POPE FRANCIS' REMARKS ABOUT MARRIAGE

 The Context of Pope Francis's Remarks

On June 16, 2016, Pope Francis ignited a firestorm in the Catholic world with some unscripted comments about the validity of Catholic marriages today. In the initial version of his remarks, the Holy Father declared that "the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null." The following day, June 17, the Vatican released an official transcript in which the comment was revised (with Pope Francis's approval) to read that "a portion of our sacramental marriages are null."

Was this simply another case of the Pope making off-the-cuff remarks without consideration for how they would be reported by the media, or is there, in fact, a deeper point that the Holy Father was trying to express? What makes a Catholic marriage valid, and is it harder today to contract a valid marriage than it was in the past?

Pope Francis's comments may have been unexpected, but they did not come out of left field. On June 16, he was addressing a pastoral congress for the Diocese of Rome, when, as the Catholic News Age

A layman asked about the “crisis of marriage” and how Catholics can help educate youth in love, help them learn about sacramental marriage, and help them overcome “their resistance, delusions and fears.”

The questioner and the Holy Father shared three specific concerns, none of which is in itself controversial: first, that there is a "crisis of marriage" in the Catholic world today; second, that the Church must increase its efforts to educate those who are entering into marriage so that they are properly prepared for the Sacrament of Marriage; and third, that the Church must help those who are resistant to marriage for various reasons to overcome that resistance and embrace the Christian vision of marriage.

What Did Pope Francis Actually Say?

In the context of the question that the Holy Father was asked, we can better understand his answer. As the Catholic News Agency reports, "The Pope answered from his own experience":

“I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,” he said.

“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”

He later noted that many Catholics "don't know what the sacrament [of marriage] is," nor do they understand "the beauty of the sacrament." Catholic marriage-preparation courses have to overcome cultural and social issues, as well as the "culture of the provisional," and they must do so in a very short time. The Holy Father mentioned a woman in Buenos Aires who "reproached" him for the lack of marriage preparation in the Church, saying, “we have to do the sacrament for our entire lives, and indissolubly, to us laity they give four (marriage preparation) conferences, and this is for our entire life.”

For most priests and those engaged in Catholic marriage preparation, Pope Francis's remarks were not very surprising—with the exception, perhaps, of the initial claim (modified the next day) that "the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null." The very fact that Catholics in most countries divorce at a rate comparable to non-Catholics suggests that the questioner's concerns, and the Holy Father's answer, are addressing a very real problem.