Detroit native Msgr. Robert Sable serves Vatican legal system on Roman Rota

ROME, Italy — The more things change, the more everything stays the same.

With recent news about Pope Francis’ changes to the Catholic Church annulment process, streamlining the automatic review system of an affirmative decision in order to reduce backlog, critics have questioned if the reforms reflect a radical change in the Catholic Church.

Msgr. Robert Sable, a Detroit native who attended from Cardinal Mooney Latin School before graduating from Sacred Heart Seminary College in 1969, currently works in the Vatican on the Roman Rota, the highest judicial court of appeal in the Catholic Church. Msgr. Sable was appointed a Prelate Auditor by St. John Paul II in 1994.

Msgr. Sable says the Pontiff’s recent decrees don’t resemble a paradigm shift in Church thinking, but rather a continuation, clarification and simplification of legal precedent that predates modern history.

“According to Scriptures and Apostolic tradition, marriage is a vow between God and a man and woman which no man on Earth can break,” Msgr. Sable said. “Marriage vows are real; they’re not just poetry. This is something the Church struggled with for the first 400 years; because how do we deal with situations where a spouse dies — can the other spouse remarry? Or what happens if one person didn’t truly consent to the marriage.”

The Roman Rota is one of two appellate courts in the Catholic Church — each judging disputes in the name of the pope. The Rota is a judicial supreme court, dealing with cases of merit such as right, including the right to marry, reviewing hundreds of appeals from lower Church courts from around the world.

“When two Catholics marry, and things aren’t working out, they go to a civil court and get a divorce,” Msgr. Sable said. “The Church says that you have an obligation to one another and God to try and work things out; working through the Church to reconcile the marriage. If the Church looks at the marriage, and sees there is no way to achieve reconciliation and something was insufficient or lacking from the beginning, the Church would grant a separation and start the annulment process.”

The Rota deals with disputes on appeal regarding disagreements between groups within the Church regarding property, defamation and disciplinary matters for members of the clergy.

Msgr. Sable’s introduction to Church legal matters began in December 1975, when he became a part-time auditor for the Metropolitan Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Sable worked on the tribunal while learning more about cannon law and studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

In June 1981, Msgr. Sable was appointed presiding judge of the Metropolitan Tribunal of Detroit by then-Archbishop Edmund C. Szoka, tasked with processing and clearing 40 years of backlog of annulments and pending legal decisions in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

“When I was in Detroit, we were getting paperwork for 2,000 cases a year and we had three priests and three secretaries to work through it all,” Msgr. Sable said. “Archbishop Szoka gave me a lot of priests part-time to help us gather testimony and fulfill the required procedures. I said, ‘give me 30 priests and leave me alone for a while, and we can work through this without having to shut the Tribunal down to deal with the backlog first.’”

 



Msgr. Sable attributed the backlog to Catholics not seeking an annulment when they filed for divorce in civil court. Many Catholics started dating and wanted to remarry in the Church, but would have to start the annulment process many years after the fact, causing backlog and putting people in legal limbo when it came to whether or not the Church recognizes their first marriage.

“Pope Francis said, we have so much back up, we need to make it easier to go through the process so people don’t have to wait so long,” Msgr. Sable said. “The pope abolished the automatic second review of an annulment — but appeals can still be made. Because of the mobility of people, the Holy Father made it easier for lower Church courts to have a more easy jurisdiction to open a case in a local tribunal.”

During his time with the Church, Msgr. Sable served as an active duty officer and chaplain for the U.S. Air Force. He retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve as a Lt. Col in November 2007.

Msgr. Sable was an active-duty Air Force chaplain at Shaw AFB in South Carolina in February 1989 when he received a call from Cardinal Szoka, who told him St. John Paul II was prepared to appoint Sable a Defender of the Bond on the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota.

Still with a commitment to the U.S. Air Force, Chuch authorizes worked with the military authorities to secure his release from his military commitment.

The Roman Rota is the oldest legal court system still in use today, with its roots already established in the 13th century.

“All the time you get the sense of history when you work in the Vatican,” Msgr. Sable said. “Even with the cases I monitor today, there are books I refer to from the 1500s and 1600s. We’re a Church that follows the traditions and treasure of what our forefathers handed to us on how to look at things.”

The monumental sense of history and tradition of a Church that dates back the first century A.D. is not lost on Msgr. Sable, who said he couldn’t image where he is today when he was a priest in the Archdiocese of Detroit as the associate pastor of St. Anthony parish in Belleville.

He is proud to answer the call of the Church, safeguarding the legal precedents and statues which have been a pillar of the Church’s foundation for a millennia.

“You look at the old Church legal documents, and they discuss things like intent, competency and things that can be done to prevent a person from consenting to a marriage,” Msgr. Sable said. “They didn’t have a word for it back then, but we would call it psychology.

“It’s humbling to wear the same robes, say the same prayers and walk the same streets as the judges in the Rota did 500 years ago. You see the humanity of the popes and judges that came before us and it an honor to carry on the tradition.”