Objective
Impediments to a Valid Marriage
But is it really that hard for Catholics today to contract a
valid sacramental marriage? What kinds of things can render a marriage invalid?
The Code of Canon Law addresses
these questions by discussing "specific
diriment impediments"—what we might call objective impediments—to
marriage, and those problems that may affect the ability of one or both parties
to consent
to marriage. (An impediment is
something that stands in the way of what you're trying to do. ) The Holy
Father, we should note, was not talking
about objective impediments, which include (among other things)
·
not being of the proper age (16 for men, 14 for women)
·
"Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have
intercourse"
·
being "bound by the bond of a prior marriage"
·
a union between a baptized Catholic
and a unbaptized person
·
having received the Sacrament of Holy Orders or being "bound by a public
perpetual vow of chastity in a religious institute"
·
being too closely related, whether by blood or by adoption
Indeed, perhaps the only one of these objective impediments that
is more common today than in the past would be unions between baptized
Catholics and unbaptized spouses.
Impediments to
Matrimonial Consent That May Affect a Marriage's Validity
What
both Pope Francis and the questioner had in mind were, instead, those things
that affect the ability of one or both of those entering a marriage from fully
consenting to the marriage contract. This is important because, as Canon
1057 of the Code of
Canon Law notes, "The consent of the parties, legitimately manifested
between persons qualified by law, makes marriage; no human power is able to
supply this consent." In sacramental terms, the man and the woman are the
ministers of the Sacrament of Marriage, not the priest or deacon who performs
the ceremony; therefore, in entering into the sacrament, they need to intend by
an act of the will to do what the Church intends in the sacrament:
"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."
Various
things can stand in the way of one or both of those entering a marriage giving
their full consent, including (according to Canons
1095-1098 of the Code
of Canon Law)
·
lacking "the sufficient use of reason"
·
suffering from "a grave defect of discretion of judgment
concerning the essential matrimonial rights and duties mutually to be handed
over and accepted" (e.g.,
not understanding that marriage entails sexual activity)
·
not being "able to assume the essential obligations of
marriage for causes of a psychic nature"
·
being "ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership
between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of
some sexual cooperation"
·
thinking you are marrying one person when you are really
marrying another ("Error concerning the person")
·
having been "deceived by malice, perpetrated to obtain
consent, concerning some quality of the other partner which by its very nature
can gravely disturb the partnership of conjugal life"
Of these, the chief one that Pope Francis clearly had in mind
was ignorance concerning the permanence of marriage, as his remarks about the
"culture of the provisional" make clear.
"The Culture of
the Provisional"
So what does the Holy Father mean by the "culture of the
provisional"? In a nutshell, it's the idea that something is important
only so long as we think it's important. Once we decide that something no
longer fits with our plans, we can set it aside and move on. To this mindset,
the idea that some actions we take have permanent, binding consequences that
cannot be undone simply does not make sense.
While he hasn't always used the phrase "culture of the
provisional," Pope Francis has spoken about this in many different
contexts in the past, including in discussions of abortion, euthanasia, the economy,
and environmental degradation. To many people in the modern world, including
Catholics, no decision seems irrevocable. And that obviously has serious
consequences when it comes to the question of consenting to marriage, since
such consent requires us to recognize that "marriage is a permanent
partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of
offspring."
In a world in which divorce is common, and married couples
choose to delay childbirth or even avoid it altogether, the intuitive grasp of
the permanence of marriage that previous generations had can no longer be taken
for granted. And that presents serious problems for the Church, because priests
can no longer assume that those who come to them wishing to get married intend
what the Church herself intends in the sacrament.
Does
that mean that "the great majority" of Catholics who contract
marriages today do not understand that marriage is a "permanent
partnership"? Not necessarily, and for that reason, the revision of the
Holy Father's comment to read (in the official transcript) "a portion
of our sacramental marriages are null" seems to have been prudent.
A Deeper Examination
of the Validity of Marriage
Pope
Francis's off-the-cuff comment in June 2016 was hardly the first time that he
has considered the topic. In fact, other than the "great majority"
part, everything he said (and much more) was expressed in a speech that he delivered to the Roman Rota,
the Catholic Church's "Supreme Court," 15 months earlier, on January
23, 2015:
Indeed,
the lack of knowledge of the contents of the faith might lead to what the Code
calls determinant error of the will (cf. can. 1099). This circumstance can no
longer be considered exceptional as in the past, given the frequent prevalence
of worldly thinking imposed on the magisterium of the Church. Such error
threatens not only the stability of marriage, its exclusivity and fruitfulness,
but also the ordering of marriage to the good of the other. It threatens the
conjugal love that is the “vital principle” of consent, the mutual giving in
order to build a lifetime of consortium. “Marriage now tends to be viewed as a
form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or
modified at will” (Ap. Ex. Evangelii gaudium, n. 66). This pushes married persons into a kind of mental
reservation regarding the very permanence of their union, its exclusivity,
which is undermined whenever the loved one no longer sees his or her own
expectations of emotional well-being fulfilled.
The language is much more formal in this scripted speech, but
the idea is the same as the one Pope Francis expressed in his unscripted
comments: The validity of marriage is threatened today by "worldly
thinking" that denies the "permanence" of marriage and its
"exclusivity."
The Heart of the Matter—and an Important
Consideration
In the end, then, it appears that we can separate the possible
hyperbole—"the great majority"—of Pope Francis's unscripted remarks
from the underlying issue that he discussed in his response of June 2016 and in
his speech of January 2015, and that Pope Benedict discussed in January 2013.
That underlying issue—the "culture of the provisional," and how it
affects the ability of Catholic men and women truly to consent to marriage, and
thus to contract a marriage validly—is a serious problem that the Catholic
Church must face.
Yet even if Pope
Francis's initial off-the-cuff remark is correct, it's important to remember
this: The Church as always presumed that any particular marriage that meets the
external criteria for validity is actually valid, until shown otherwise.
In other words, the concerns raised by both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis are
not the same as, say, a question about the validity of a particular baptism. In the
latter case, if there is any doubt about the validity of a baptism, the Church
requires that a provisional baptism be performed to ensure the validity of the
sacrament, since the Sacrament of Baptism is necessary for salvation.
In
the case of marriage, the question of validity only becomes a concern should
one or both spouses request an annulment. In that case, Church marriage tribunals,
from the diocesan level all the way up to the Roman Rota, may in fact consider
evidence that one or both partners did not enter into the marriage with a
proper understanding of its permanent nature, and thus did not offer the full
consent that is necessary for a marriage to be valid.
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