Why have "disparity of cult" impediment if dispensation is always granted?

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HomeschoolDad said:
So are you referring to a Catholic who marries a non-Catholic Christian without permission, and somehow gets a priest to perform the Catholic rite without having gotten that permission?
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If a priest failed to get permission before performing the ceremony, by accident or otherwise, it would be valid and illicit. Not so with disparity of cult. It would be invalid.

Yes, it’s happened.
 
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babochka said:
This is an excellent point. I have a friend from a middle-Eastern (Muslim) country who was granted a disparity of cult dispensation. It required a personal meeting with her bishop, who assessed her situation before granting the dispensation. She was marrying a nominally Christian American who was unbaptized. The bishop met with her for over two hours, educating her in the reality that Christianity in America is varied and different from her region, where nearly all Christians are of an Apostolic faith. At the end of their conversation, he somewhat reluctantly granted her the dispensation.
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Amazing case @babochka thanks for sharing. I had never read something like this.
 
It is a test of obedience - which is sorely lacking these days. Yes, it is probably canon law and a bunch of other things, but there have to be some rules, some bright lines, some black and white or else the faith devolves into unrecognizable chaos.

I have maintained for decades that there are not too many divorces - there are too many marriages. Hasty, poorly thought out, selfish and emotion-based “marriages” that are destined to fail.
 
po18guy said:
I have maintained for decades that there are not too many divorces - there are too many marriages . Hasty, poorly thought out, selfish and emotion-based “marriages” that are destined to fail.
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I couldn’t agree more. I think it is fair to say that there is a certain percentage of the population that is not capable of contracting a valid marriage, due to lack of psychological maturity, as well as not understanding what marriage really is. It is almost universally viewed as a legal contract with religious ceremonies and ramifications for those who like that sort of thing, or where those ceremonies are culturally expected. And I still seriously, seriously have to question whether someone can confect a valid sacrament of matrimony if they do not view marriage in the abstract as indissoluble.

I say “in the abstract” because they could say “we intend this marriage to be permanent, but we believe that other people can dissolve their marriages if they so desire”. And this doesn’t even touch on what they will think if, later in the marriage, one of the partners becomes an axe murderer, multi-million-dollar corporate embezzler, or child molester. Will they view it as permanent then?

And I say “sacrament” because I will concede that two unbaptized persons could validly contract a natural marriage while believing that natural marriage can be dissolved. That may not be true, but for the sake of argument I will assume it is. Anyone?
 
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For a fact, I was an unbaptized, non-practicing anything when I married my Catholic wife. This is not to say that I did not receive a thorough grilling from the young priest.

Of course, reason (and DW) prevailed and I was received into the Catholic faith. Next year will be anniversary #40.
 
I have lived long enough to see marriage go from divorce with cause (e.g. physical brutality or adultery) to no-fault. One of the driving forces behind no-fault was the real world understanding that there were people who lied on the stand during the trial to fit within the limited causes in order to get the court to decree a divorce.

What do you have (without getting into issues of what the state of one or both of the parties was on the day of the marriage) when one of the parties has decided, for example, that adultery is the act du jour, if you will, and does not want to leave the marriage because of economics (or whatever) and the other party does not want to file because of whatever reasons. And I refer to an individual who has a public presence because of their profession, and makes it public they have an “open” marriage.

Underlying all of this discussion is the issue of the real possibility that there is a defect of consent/impediment which would be grounds for a decree of nullity. So the issue of “abstract” may not be so abstract. People do get divorces who have grounds for a decree of nullity; others get one and done’t apply; or they try and for whatever reason the tribunal cannot come to a decision of nullity (in other words, tribunals are not infallibile - which cuts both ways); people who have valid grounds for a decree of nullity do not get divorced, but “soldier on” for personal reasons (and I am not assuming some sort of post marriage change of issues).

People get into invalid marriages and die married. What is the status of that?

At the end, the matter is God’s problem, and we do not really have the ability to sort out all the pieces. According to some comments I have seen, divorce rates have come down somewhat; what is not said in those comments is that we have far more people living together - including some who simply refuse to go through the process of actually marrying, but would not and do not part. (and I am not limiting that to Catholics). Getting back to Catholics, according to a CARA study several years ago, 18% of those in the 18 to 29 year age bracket attend Mass weekly - which leaves 82% in a sketchy to not-existent contact with the Church and what the Church teaches. Can part of that 82% confect a valid marriage? Certainly and one of the issues which tends to bring some of them back to practicing their faith is the birth of children.

And so they practice - but that always substance - or more just form?

The short is that neither you, nor I , nor anyone else in this thread really capable of answers; we can site Canon law, moral theology and sacramental theology, but at the very end of it, we speak theory. the practice is per the individual. and many of them may not be able to articulate why they choose to stay together with any sense of depth of understanding.
 
In my experience just with human beings, everyone has grown up hearing that “God wants you to be happy” and “follow your passion” until they cannot think beyond today’s happiness and passion.

Even practicing Catholics who are committed to no premarital sex have often still “messed around” so those Oxytocin bonds are in place where they are deaf/mute/blind to the admonishments of family, friends, clergy.
 
But it is rare, and that priest would likely not be in parish ministry once it came to light.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
OK, I was conflating the two. But the end result is the same: you have to ask the Church’s permission, and they may or may not grant it.
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Not quite right. All marriages require the Church’s permission , even a Catholic marrying a Catholic.
 
po18guy said:
I have maintained for decades that there are not too many divorces - there are too many marriages . Hasty, poorly thought out, selfish and emotion-based “marriages” that are destined to fail.
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There are not too many marriages. There are too many people who are unprepared getting married.

Telling half the people to stay single is not an answer to any of our society’s woes.
 
tafan2 said:
There are not too many marriages. There are too many people who are unprepared getting married.

Telling half the people to stay single is not an answer to any of our society’s woes.
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There is a school of thought that says there are too many marriages and this accounts for the “priest shortage” and plummeting religions vocations as well as divorce rate. People get married who have never discerned marriage as their vocation. They then end up feeling something is missing in the marriage and it causes divorce.
 
TheLittleLady said:
There are not too many marriages. There are too many people who are unprepared getting married.

Telling half the people to stay single is not an answer to any of our society’s woes.
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The medieval Catholic idea of the ideal society was to have one-third of the people getting married and having children, one-third going into the priestly or religious life, and one-third remaining single in the unconsecrated lay state.

I would like to see every young Catholic ask themselves, in all utter objectivity and forgetting about “what I want”, whether they have a priestly/religious vocation, a married vocation, or a single vocation.

There are few people for whom I have greater respect than those who went to seminary or convent, gave it a chance, and determined it wasn’t their calling. I’d like to see more of this.
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I don’t think so. But I guess it depends on what you meant by too many marriages. Overall marriage rates are down. More people are not getting married.

My point is not that we need less marriages, we need more people who are well prepared for marriage. A large part of the problem is cohabitation prior to marriage. My wife and I do marriage prep at our parish. There is one trend that is almost always right. Couples who are already living together are almost never as well prepared for marriage. They assume they already are prepared, yet they invariably have not discussed so many crucial aspects of marraige., Eg finances, raising children, etc. They are essentially roommates with benefits, and that do not see marraige as much more than that.
 
No permission is needed for a catholic to marry a catholic, if there is no impediment. Catholic have a right (canonically) to be administered a sacrament if they are properly disposed, seek it at appropriate time and are not legally prohibited from receiving a sacrament.
 
I agree they have a right. But they must be properly disposed and there can be no impediments. This all must be verified by the pastor before they can get married, is his permission.
 
QuD said:
No permission is needed for a catholic to marry a catholic, if there is no impediment. Catholic have a right (canonically) to be administered a sacrament if they are properly disposed, seek it at appropriate time and are not legally prohibited from receiving a sacrament.
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tafan2 said:
I agree they have a right. But they must be properly disposed and there can be no impediments. This all must be verified by the pastor before they can get married, is his permission.
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This is what I would call “permission”, in that two Catholics cannot “just get married”, they have to file the proper paperwork, go through pre-Cana, wait six months, follow proper form, and so on.

I suppose theoretically a Catholic couple could go to a priest and say “please marry us”, have him to meet them in the church or chapel with two witnesses, produce the civil marriage license (which is not needed for validity), exchange rings and vows, and boom, you’re done, valid sacrament confected. But we do not live in that kind of world, if indeed we ever did.

I would warn, and the Church has traditionally warned, against overly long engagements. Six months is not too long. Some couples boast of waiting two, three, four years. This is a horrible temptation against chastity, and quite frankly, gives one of the partners the opportunity to find someone else. (I know it could be argued that if this happens, the outside partner is the one they are called to marry in the first place, never mind the injustice done to the abandoned fiance.)
 
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Dispensations have not always been granted. The Notre Dame Archives have various examples of times when dispensations were not granted.
 
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