When is a marriage valid

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What contributes to a valid marriage? What does it mean if a marriage is illicit?
 
A marriage is valid if the spouses give consent to the marriage, if there are no impediments preventing the marriage, and if the appropriate form of the ceremony (if applicable) is followed.

A valid marriage may be contracted licitly (i.e., according to the law) or illicitly (i.e., deficient in some aspect of the law).

A marriage that’s illicit might still be valid – liceity doesn’t necessarily effect validity.
 
pietrocontolini said:
Would a legal or civil marriage be considered valid then?
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For a non-Catholic Christian, whose denomination doesn’t have any requirements for the ‘form’ of marriage? Yes, it could be.

For a Catholic? Considering that the Catholic Church has requirements of form (e.g., the marriage must take place in a church or oratory, and be celebrated by a priest or deacon), then no: a marriage that is only ‘civil’ does not meet the definition of a ‘valid marriage’ for a Catholic.

There’s one exception, of course: a Catholic (who is marrying a non-Catholic) may petition for a dispensation from form. If the Church gives such a dispensation, then a marriage outside the normal form could be valid.
 
Ok. That clears things up. The reason I ask is that I know some Catholics who were engaged, but they had made a promise not to marry until he found a stable job. He was an immigrant, so he couldn’t get a stable job until he got a green card. In order to get a green card, he had to be married to a citizen. So they had a legal marriage, but according to the Church, it was not a true marriage, so they lived separately until they got married in a Catholic Church after he got a green card and a job.
 
pietrocontolini said:
Ok. That clears things up. The reason I ask is that I know some Catholics who were engaged, but they had made a promise not to marry until he found a stable job. He was an immigrant, so he couldn’t get a stable job until he got a green card. In order to get a green card, he had to be married to a citizen. So they had a legal marriage, but according to the Church, it was not a true marriage, so they lived separately until they got married in a Catholic Church after he got a green card and a job.
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I think the polite term for that is fraud.
 
pietrocontolini said:
Ok. That clears things up. The reason I ask is that I know some Catholics who were engaged, but they had made a promise not to marry until he found a stable job. He was an immigrant, so he couldn’t get a stable job until he got a green card. In order to get a green card, he had to be married to a citizen. So they had a legal marriage, but according to the Church, it was not a true marriage, so they lived separately until they got married in a Catholic Church after he got a green card and a job.
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this scenario bothers me greatly. I fail to understand why two people feel it’s ok to marry (illicitly) in city hall or with a judge, but refused to marry with a priest or deacon in the Rectory?

I know lots of people do it because they want to the storybook wedding, but that doesn’t mean they need to marry civilly only. Get married in Church and then have some big civil celebration when you can afford it. But don’t live in sin until you can afford an expensive wedding.

Same thing with people who want some destination wedding. Have a small ceremony at the parish before you leave and then have a purely secular destination ceremony and party.

Drives me nuts. My brother did this and my sister is still living in sin, waiting until she can afford something grand (in the meantime, her son is 8 years old)
 
No, you don’t understand. They married civilly for the sole purpose of obtaining a green card. They knew the church did not see the civil marriage as valid, so they still lived as though they were not married until they were able to be married by a Catholic priest. Only then did they consider themselves married.
 
pietrocontolini said:
No, you don’t understand. They married civilly for the sole purpose of obtaining a green card. They knew the church did not see the civil marriage as valid, so they still lived as though they were not married until they were able to be married by a Catholic priest. Only then did they consider themselves married.
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Fine. But if they were engaged why not tie the knot officially?

BTW - I wasn’t really addressing your friends, but the general notion of people who do this and have marital relations.
 
These people actually went to extremes to make sure they did not have marital relations until after their Catholic Marriage. The reason they did that is they had promised his mother he would find a steady job before they were married.
 
pietrocontolini said:
These people actually went to extremes to make sure they did not have marital relations until after their Catholic Marriage. The reason they did that is they had promised his mother he would find a steady job before they were married.
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What they did is water under the bridge now. It’s done. They are validly married.

It was not the only way to achieve the goal-- they most certainly *could have *been validly married in the Church without doing the civil-only marriage.

When one is old enough to be married, one is old enough to tell one’s mother “no”.

His mother’s extraction of a “promise” and his mother’s expectations regarding how he conducts his business is irrelevant.
 
pietrocontolini said:
No, you don’t understand. They married civilly for the sole purpose of obtaining a green card. They knew the church did not see the civil marriage as valid, so they still lived as though they were not married until they were able to be married by a Catholic priest. Only then did they consider themselves married.
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I don’t understand that. Why didn’t they get married in the Church in the first place?
 
Gorgias said:
For a non-Catholic Christian, whose denomination doesn’t have any requirements for the ‘form’ of marriage? Yes, it could be.
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Just to clarify – it wouldn’t matter if the denomination had requirements or not (Orthodox aside). If two people belonged to a denomination that required marriage in front of a minister for validity, but chose to marry in the courthouse instead, the Church would still presume that to be a valid marriage.
 
AnnArbor said:
Just to clarify – it wouldn’t matter if the denomination had requirements or not (Orthodox aside). If two people belonged to a denomination that required marriage in front of a minister for validity, but chose to marry in the courthouse instead, the Church would still presume that to be a valid marriage.
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Yes, exactly, if that group was not an actual Church (valid orders and apostolic succession) then “form” is not at issue, So Orthodox and a few others have or could have form requirements, not so for ecclesial communities whose leaders are lay people (from the Catholic perspective).
 
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