That doesn’t sound quite right to me. The Church also recognizes non-sacramental, natural marriages as valid marriages.
If two non-baptized persons married in a civil ceremony later divorced, and one of them became Catholic and wished to remarry, the prior non-sacramental natural marriage would have to be submitted to the marriage tribunal for a determination as to whether it was valid (and therefore permanent) or not.
At least, that’s my understanding. The Church recognizes most marriages as valid until proven otherwise.
Two baptized Christians who marry, whether Catholic or not, have a sacramental marriage.
One of the posters, as well as Dr. Peters, are excellent at parsing out the finest divisions of Canon law.
What I was talking about was not a parsing of the finer points of the work of the tribunals. I was talking about how we, who know the differences, need to understand that the lay person (usually Catholic, but often non Catholic Christian) trying to come to terms with a divorce, is carrying an enormous amount of emotional baggage stemming from the dissolution of a marriage, As such, the language we need to use in working with them is different than the language of the scholar, the Canon lawyer, and the judges of the tribunal.
It is an oxymoron that a Catholic who is in a valid marriage with another baptized person is not in a sacramental marriage. and the majority, if not the great majority of cases heading for a tribunal are between baptized persons.
perhaps I wasn’t clear; but I can absolutely guarantee that if I - or your, or any of the other posters herein - were to sit down with someone who has been divorced and hit them up with “in the eyes of the Church you weren’t married” there is a high likelihood of starting an emotional storm, one that too often has that person walking (stomping, steaming, fleeing, screaming, storming - take your pick) out of the room in anger/tears/emotional turmoil.
Well, isn’t that just hunkey dorey! Isn’[t that just the most effective thing we could do to try to help someone reconcile with the Church, with Christ, and with themselves?
NOT!
Yes, I know the permutations. They are irrelevant to the person coming in trying to come to terms with a broken marriage.
That is not to say they don’t have their place. But someone coming in to at least look at the possibility of a tribunal review doesn’t give a flying flip as to what the tribunal officially says about the marriage; what they want to do is start the process of reconciliation.
Civil law deals with contracts. In fact, it is a year long first year course for law students. NOTE: It is not a course in covenant.
And to go Dr. Peters one, the validity of a marriage in the eyes of the Church, whether it is between two baptized persons, or one or both non Christians, is about covenant, not about contract. But the tribunal doesn’t talk about covenant either; it talks about validity. Fine; the scholars can parse out all they want; but there is no such thing as a valid non-sacramental marriage between a Catholic and another baptized person. Whether or not the tribunal uses the term “sacrament” or “sacramental marriage”, in the majority of cases, because they are between 2 baptized persons (and usually one of them is Catholic), if the tribunal passes on the validity of the marriage, it passes on the sacramentality of the marriage. A valid non sacramental marriage between two baptized persons is an oxymoron.
To be tedious and redundant, my point is that in counseling people who are seeking whether or not to apply to a tribunal concerning their divorce form another, using legally correct terms is more likely than not to create a significant roadblock for that individual, due to the fact that they don’t understand the nuances which we use when we speak canonically “correctly”.
And for anyone (and I am not directing this at you) who wants to parse it out, that is fine in a discussion of the finer points of tribunal work. But if you are counseling, and I speak from experience, you might want to forego the technical language and not trip people’s triggers. To put it another way, if you are too focused on your own knowledge, stay out of the counseling ring. All too many people who have gone through a divorce (and all too often, a subsequent to a non Catholic “altar” or the judge or justice of the peace) are already significantly on the outs with the "Church. Throwing them into an emotional tailspin will only push them farther away.
True dat.
As Dr. Ed Peters, a respected canonist, pointed out recently here, “Not only is the sacramentality of a marriage NOT determined in an annulment case, the question of its sacramentality is not even RAISED in the process. The annulment process is about the validity of marriage and only about validity; a successful petition results in a “declaration of nullity”, not in a declaration of non-sacramentality.”