My understanding (limited) of Roman Catholic doctrine is that marriage is a sacrament that is not bestowed on the couple by the Priest, but by the bride and groom on each other. A. Is this right? and B. So does there even have to be a priest there? If not, does that mean that the prenuptual counseling and whatnot is also not required? How would it work, logistically, if two Catholics in good standing married each other without a priest?
To your last Q, then it wouldn’t be an sanctified marriage in the eyes of the chatholic church.
This is all IIRC, as I haven’t been a practicing catholic for 15 years…
I believe a priest must marry them to be sanctified in the church’s eyes.
You are correct that the ministers of the sacrament are the spouses themselves, not the priest. However, for the marriage to be valid, it must take place according to the correct canonical form. This requires the presence of a priest/deacon and witnesses (Code of Canon Law canon 1108):
Canon 1116 of the Code recognises the possibility of exceptions to this, and the spouses can marry in the presence of two witnesses only, without a sacred minister, in certain “extreme/emergency” circumstances:
The theology of it is that, while the couple are the “ministers of the sacrament” to each other, the priest or bishop is there as the official witness representing the Church (meaning the universal God-given institution) and the bestowers of God’s blessing through her. A deacon presiding at a wedding fulfills the first of these roles but is not competent in terms of empowerment to bestow the marriage blessing.
It’s important to note that Catholics distinguish between a sacramental marriage vowed within and blessed by the Church, and a contractual marriage comprising only the partners’ vows (along with such other ceremonial as they choose, of course). They consider both forms valid, but only the sacramental marriage to partake of the fulness of what a marriage can be.
The ministers of the Sacrament are the husband and wife.
In keeping with all sacramental theology that is predicated on the concept of the Body of Christ, the church needs to be involved–it is not a private action involving the couple, only.
The normal official witness for the church may be a priest or a deacon (with the fairly odd exceptions noted, above).
The rules regarding pre-nuptial counseling are matters of administration required by the church to attempt to ensure that the couple has given due thought and consideration to the commitment they are about to pledge. It is not a sacramental obligation so much as a practical one. A failure to engage in prenuptial guidance does nothing to harm the validity of the sacrament.
I am confused by this statement. I’m not being snide; I simply do not know what you were saying.
So the Priest (or deacon) is there simply as a required witness (for the Church), then? OK, that makes sense. Thanks for all your answers!
Sorry! Let’s try it again.
By their ordination, a priest, and even more so a bishop, is empowered to act formally in behalf of the Catholic Church, representing and embodying it in a way that a layman does not. Through his person, the Church Universal is embodied as being present at the union of the couple in matrimony.
In addition to this role, he is empowered to pronounce the blessing of the Church formally upon the newly wedded couple (“the marriage blessing”).
The inherent capacities bestowed on a deacon at his ordination are rather more limited. He still embodies the Church as witness to the wedding,but he is not equipped by his ordination with the power to pronounce the Church’s blessing. He may of course bless, but in his own name in the same way as a layman, rather than that of the church. He therefore is not empowered to pronounce the Church’s blessing as would a priest or bishop.
I understand that a deacon does not share in the full powers of the priesthood - he obviously cannot confect the sacrament of the Eucharist - but I’ve not come across this interpretation limiting his ability to give an “official” wedding blessing in the name of the Church. I don’t think that the Catchecism suggests this when it discusses the role of a deacon (para 1570):
And there’s no suggestion in para 1630 that a wedding blessing given by a deacon is anything other than an “official” blessing in the name of the Church or that it differs from that given by a priest:
Intriguing. I am clearly wrong in what I said above, then. Thanks for the correction.
Catholics in Sudan have been getting married without priests for several years, due to a severe priestly drought. Their marriages are perfectly valid in the eyes of the Church.
If you don’t get married with a priest as witness because you don’t have one handy, the Church doesn’t have any complaints. If you do it because you don’t want to go through pre-marital counseling, then the Church doesn’t consider your marriage valid, not “because there wasn’t a priest there”, but because… well, what the heck are you hiding? What are you so afraid of hearing? If you do it because one spouse has a previous, not-annulled-(yet) Church marriage, there’s a serious defect of form, one called bigamy.
Several years back there was an article in the local newspaper (that newspaper now has all its archives in the web, but it would still be in Spanish), one of their regular interviews to PhD candidates. In this case, the doctorate was in Law and the candidate a priest. His thesis was a study of marriage cases brought before Church tribunals before the “have a priest there and have the priest write down a record” rule was implemented.
He found 13 cases; all of them were cases were a couple had been married for years but now the husband wasn’t owning up. Either he was attempting to marry another woman or join a convent. The procedures were similar: witnesses were called before the tribunal, to attest to whether those two people were married or not. This could mean hundreds of witnesses (two whole villages, in one of the cases).
The idea was that it’s a lot faster to show a piece of paper written by the only person in the village who absolutely had to be literate, than to call 200 witnesses.
In theory, someone who’s been living as husband and wife with someone of the opposite gender, and people know this, could still go to the Rota to have the marriage declared valid… but calling a priest and asking him to fill a piece of paper is faster and cheaper. Premarital counseling is a tool to help the couple deal with the pressures of marriage, requiring it or not is decided locally.
Interesting, Nava. The neopagan community has a story (I don’t know if it’s verified by any evidence, but your post makes me think it’s not impossible) that in Ye Olden Days when there were wandering priests in Europe, instead of every village having a church, the priest could be expected through most towns once a year or so. Obviously, people wanted or needed to get married more often than that, and so a couple could just announce, “Hey, we’re married now!” in front of a group of villagers and they’d say, “Um, okay.” and the two were considered legally married until the next priest visited and did it up proper. Any children conceived or born during this period of time were just as legitimate as those born after they were married by the priest. A modified version is still done today, with many neopagan couples choosing to do a non-legal ceremony called a handfasting a year and a day before a legal wedding.
I do know that I have to keep records of people that I legally marry (I became a legally ordained minister through a *very *liberal Christian church in order to be able to perform legal weddings), even though the state keeps their own records of the marriage licenses and certificates. I don’t know if it’s the same in all states or not. I just keep a little notebook of names and dates, that’s all the state requires of me.
[QUOTEThe way in which a marriage is enacted has changed over time, as has the institution of marriage itself. In Europe during the Middle Ages, marriage was enacted by the couple promising verbally to each other that they would be married to each other; the presence of a priest or other witnesses was not required.
This promise was known as the “verbum”. If made in the present tense (e.g. “I marry you”), it was unquestionably binding; if made in the future tense (“I will marry you”), it would, by itself constitute a betrothal, but if the couple proceeded to have sexual relations, the union was a marriage.
As part of the Reformation, the role of recording marriages and setting the rules for marriage passed to the state; by the 1600s many of the Protestant European countries had heavy state involvement in marriage. As part of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church added a requirement of witnesses to the promise, which under normal circumstances had to include the priest.[/QUOTE]
Yes, this is Wikipedia. But it confirms what I’ve read elsewhere; things were more informal in the old days. Especially if the couple was not noble–in which case the marriage usually had political meaning.
We still have Common Law Marriage in Texas–going back to the days when it might take more than 9 months for a preacher to come around. But there’s no “Common Law Divorce.” Ending a common law marriage requires the same legal steps as any divorce.
My understanding is as follows. There are two things going on in a Marriage, the Sacramental (Church) aspect and the legal (secular) aspect. I write only of the Sacramental aspect, which is what would concern the church. The ministers of the Sacrament are the couple themselves, so the only people ABSOLUTELY necessary for the Wedding are the couple themselves; thus two people isolated on a desert island, who wished to marry and were eligible, could do so. However, because their Wedding would not have taken place in accordance with the procedural norms of the church, it would be illicit. That is absolutely not the same thing as invalid. Many things can be valid but illicit - such as a child born out of wedlock, which is clearly VALID - there (s)he is, crawling around - but not, in the church’s view, licit (legitimate). Back to our couple on the desert island. Their “private” Wedding (private only because no-one else is on the island) is absolutely valid, but they are the only witnesses to their own Wedding, and to the fact that their INTENT (intent is very important to Sacrament) was such at the time. If, at a later point in time, they are rescued and returned to physical communication with the Church, they must legitimise their Wedding (just as a couple can legitimise an illegitimate child by subsequently marrying) post-hoc, by going to see the Bishop, telling him what they have done, and completing the administrative formalities. The problem, of course, arises if it is years later and one of them doesn’t want to stay married and thus refuses to bear witness to the original Wedding. If they do not, on return to the physical community of the Church, STILL agree on what was their intent, then the Bishop has no way to affirm (or deny) their Marriage. In that case (I suggest) they are STILL married, but only God (who knows the secrets of all hearts and who was, of course, a mind-reading and invisible witness to the Marriage) knows that they are married and their Marriage, in this world, will forever be “valid but illicit”.
The Greek Orthodox Church (which is not Catholic, but close) has a concept called “economy” which more or less means that if you approach something with an honest attempt to fulfill the requirements but somehow fall short of all the technical little details, then God will step in and fill in the gap or else ignore the fault. The point is to look at a person’s intent. Did you try your best to act reasonably and responsibly, or did you look for an excuse not to do something that you really didn’t want to do?
Which interestingly enough, require that the common-law married couple represent themselves as married, in a sort of echo of the verbum. Just shacking up doesn’t do it- you have to say in public that you’re married for it to be a legally valid common-law marriage.
I know this, because my wife and I are friends with a couple who’s been shacked up for some 15 years, but where the female partner doesn’t ever want to get married due to some (IMO) wacko-feminist ideas about how marriage makes the woman the man’s property. She also happened to have been an attorney up until very recently, so I have no doubt that she researched common-law marriage to death.