Issue: Is Marriage Still Binding?
by Rev. Michael Dogali
It may shock some to hear marriage referred to as being contractual, but indeed it is. For roughly the first thousand years of the church's history, there was no specific Christian rite of marriage. Christians contracted marriage according to the civil and family ceremonies of the times. Marriage was seen culturally as a contract between two families. As part of the contract, the bride left her family and joined the groom's family. Attitudes toward marriage have changed over the centuries. The personal love between a man and a woman came to be recognized as the primary motivation for marriage, replacing contractual arrangements between families. And since love can wane, we are presented with a question. Is marriage still permanent?
There are over six million divorced Catholics in the United States. A number of those persons feel alienated from the Church. Should they remarry outside the Church, these Catholics will be impeded from the solace and strength of the sacraments. The annulment procedure is an attempt to bring justice and compassion to many divorced and separated Catholics whose marriage actually was one in appearance only.
Much misunderstanding on the procedure is due partly to the word annulment. The precise term is declaration of nullity. This declaration is a judgement by the Church that what seemed to be a marriage never was in fact a true marriage. A declaration of nullity is granted when it can be shown that some essential or juridical defect made a particular marriage invalid from the beginning despite outward appearance, despite even the good faith of the partners or the establishment of a family.
Marriage is effected by consent, freely and knowingly saying "yes" to all that marriage involves; therefore, in considering a particular marriage, this "yes" is the key issue. When a couple said their vows, did both partners freely accept and clearly understand the lifelong commitment they were making? Did both partners, at that time, have the personal capacity to carry out consent, to form a community of life with the chosen partner?
While carefully protecting Jesus' teaching of the sacredness of marriage, the Church also is obliged to provide justice for anyone whose marriage has failed when it can be shown with moral certainty that the marriage lacked from its onset some essential element for a true sacramental bond. The indissolubility of sacramental marriage remains a central Catholic teaching. Popes Paul VI and John Paul II strongly reaffirmed the uncompromising doctrine that a consummated, sacramental marriage bond is lifelong and cannot be broken by civil or ecclesiastical authority.
The marriage tribunals of the Catholic Church do not seek to assign blame for marital breakups. They seek only to understand a failed marriage and determine whether either or both partners lacked proper consent or the ability to carry out consent. Church law affirms the personal relationship, the intimate partnership between the spouses, as a crucial, basic dimension of marriage. While conjugal union is expressed most specifically and intimately in sexual relations, it also extends to the couple's total life together, to physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual community. In short, marriage is a union of persons, not simply a union of bodies. The purpose of marriage is to give life, but equally, to share it.