Legal Marriage separated from The Sacrament of Marriage

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Br.Rich_SFO

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There wa a thread somewhere discussing the introduction of a bill to remove clergy from the list of people allowed to witness Marriages for the civil authorities. Only Judges, Civil Officials, and Notary Publics would be allowed to witness the Civil portion of Marriage. The Church would only be involved in the Sacramental celebration.

A couple would be required, as is currently done in Mexico, to purchase a Marriage License, appear before a Judge, Notary, Official, and exchange vows completing the civil requirements of the Marriage. They would then go to the Church to celebrate the Sacrament of Marriage.

I originally had no issue with this. However while killing an hour last night waiting for someone I was reading the Code of Canon Law and noticed Canon 1055 #2. It speaks of a principle of inseparability of contract and Sacrament.

So if a valid Marriage takes place between two validly Baptized persons at the courthouse, would the Sacrament also take place there?

Even though it would be required by law. I think it would it be considered a Defect of Form and require a convalidation in a sense in the Church after the required civil ceremony.

Would the civil ceremony have to take place before or could it take place after the celebration of the Sacrament of Marriage in the Church?
 
Or would the Church begin granting a dispensation of form to Catholics who wish to marry since they are marrying before a judge? Of course then there would be no Church weddings and that would not be good.

This is probably more likely…I guess the actual real marriage would occur in the Church first. Then later, the couple would go before a judge and create a legal marriage that would give them the legal benefits. The civil marriage would be used in the same way that civil divorce is currently used - as an act that is sometimes necessary for legal purposes but has no real bearing whatsoever on the actual marriage.
 
Between baptized persons, only a sacramental marriage can exist. If it is a valid marriage, it has to be a sacramental marriage.

If neither person is Catholic, then it would probably be valid.

If at least one member is Catholic, then that person has an obligation to be married in the Catholic Church (unless this is dispensed from). If this obligation is not met, then the marriage would not be valid.

Catholics could get married in the Church (the real marriage) and then, perhaps, go through whatever needs to be done to get legal recognition.
 
The Church concedes competence to competence of civil authority concerning the merely civil effects of marriage but not in regard to matters of divine law or ecclesiastical law (c. 1059). So the separability exists more properly on this basis. The question of the separability of contract and Sacrament entails some slightly different (through affiliated) notions. Then too, we are speaking of the Latin code here.

In regard to the marriage of a Catholic, canon 1057 §1 specifies that the consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons qualified by law, makes marriage. Then canon 1108 imposes a canonical form of the celebration as the means of that legitimate manifestation for validity. Unless there is a dispensation or exception in law (see canons 144, 1112, §1, 1116 and 1127, §§ 1 and 2), a Catholic can only enter valid marriage through canonical form.

Therefore, careful catechesis is needed in any civil jurisdiction that would require some kind of ceremony or registration of consent of a Catholic prior to or following the canonical celebration.

If the parties in a marriage involving a Catholic considered the natural consent given at a prior civil ceremony as sufficient to create marriage, they would not place the new efficacious consent required of a convalidation (canon 1157 and see canon 1160).

Similarly if they withheld consent during a prior (in tempore) canonical ceremony, believing that the consent of the subsequent civil ceremony was the means of creating marriage, we would have a problem.

It is unlikely that the requirement of form would be bypassed by a customary recourse to dispensation. Although a disciplinary law, and for validity, the requirement of canonical form protects the principle that marriage is not merely a human or civil contract or social institution, but has an intrinsic divine and ecclesial dimension.

Consent is received in the name of the Church in the ordinary canonical form. As canon 1108 §2 explains, the one assisting at a marriage is understood to be only that person who, present at the ceremony, asks for the contractants’ manifestation of consent and receives it in the name of the Church. (The extraordinary form, while still requiring two witnesses, does not involve this, but even if a person not qualified to assist is present, he should be called upon.)
 
My youngest son married in Germany before an officer of the court on Friday afternoon and then by a Jesuit priest friend of his in a wedding Chapel in Stuttgart on Saturday.
 
Isn’t Italy one of the countries that requires separate civil and Church ceremonies? I wonder if those in Rome see this as problematic.
 
rwoehmke said:
My youngest son married in Germany before an officer of the court on Friday afternoon and then by a Jesuit priest friend of his in a wedding Chapel in Stuttgart on Saturday.
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I was going to bring up the German and Austrian models as well. I’m not as sure about Germany, but I know in Austria the order was strictly legal first and then church wedding, which was probably the result of some sort of concordat. The zinger is that the Church required couples to ordinarily be legally married before witnessing their true marriage. I say ordinarily because the family I stayed with told me how they had to obtain a dispensation to marry in the Church before a legal marriage because they could not afford the legal part at the time; they had to promise to carry out the legal necessities as soon as they were able.
 
In Romania where the marriages are separated , the legal civil version must take place first and it is actually breaking the law for a Priest to do otherwise.
 
So far, then, all the real-life examples presented have required legal marriage before true sacramental marriage.
 
A couple of thoughts along this line (one from personal experience). My then girl friend and I lived in Germany (both Air Force) at the time of our marriage. We went to Switzerland for the civil marriage (since that was required before we could get married in the Church) and then were married three days later in the Church. For legal reasons, the “anniversary” date is the legal date and not the Church date…

In the early Church marriage was always a civil affair and some (but certainly not all) couples came to the Church for a blessing. Modern marriage practices did not develop until well after the third century but before the 8th century in which the Church performed marriage.

In the Eastern Catholic Churches there is no “consent” given – the very act of being present for the marriage is seen as consensual. In those countries where consent is required, the priest or bishop will ask for consent prior to the start of the marriage ceremony!

Thus, there are examples in the modern Church where the proposed legislation is alredy in force and is not seen as an issue. However, the caveats that Deacon Cameron mentioned are certainly not to be discounted.

Deacon Ed
 
I was mararied 22 years ago in the Catholic church. The priest would not have a Mass since my husband was not Catholic. He also was not baptized yet we were married in the Church. I often wondered if we had a true sacramental marriage. I mentioned this to him once and he threw it off.

He has since left me and has filed divorce papers. I feel I should talk to a priest but I truly do not feel close to any church in my city of Louisville.
 
chandler550369 said:
I was mararied 22 years ago in the Catholic church. The priest would not have a Mass since my husband was not Catholic. He also was not baptized yet we were married in the Church. I often wondered if we had a true sacramental marriage. I mentioned this to him once and he threw it off.

He has since left me and has filed divorce papers. I feel I should talk to a priest but I truly do not feel close to any church in my city of Louisville.
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Well, the marriage of a baptized person and an unbaptized person is never sacramental but it can be valid. If valid, then it becomes sacramental at such time as the unbaptized person is baptized. At the time you were married you had to obtain a special dispensation to marry an unbaptized person (even if it was not clear to you at the time that you were doing so.)

Your case is really outside of the scope of this thread but it does raise an interesting question.

In countries where the Church does not have civil authority to perform marriages, what exactly happens in the case of a Catholic marrying an unbaptized person? Does the valid but not sacramental marriage begin at the time of the civil exchange of consent or not until such time as a Church ceremony takes place? Or is it simply customary to grant a dispensation from marrying in a Catholic Church along with thd dispensation to marry an unbaptized person?
 
You lost me in your reply. Plese try to expain so I can follow and I thank you
 
SMHW said:
In countries where the Church does not have civil authority to perform marriages, what exactly happens in the case of a Catholic marrying an unbaptized person? Does the valid but not sacramental marriage begin at the time of the civil exchange of consent or not until such time as a Church ceremony takes place? Or is it simply customary to grant a dispensation from marrying in a Catholic Church along with thd dispensation to marry an unbaptized person?
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The dispensations are separate. If a Catholic attempts to marry an unbaptized person without dispensation, the attempt is invalid. If a Catholic attempts to marry any person without the witness of the Church, the attempt is invalid. So a Catholic can’t have a “valid but not sacramental marriage” on the basis of a civil ceremony without an ecclesiastical witness later supplied. In other words, the marriage takes place when it takes place - you can’t retroactively start it from a point of purely civil consent.
 
How do you know if you got a dispensation if it happened 22 years ago? And, if a person is baptized into the marriage is the covenant sacramental on a retroactive basis?
 
chandler550369 said:
How do you know if you got a dispensation if it happened 22 years ago? And, if a person is baptized into the marriage is the covenant sacramental on a retroactive basis?
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Yes, when a partner to a true, nonsacramental marriage is baptized the marriage is elevated to the level of a sacrament. Typically one presumes all the right steps have been taken because the priest is able to handle most of it without your direct participation, but for the purposes of a tribunal I’m not sure what is done to verify. Since tribunals must resolve doubt in favor of the bond, I figure they would also presume dispensation had been obtained unless evidence could be produced to the contrary. I don’t know if dispensations are the sort of thing that are archived anywhere, so the only thing I know would work as a starting point is asking the priest. If you are concerned about your particular situation I would PM one of the canonist members of the forums for specific advice on steps to take.
 
The OP cited México’s marriage laws. Civil marriage is the only kind recognized if the parties marry within the country. As a priest explained it to me, he could not witness a sacramental marriage unless the civil papers were in order, somewhat like most US jurisdictions that require a license be issued before any marriage formalities take place. In that country, it is Federal Law, with plenty of signing of legal documents witnessed by, preferably, a judge, and at least two other adults.
Our marriage was complicated by the only priest in the very large parish. He expected the couple to get his permission before they sought the civil papers, but he would not grant such permission, or if the couple already had the legal documents, he would not do weddings anyway. Couples with plenty of time and patience could eventually have a Church wedding in another parish by getting permission from the chancery with the help of the other pastor.
When I was in Austria, my friends pointed out the office where civil marriages were conducted, but since most of the people in the area were Catholic, they didn’t consider this anything more than a formality, more of a license, and the Church marriage was, as my friend Wilma explained, “Za real one!”
 
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