RC/EO Married outside RC Church: Obtaining approval when the non-Catholic is unwilling

[Verdanty]

I heard a story from an Eastern Orthodox friend today, and while I don’t know the full story I am curious about a few details related to the Catholic Church.

A few years ago said EO married a lapsed Roman Catholic without dispensation in the Greek Orthodox Church. Fastforward a few years and said RC’s family are pushing him to start proceedings to have their marriage recognized by the RC. Said EO friend is very angry not because of some theological end, but because she takes great umbridge in the RC essentially claiming that she isn’t really married and needs the RC to actually be married. While the RC was considering it just to get his family to be quiet, the EO is dead set against it; so now they’re pushing to obtain “radical” dispensation on her husbands behalf where her agreement is not actually required.

What is the theological basis for this radical sanction? Does the church basically declare in absentia she is validly married, or if she couldn’t be married because due to lack of form can it marry her against her own will? I’m not entirely sure what this procedure entails or is, although I have heard of it I’ve never encountered it actually being undertaken.

 

[FrDavid96]

A “radical sanation” means that the Church “heals” (sanates) a situation after-the-fact and from the very beginning (the “root” or “radix” in Latin).

This situation gets very complicated because the laws have changed over the years. Part of the process is to look at each event and ask “what exactly did the law say at that particular moment?” Since you wrote “a few years ago” instead of a few decades, it seems as if the current codes of canon law (1983 and 1990) apply here.

A radical sanation is not so much about a situation where one party chooses not to participate in the process (although it can be, and often is the case). Instead, it’s actually about healing the situation “at the root” or we might say “after the fact.”

In practical terms, what the Catholic Church is saying to your friend, her Orthodox husband, and the Orthodox Church is “we now recognize the liciety (harmony with the law) of what you did, even though we did not see it that way before.”

Essentially, the Catholic Church is affirming that the Orthodox priest did marry them. Hopefully, they can see it from that perspective.

 

[Verdanty]

This makes the situation far clearer, thank you.

They were married five years ago so that code would be the one governing the situation. I might try to explain that to her later, she is under the impression the Catholic Church currently considers her to be a fornicator and being a practicing Christian she took deep offense to it. She may be more lenient if that is not the case.

 

[1ke]

A Catholic who marries an Orthodox in the Orthodox Church without permission from his/her Catholic bishop marries validly, although illicitly.

There is nothing to convalidate either by simple convalidation or radical sanation.

The Catholic’s family is likely under the mistaken idea that the Catholic’s marriage is invalid because they are not familiar with the Church’s law on this specific point.

The Catholic should supply the marriage information to his parish of baptism so that it can be recorded in his/her sacramental record.

The family means well but is not giving the Catholic accurate information and is unnecessarily upsetting the Orthodox spouse.

By the way, perhaps the Greek spouse would be less insulted were they to know that while the CC views the marriage as valid, if the situation were reversed and she had married her husband in the CC, the GO Church would not view them as married.

 

[twf]

I believe the family is tragically uninformed. If the RC individual had married a Protestant, the marriage would be presumed invalid in this scenario. This was not the case. It is my understanding that the Catholic Church recognizes all Orthodox marriages regardless of who is involved - Catholic or otherwise.

 

[FrDavid96]

Not exactly.

The Catholic Church does not necessarily recognize all Orthodox marriages. For example, the Orthodox do grant ecclesiastical divorces (in a manner of speaking) and allow re-marriage. In such a case, the Catholic Church does not recognize the second marriage.

The point is that we cannot say “all marriages” and leave it at that. We can say “most.”