Montie Claunch:
I was wondering what goes into a valid marrige?. . .
The references to the Code and the Catechism are excellent. Read them. I’ll comment a little, as non-technically as I can, but won’t be able to cover everything. Just a real thumbnail sketch. So let me put this into shorthand by a handy formula, FIC.
Form,
Impediment,
Consent.
These come from Canon 1057 §1. The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons qualified by law, makes marriage; (no human power is able to supply this consent. §2. 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.)
Legitimately manifested: the legal requirements for how marriage is celebrated, form, must be followed. Generally, a Latin Catholic is required to celebrate marriage with the active assistance of an authorized priest or deacon and two witnesses. This is called the “Catholic form of marriage.” There are exceptions, though, and dispensations or relaxations of the law can be given though.
If the form is lacking for a Catholic, unless an exception or dispensation exists, the marriage is considered as though it had not happened at all, and can be declared so without a nullity trial.
Persons qualified by law: the parties are free from impediments that disqualify them. Impediments are obstacles to a valid marriage which can arise from divine law or ecclesiastical (Church) law. Divine law impediments include already being in a valid marriage and forms of close blood relationships. Ecclesiastical impediments include a number of things, such as being a priest or deacon, or having made permanent vows in certain forms of religious life, and marriage to an unbaptized person. The Church may relax the law so that the ecclesiastical impediments no longer prevent a valid marriage. It cannot relax divine law.
If an impediment exists, the marriage can be declared invalid on that basis.
Consent: a human act of the will to give oneself and to receive the other in marriage. This is what the vows in a wedding ceremony do. The consent must be properly informed, free, unconditional, and both parties have to be able to do what they promise, that is, to fulfill the essential obligations and duties of marriage. When the parties give consent, the law presumes they have consented to marriage as the Creator defined it and are capable of living out the consent. Here are some canons that describe this.
Canon 1055:§1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, which is ordered by its nature toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized. §2. For this reason, a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.
Canon 1056:The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of of the sacrament.
Canon 1096: §1. For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation and education of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.
I’ll briefly comment on that consent in a next post.
