To Fr David,
There is something about this that fundamentally does not make sense to me. The Church witnesses and then blesses the Sacrament of Marriage to the couple being married in the Catholic church. But, if this couple’s marriage is not valid, the couple will going on living it as though it is invalid and address this when 1) they become aware, 2) they obtain a civil divorce, 3) they take the initiative to start the annulment process, and finally 4) they are granted an annulment.
OK. One at a time…
Questions;
a) What happens if they are not granted an annulment by the Church. They are already civilly divorced; this imposes a conflict of Church law over civil vs Church law. I.e., civil law they are not married, but Church law they are.
Here’s how there isn’t a conflict. First of all, the Church requires that a couple have a civil divorce (or annulment) before the Church will consider a petition for declaration of nullity. That way, the state already says the marriage doesn’t exist, so the Church isn’t in conflict with the state’s authority to regulate marriage as a civil institution.
On the other end of things, the Church recognizes the authority of the state to end the legal marriage bond. The Church says that when a couple divorces, the legal marriage ends even though the spiritual bond continues. Of course, “spiritual bond” has no standing in the eyes of the civil law. The parties are “free to marry” in the eyes of the state, but only in the civil sense. As a more practical application: let’s say that one of my own parishioners is divorced (no Church annulment). If he goes to the local courthouse and seeks a marriage license, I would not say to the marriage office “he’s already married and if he gets married again, that’s bigamy.” Of course, priests don’t hang out at the courthouse looking for such a situation, I’m merely illustrating the point. But if a citizen is aware that a person is about to commit bigamy, there’s a certain legal/moral obligation to notify the court (say, someone who is known for a fact to have a wife living in a different state). That’s where our American tradition of saying “if anyone knows why these two should not be united…let him speak now…” although that’s not part of the Catholic marriage rite.
b) What if civil law imposes a corruption or something against Catholic Church law into marriage (same sex marriage, India’s toddler parent marriages of their children, …); then the civil law contradicts or opposes the Church law; the two can not be reconciled and so by default cannot be held as the Church also mandates, in agreement.
Actually, civil and Church laws on marriage already conflict in many different ways. People get married (civil) all the time even though their marriage would not be a valid sacrament. If a Budhist marries a Shinto in the local courthouse, that marriage is not a Sacrament, but it’s a perfectly legal marriage. The state does not say that priests
must perform marriages, only that a priest
may perform a marriage ceremony if that marriage ceremony would be valid according to the tenets of that religion.
What the Church says is that in order for a priest/deacon to officiate at a wedding, all of the requirements of both Church and civil law must be met. The prohibition against performing a marriage which conflicts with state law does not mean that the state cannot perform a strictly-civil marriage which conflicts with Church law.
c) What if the couple is ignorant that their marriage does not follow Church law (maybe they were forced to be married (royalty in Europe) and they never thought to question the arrangement) and so by Church standards they are not validly married. They would essentially be living inn sin without knowing it.
That’s where “marriage enjoys the favor of the law” comes into play. Every marriage is considered valid unless/until proven otherwise. As for the sin part, because they don’t know it, they aren’t culpable. They can’t be sinning if they’re in a situation where the Church says “you are married.” (unless there was some serious deception involved from the start) A declaration of nullity is not “retroactive” in the sense that the couple was living in sin from the time of the ceremony to the time of the annulment (this is an important point). That’s why, when a couple does receive an annulment, the children from that marriage are not considered illegitimate.
d) Why does the Church submit to civil law at all when it knows it is human based and by definition and common knowledge seriously flawed; for example, Nazi Germany?
Most of the time, civil law requirements are reasonable and just laws. Of course, that’s not always the case. In Nazi Germany, an Aryan could not marry a Jew. Becuase that civil law was unjust, the Church was not bound by it. That’s why there’s that clause in canon law which says that a marriage which cannot be recognized by civil law cannot be performed in the Church without the explicit permission of the bishop.
It can be done, but the bishop has to approve. In the US, in some states, inter-racial marriages were illegal until relatively recently. If such laws were still on the books, the local bishop could still allow the sacrament to be celebrated, even though such a marriage could not be recognized by the state, because the civil law is unjust.
The Church only submits to the state laws when those laws are just. Canon law reserves to the bishop the authority to make that decision.
Does it make sense now?
