Non-legal Catholic marriage

[MrMary]

Can a Catholic man and woman be married in the Church without the marriage being registered with the government?

 

[1ke]

Can a Catholic man and woman be married in the Church without the marriage being registered with the government?

In general, no, the Church does not perform marriages unless the people involved are married civilly as well. In the US, that happens at the same time as clergy perform both functions, civil and church witness. In countries where that is separated, the Church requires the couple to marry civilly first, and present the proof of that marriage to the church in order to be married.

In the US, I do not believe a clergyman can separate their functions. I don’t *think *they can marry someone “in the church” without also marrying them “legally”. But that is a question for both a canon and civil lawyer.

A person would have to provide a good reason for such a marriage, and the bishop would have to give permission. See below:

Can. 1071 §1. Except in a case of necessity, a person is not to assist without the permission of the local ordinary at:

2/ a marriage which cannot be recognized or celebrated according to the norm of civil law;

In the past, the church has conducted secret marriages where the law did not allow a marriage-- for example unjust interracial marriage laws. Canons on secret marriages:

Can. 1130 For a grave and urgent cause, the local ordinary can permit a marriage to be celebrated secretly.

Can. 1131 Permission to celebrate a marriage secretly entails the following:

1/ the investigations which must be conducted before the marriage are done secretly;

2/ the local ordinary, the one assisting, the witnesses, and the spouses observe secrecy about the marriage celebrated.

Can. 1132 The obligation of observing the secrecy mentioned in ⇒ can. 1131, n. 2 ceases on the part of the local ordinary if grave scandal or grave harm to the holiness of marriage is imminent due to the observance of the secret; this is to be made known to the parties before the celebration of the marriage.

Can. 1133 A marriage celebrated secretly is to be noted only in a special register to be kept in the secret archive of the curia.

 

[Mintaka]

– If you lived in a place where no Catholic priest or deacon ever comes, or it’s only once a year or such

– If you and your Catholic fiance/fiancee could not reasonably travel to where a priest or deacon was, or communicate with one and get him to come

Then you could marry each other before two witnesses without a priest, and it would be a valid Catholic marriage. (And even then, it’s supposed to be done in a parish church or chapel, if at all possible.)

This sort of marriage is obviously designed for times of persecution, war, extreme isolation, etc. You’re supposed to get it blessed by a priest as soon as possible.

So yeah, if you had to do this, and if you had a valid reason not to register your marriage with a civil authority (the civil authorities are Nazis and they kill people who look like you, that sort of serious thing), then you could get married as a Catholic but not legally.

There are also some circumstances where the government is really bad and times are really hard when Catholic priests might not register a marriage either, but it would be put into parish records in some way, I guarantee.

Not recording marriages is a leading cause of bigamy, as well as other injustices perpetrated against people not in the know.

 

[Phemie]

Can a Catholic man and woman be married in the Church without the marriage being registered with the government?

Often this question is asked because a couple wants to marry religiously while avoiding the things that might result from a civil marriage: less social security for example. In essence they are looking for the Church’s blessing on committing fraud.

 

[marymary1975]

In countries where legal marriage and religious marriage is separated the church won’t marry anyone who is not previously civilly married. In fact in many of these countries the church will require the couple to have been already married civilly for a period of time. In Latin america sometimes the church may require between two to six months in which the couple has been married civilly before performing a religious marriage so no, I don’t think the church will perform a non legal marriage

 

[casslean]

Can a Catholic man and woman be married in the Church without the marriage being registered with the government?

This is going to depend in large part on the country or area you are talking about. As already pointed out, the Church cannot marry two people who would be ineligible for marriage under civil laws, but whether or not the Church can perform a marriage, and then fail to forward the requisite documents to the appropriate government agency to register the marriage is going to be a legislative fact which has to be determined on a case by case basis depending on the jurisdiction.

Each country, and in many countries the individual states or provinces, have different laws and regulations regarding the registration of marriages and what is required to “prove” a valid marriage. I recently dealt with a situation (not involving the Catholic Church) where the parties had been married by an official of a Protestant Church, but the paperwork needed to register the marriage with the government authority was never forwarded to the government. Consequently though the parties were married (they were actually trying to get a divorce), we had difficulty proving the marriage because we had no government record of the marriage, which is the accepted form of proof in this jurisdiction.

So, as with so many things in law - it depends.