Bowen says the non-Catholic partner was usually willing to sign, as it was the only way out. "However, sometimes an annulment was not sought until the Catholic partner wanted to remarry, because the Church would tolerate your living apart even though it didn't recognize divorce, but obviously would not let you remarry if the original marriage was still considered to exist. This caused great problems for one of the Kennedys when he asked his Episcopalian ex-wife to sign a statement that she never intended to fulfill the promises she had made before they married. Being, of all things, a person of principle, she flatly refused on the grounds that she had intended to fulfill them, and wasn't going to lie about it now. His frustrated response that it was only a piece of paper did him considerable damage with the electorate when it got into the news, and he has now retired from politics."

"Needless to say, Catholic moral teaching did not include a 'principle of double intent' although there was a principle of unintended consequences," explains Bowen, "as when you chop down a tree and someone that you didn't know about happens to be under it when it comes down - you aren't guilty of murder because that wasn't the intent of your action. John is playing with the use of casuistical logic to excuse acts that are plainly immoral. Not an everyday part of Catholic experience, by a long shot, but sometimes suspected in cases where powerful Catholics (such as the European kings of old) were apparently allowed by the church to get away with things you and I couldn't get away with."

Gorm is a north-of-England term (maybe just a Yorkshire term) meaning something like "witless, idiotic."