Consent for a Valid Marriage - Is The Church Wrong?

[GloriamDeo7]

The Church clearly teaches that consent is necessary for there to be a valid marriage, whether natural or sacramental.

Catechism 1625-1628:
"The parties to a marriage covenant are a baptized man and woman, free to contract marriage, who freely express their consent; ‘to be free’ means:

• not being under constraint;
• not impeded by any natural or ecclesiastical law.

The Church holds the exchange of consent between the spouses to be the indispensable element that ‘makes the marriage.’ If consent is lacking there is no marriage.
The consent consists in a ‘human act by which the partners mutually give themselves to each other’: ‘I take you to be my wife’ - ‘I take you to be my husband.’ This consent that binds the spouses to each other finds its fulfillment in the two ‘becoming one flesh.’
The consent must be an act of the will of each of the contracting parties, free of coercion or grave external fear. No human power can substitute for this consent. If this freedom is lacking the marriage is invalid."

Canon Law 1057
“The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons qualified by law, makes marriage; no human power is able to supply this consent. 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.”

However, I’ve ran into a problem. Some Old Testament laws seem to diminish free consent for at least the groom, and possibly the bride, in what is still called a marriage.

The verses are Deuteronomy 22:28-29 and Exodus 22:15-16, which require a man who seizes and lays with an unbetrothed virgin to marry her.

Note: These are often brought up as a question about if a woman is forced to marry her rapist, or if it was rape at all. We can leave that at rest here. It’s not entirely clear that it was a case of rape, and even if it was, it’s still not clear that the woman couldn’t have refused the marriage. We can also understand that the law is for the sake of the woman, because in those times she would be left with almost no chance of finding a husband now that she is no longer a virgin, and because without a husband in that society she was almost surely to end up in poverty or prostitution. It was not a moral law, but rather a remedy for the time.

The issue is, these are cases where a law, given by God Himself, binds a man to marry a woman. At least his, if not also the woman’s, free consent is apparently not needed for there to be a valid marriage in God’s eyes.

Keep in mind that the fact that we are no longer bound by these laws does not diminish the fact that at one point that was required, and therefore shows marriage without consent being possible.

Any thoughts on this? Was it always the Church’s teaching that consent is necessary for marriage? Is the teaching infallible? Any sources would be greatly appreciated. I love when I get to see answers from “primary sources,” such as Scripture, Church Councils, anything declared infallible, etc.

How do we reconcile these?

Thank you and God bless you!

 

[Weave]

I’m going to take a stab at this but I’m probably wrong. As I see it the legalistic marriage of the Mosaic Laws is not the same as the sacramental marriage that Christ spoke of when he said “From the beginning it was not so.” when speaking to the Jews on marriage. The sacraments didn’t exist in the fallen world until Christ instituted them. Marriage seemed to exist in primarily a legal sense before Christ. Hence all the polygamy in the Old Testament.

 

[Mintaka]

The point of the OT man being constrained to marry the girl is that he is constrained to support her. There is no requirement that she live with him, IIRC, and I seem to remember that she has the right to stay with her family. I think there were various other legal penalties to the man. He is also forbidden to marry any other woman, unless the woman he wronged consents to divorce him. Also, I believe the girl gets all the support money, instead of her father or family getting any.

There are a lot of Torah and Talmud discussions online, it you want to know about Jewish legal interpretations.

 

[otjm]

I think it would be more correct to say that marriage existed in a natural state rather than in a legal sense. Thus a marriage in some tribe in the inner parts of Brazil, for example, would have no “legal sense” as they do not have a legal system; but they are married. the Church recognizes natural marriages.

 

[ZMystiCat]

Some Old Testament

Bear in mind, when Christ was discussing marriage and divorce with the Pharisees, the Pharisees countered His point on forbidding divorce by quoting the Mosaic Law, which permitted it (Matt. 19:4-9). Marriage, under Mosaic Law, had allowances that permitted the Israelites to not hold to marriage originally designed by God. However, when discussing sacramental marriage, we should be looking to God’s original design, in line with what Christ called us to.

 

[JerryZ]

As others have pointed out there are 2 distinct cases here. One the Church if speaking specifically in the post Jesus declaration that there is no divorce in marriage. Period end of the line and paragraph.

Now you are trying to jive this to what were the customs based on the Law.
Which allowed divorce as stated by Jesus Himself as well as trying to rectify a wrong by marriage. Similar to what it would be called a marriage by the shotgun portraid in movies. The Church disqualifies those as non valid…

 

[Vico]

…

The Church was given the right to loose and bind sins, so can make the marriage laws binding.

One is not married to a prostitute, however there is a becoming of one flesh.

1 Cor 6

16 [Or] do you not know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For “the two,” it says, “will become one flesh.” 17 But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.

 

[po18guy]

Are you over-thinking this? We are not Torah Jews - we live under the new covenant.

Same God. Different covenants. The new standard - love - is much higher than the old - ritualistic obedience.

 

[FiveLinden]

They cannot be reconciled except by adding meaning to the Biblical verses that is not there.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Are you over-thinking this? We are not Torah Jews - we live under the new covenant.

Same God. Different covenants. The new standard - love - is much higher than the old - ritualistic obedience.

Agree. Jesus made clear that the old law of marriage was deficient, and he revised it as necessary to meet the new standard of love.

 

[AdamP88]

Agree. Jesus made clear that the old law of marriage was deficient, and he revised it as necessary to meet the new standard of love.

Yes. This plus the fact that the Church’s view of marriage is very different from the OT Jewish view of marriage.

 

[poche]

One thing to take into account is the sense of honor. A young girl who had relations with a man, even if it was rape, was considered as some kind of a prostitute who no one would want to marry. She would be shunned and her family would be looked upon as somehow complicit in her “immorality.”

 

[mythbuster1]

By the act of having relations with her, he has consented to marry her under the Mosaic Law. She has the choice whether or not to require him to make good on his duty to marry her, thereby demonstrating her own consent.

 

[Gorgias]

Keep in mind that the fact that we are no longer bound by these laws does not diminish the fact that at one point that was required, and therefore shows marriage without consent being possible.

Any thoughts on this?

Yes. You’re being anachronistic.

The Mosaic law also provided requirements for dietary restrictions. If Christ and the Church are able authoritatively to provide new discipline in that context, then why is this one an issue? If we can say “dietary restrictions were fine for those people and in that time and were valid, but for these people and in this time, there is a different valid standard”, then why may they not do the exact same thing with respect to marital discipline?

The sacraments didn’t exist in the fallen world until Christ instituted them.

Good point. If you were to phrase the question “why is sacramental marriage under the New Covenant different than marriage under the Mosaic Covenant?”, then you’d have your answer right there, in the phrasing of the question. But, the way the OP phrased it, I think there’s a slightly different answer – that is, an explanation of why the difference is reasonable, and why it doesn’t imply that the old law was invalid.

 

[acanonlawyer]

The issue is, these are cases where a law, given by God Himself, binds a man to marry a woman. At least his, if not also the woman’s, free consent is apparently not needed for there to be a valid marriage in God’s eyes.

Simply because we are bound to do something by divine law does not mean that we can’t freely do it.

Dan

 

[GloriamDeo7]

The problem with the sacramental argument is that I’m pretty sure the Church says any valid marriage, whether sacramental or only natural, requires consent. So we still have the same problem, even if the old covenant marriages weren’t sacramental but this example was still valid.

 

[Gorgias]

The problem with the sacramental argument is that I’m pretty sure the Church says any valid marriage, whether sacramental or only natural, requires consent. So we still have the same problem, even if the old covenant marriages weren’t sacramental but this example was still valid.

No, you really don’t.

And, you’re still being anachronistic, by attempting to use the Church’s canon law to describe a situation that preceded the Church’s existence.

But, to play along with the game… you’ve already been given the answer to your question by other posters upthread: when a man takes a virgin by force, he is, by his very act, giving his consent to marry her, according to the Mosaic law. And, given that in those days women were seen pretty much as chattel, it was the father of the girl who gave consent, so there’s no “lack of consent of the bride” in this case, either.