Marriage question

[FrDavid96]

Would you please explain? I was not aware that any Sacrament could be retroactive. …

Please quote the post where I said it would be retroactive, then I’ll get back to you.

 

[Vico]

Would you please explain? I was not aware that any Sacrament could be retroactive. I thought the subject/minister/matter/intent/form of a Sacrament had to be valid at the time. In the case of matrimony (in the Latin understanding), TWO of these conditions (subject and minister) were not valid at the time.

If a person who was not Baptized (but was assumed to be so at the time) was ordained to the priesthood, and the fact of the non-Baptism were to become known later, would simple but subsequent Baptism automatically and retroactively validate the Ordination?

If a baptism were performed with invalid substance (such as, for example, milk or wine or oil instead of water), could the Baptism be “remediated” in any way? Is there any way that this baptism could be considered valid without doing it all over again (with valid substance)?

Valid matrimony is a natural marriage when it is not between two baptized persons, therefore from the moment that both are baptized, it becomes a sacrament. If there is a proper disposition at that time or later, then the grace particular to matrimony is received by those with proper disposition.

 

[TradCath123]

“I was not aware that any Sacrament could be retroactive.”

According to Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sacrament of Marriage”

There still remains the one question, on which also Catholic theologians are still to some extent divided, as to whether and at what moment marriages legitimately contracted between the unbaptized become a sacrament on the subsequent baptism of the two parties. That they never become a sacrament was taught in his day by Vasquez, and also by the canonists Weistner and Schmalzgrüber. This view may today be regarded as abandoned, and cannot be reconciled with the official decisions since given by the Holy See. The discussion must, therefore, be confined to the question, whether through the baptism alone (i.e. at the moment when the baptism of the later baptized of the two partners is completed) the marriage becomes a sacrament, or whether for this purpose the renewal of their mutual consent is necessary. Bellarmine, Laymann, and other theologians defended the latter view; the former, which was already maintained by Sanchez, is today generally accepted, and is followed by Sape, Rosset, Billot, Pesch, Wernz etc. This opinion is based on the ecclesiastical teaching which declares that among the baptized there can be no true marriage which is not also a sacrament. Now, immediately after the baptism of both partners, the already contracted marriage, which is not dissolved by baptism, becomes a “marriage of the baptized”; for were it not immediately a “sacrament”, the above-mentioned general principle, which Pius IX and Leo XIII proclaimed as incontestable doctrine, would be untrue. Consequently we must say that, through the baptism itself, the existing marriage passes into a sacrament. A difficulty may arise only in the determination as to where in such a case the matter and form of the sacrament are to be sought, and what act of the minister completes the sacrament. This problem, it would seem, is most readily solved by falling back on the virtually continuing mutual consent of the parties, which has been already formally given. This virtual wish to be and to remain partners in marriage, which is not annulled by the reception of baptism, is an entity in the parties in which may be found the ministration of the sacrament.