not whether there is a canonical legal process that exists to make these determinations; the problem is what criteria are being used to grant these declarations of nullity.
According to author John Clark, the Catholic Church in America “has gone from 338 annulments in 1968 to over 72,000 annulments initiated in 1989 to over 24,000 initiated in 2014 — the last number being perhaps the most chilling since it reflects a massive drop in Catholic marriages. Years ago, Robert Vasoli noted — as have many others — that with ‘just 6% of the world’s Catholics,’ American tribunals dole out nearly 75% of the worldwide annulments.” 1
In a 2011 article for the Catholic World Report, J.J. Ziegler related that “Of the 27,654 declarations of nullity granted in the US by the ordinary process, 99.6 percent were granted for reasons of defect of consent — the most oft-criticized grounds for annulment.”
Should these numbers, which suggest Catholic couples are simply taking advantage of the annulment process, elicit feelings of “joy” and excitement? Of course not. The annulment explosion in the Church since Vatican II has been an unmitigated disaster for families and the Church’s reputation as a defender of the marital bond. For each annulment granted, a family — often with children — is broken up, allowing the parents to re-marry. Ultimately, there is no significant difference between Catholic annulments in the twenty-first century and no-fault civil divorces. This was not always the case.
The revolutionary roots of modern annulments
I do not necessarily blame Ms. Alvarado for her ignorance. She is a product of her environment. She is simply sanitizing and making more acceptable the doctrinal revolution that was institutionalized at Vatican II.
The Church’s teachings on marriage are rooted in Holy Scripture and Tradition, dating back to Adam and Eve. Our starting point will be Pope Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, On Christian Marriage. This encyclical clearly summarizes the Church’s teachings on the ends or purposes of marriage.
Citing the 1917 Code of Canon Law in effect at the time, Pius XI teaches that “the primary end of marriage is the procreation and the education of children.” His Holiness also acknowledges that there are other “secondary” ends of marriage, such as “mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”
In other words, Pius XI does not simply mention other ends of marriage exist, but goes out of his way to make it clear that there is a hierarchy of ends, and that all other ends of marriage are subordinated to the primary end, which is the conception and education of children.
The universally respected theologian Ludwig Ott confirmed this understanding of the hierarchy of ends in his famous Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma in 1954. According to Ott, the primary purpose of marriage is “the generation and bringing up of offspring. The secondary purpose is mutual help and the morally regulated satisfaction of the sex urge.”
The Dispatch
This is considered sententia certa — theologically certain — although not explicitly defined by the Church as a dogma. It is nevertheless considered Church doctrine and must be believed.
As with so many other points of doctrine, this hierarchy of ends within marriage came under attack at Vatican II. According to Gaudium et spes, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in the section dedicated to “Fostering the Nobility of Marriage and the Family,” it reads:
“By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown. Thus a man and a woman, who by their compact of conjugal love “are no longer two, but one flesh” (Matt. 19:ff), render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions. Through this union they experience the meaning of their oneness and attain to it with growing perfection day by day. As a mutual gift of two persons, this intimate union and the good of the children impose total fidelity on the spouses and argue for an unbreakable oneness between them.” (emphasis added)
There is no reference here whatsoever to the primary and secondary ends of marriage. Gaudium et spes goes out of its way to avoid them while conflating procreation with “intimate union” and “mutual gift” that leads to “perfection” of the couple.
Without saying so directly, Vatican II reverses the purpose and hierarchy of marriage. That break with the Church’s teaching on marriage naturally led to major and equally harmful changes in canon law.
As discussed above, Pope Pius XI relied on the 1917 Code of Canon law in his 1930 encyclical on marriage. According to the Code of Canon Law of 1917, “Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which each party gives and accepts perpetual and exclusive rights to the body, for those actions that are of themselves suitable for the generation of children.” 2
This canon defines what a couple consents to when contracting marriage. That is, marriage is a permanent (perpetual) contract made with only one person (exclusive) for the exchange of conjugal rights (rights to the body) for the purpose of procreation (generation of children.)
This definition of matrimonial consent corresponds perfectly to the Church’s doctrine on the primary purpose of marriage, which is the procreation and education of children. There is nothing in this definition about “spousal love,” “gift of self,” or “perfection of the couple.”
Now, compare that with the modern version of the marital consent canon from the 1983 Code “Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which a man and a woman mutually give and accept each other through an irrevocable covenant in order to establish marriage.” 3
One can still discern the permanence (irrevocable) and exclusive (a man and a woman) nature of the matrimonial consent, but noticeably missing from this new language is an exchange of bodily rights for the generation of children.
Instead of exchanging rights over the body for acts suitable to the generation of children, spouses must consent to mutually give and accept each other. This new definition of consent for purposes of the marriage contract reflects the doctrinal inversion of the ends of marriage as we saw occur at Vatican II. The 1983 Code reflects the elimination of the hierarchy of the ends of marriage, and in fact, replaces the exchange of bodily rights with the exchange of a mutual gift of the self.
Lack of consent becomes ubiquitous
The new canonical definition of marital consent is not simply an inaccurate reflection of true Catholic doctrine, but serves as a major attack on the institution of marriage itself because it imposes a requirement on the marriage contract that no one can agree to with any certainty. Now, how does one mutually consent to “give and accept each other?” And what does that mean?
The 1983 Code sought to explain what a defect in consent would look like. In Canon 1095, for example, it states that “the following are incapable of contracting marriage:
- those who lack the sufficient use of reason;
- those who suffer from a grave defect of discretion of judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and duties mutually to be handed over and accepted; and
- those who are not able to assume the essential obligations of marriage for causes of a psychic nature.”
For those seeking an annulment, it is all too easy to argue that a spouse suffered a defect in discretion concerning the duties mutually to be handed over, or that psychological capacity was lacking because he or she did not sufficiently understand “mutual gift” or could not fully give himself or herself as a gift.
The concept of “mutual gift” as the object of matrimonial consent is both too broad and too narrow to have any legal meaning that a couple could possibly agree to. It is too broad because “mutual gift” could mean absolutely anything: emotional feelings, washing each other’s dirty dishes, or sharing chores around the house. Perhaps Tom wasn’t upholding his marital duties by not taking out the trash and rudely expecting Mary to do all the vacuuming.
At the same time, “mutual gift” is too narrow because it doesn’t specifically address rights over the body, unlike how the 1917 Code clarifies. Maybe Tom wants as many children as possible, but Mary wants to pursue a career, and so she withholds the marital debt? If Tom insists that he has a right over Mary’s body for the purpose of conceiving babies, is that a reason for an annulment if their disagreement is irreconcilable?
All of this leads to a completely unworkable definition of the object of consent in marriage, which necessarily opens the door to finding any reason as a basis for an annulment.
Annulments become Catholic divorce
Although it is a legitimate legal process within the Catholic Church designed to determine whether parties to a putative marriage consented freely to its obligations, the annulment process has been distorted into nothing more than a code word — a wink and a nod, if you will — that is used to justify what amounts to Catholic divorce.
The sad statistics reflecting the breakdown in Catholic marriages point to this conclusion. More importantly, the understanding and attitude of Catholics about marriage and annulments betray this reality as well.
Montse Alvarado is a perfect example of how this abandonment of Catholic doctrine and of a true understanding of marriage manifests itself in real life. When she speaks of having a “failed marriage behind me,” and of “something going wrong” in marriage, as well as learning from mistakes so that in the future one will be “capable of loving” and “giving of the self,” Alvarado reveals what the rest of the world has observed and faithful Catholics are afraid to admit.
She reveals what many have observed since Vatican II and its codification in the 1983 Code of Canon Law: namely, that annulments now function as a way for Catholic couples to dissolve what should be an indissoluble marriage bond — not because of a technical impediment (such as consanguinity or a basic lack of understanding about exchanging bodily rights at the time of consent), but because new circumstances arose after the wedding that led one or both spouses to believe they chose the wrong partner and want the ability to have a fresh start and contract marriage with someone else.
One of the most common grounds for civil divorce in the United States today is “irreconcilable differences.” Under a no-fault legal system, neither spouse needs to prove the other spouse was to blame for the breakdown of the marriage. If one simply feels they have fallen out of love, or cannot get along with the other spouse for whatever reason, a civil divorce is granted.
The annulment process has now become what civil divorce has become in the secular sphere. This sad state of affairs was entirely foreseeable once the hierarchy abandoned Church teaching on the primary purpose of marriage at Vatican II. The outcome was inevitable.
If Ms. Alvarado truly desires to become closer to Jesus Christ, as she professes she does, she should consider using her position of authority and power that Leo XIV granted to her in the communication department and publicly proclaim the Church’s true understanding of the nature of marriage and the marital contract.
After all, it is Truth, not annulments, that will ultimately set you free.
