Abstract: 

This presentation explores how immutability is enacted and valued within the framework of Catholic canon law. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in central institutions of the Roman Curia—the world’s oldest continuous global bureaucracy, responsible for administering the Roman Catholic Church and its more than one billion adherents—it focuses on a case study of marriage annulment proceedings in ecclesiastical courts in Italy. In Catholic theology, sacraments are understood as ontologically immutable and irreversible. As a result, civil divorce is not recognised by the Church. Couples seeking to dissolve their marriage must instead apply for an annulment, which is granted only if the sacrament is retroactively declared invalid at the time it was conferred. This juridical mechanism enables the Church to maintain the doctrinal principle of sacramental immutability while responding to the social realities of marital breakdown. The presentation analyses how this value of immutability is upheld, and operationalised within church courts, particularly in a wider societal context increasingly distanced from the ideal of ‘per sempre’ (forever). It further reflects on the possible significance of immutability on a conceptual level. While anthropology has long privileged the study of fluidity, multiplicity, and social contingency across domains such as law, kinship, religion, and politics, recent scholarship has drawn attention to the productive role of forms of fixity. Sarah Besky (2017), for instance, shows how “fixity” sustains flexible capitalism; Marie-Bénédicte Dembour (2010) identifies a naturalised conception of inalienable human rights as another form of immutability-as-value. By situating the Catholic annulment process within this theoretical landscape, the presentation aims to reflect upon a more nuanced understanding of how fixity and fluidity are mutually constitutive in lived practice.