by Edward N. Peters

About the author: Edward N. Peters directs the Office for Canonical Affairs for the Diocese of San Diego and is a judge on the diocesan and appellate tribunals.

New annulment petitions are assigned by our judicial vicar to the tribunal judges on the first day of the month. Retrieving mine from the shelf, I know before cracking a file that at least one-fourth of my cases will involve a teen-age petitioner or respondent. In many months that percentage will exceed one-third, and in a significant number of all cases both the petitioner and respondent will have been teen-agers at the time of their wedding. That teen-age marriages are markedly prone to failure is not surprising. That modern canon law still considers a 14-year-old ready for marriage is.

Raising the Minimum Age for Marriage

Until...