Valid Marriages and Sacraments: Honest Deeds, Honest Words, and True Things

Now, what does this have to do with price of butter in France? Not a darn thing. However, it has an awful lot to do with the state many marriages. Because, like when I entered the Church, many Catholics enter marriage woefully confused about a lot of things, and probably very sure about a few of them. Now, the Church says the following are needed for a marriage to be valid (meaning an actual marriage existed**):

• The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament.  (CIC #1056)
• For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not 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. (CIC #1096.1)
• 1. The internal consent of the mind is presumed to conform to the words and signs used in celebrating the marriage. 2. If, however, either or both of the parties by a positive act of the will exclude marriage itself, some essential element of marriage, or some essential property of marriage, the party contracts invalidly. (CIC #1101.1-2)

A lot of people have included the first citation from the Code of Canon Law, but it is helpful to consider what the spouses are consenting to with a general notion of what we are meaning by consent. It’s a consent to the Grace of the Sacrament, a consent to be conformed to Christ and consequently to be transformed from what we were when we consented.

Now, some people, like Matt Schmitz over at First Things, have rhetorically asked if only theologians can marry. This happens to be precisely the correct question, and the answer is “obviously not.” The Church does not require you to understand the deep philosophy underlying Theology of the Body. But, she does expect the parties contracting marriage to have some sense of ideas like

And say you want me, yeah, yeah

And then you say I want you for worse or for better (worse or for better)

I would wait for ever and ever (ever and ever)

Broke your heart, I’ll put it back together

I would wait for ever and ever (I want you for ever and ever)

Even Hozier, of Take Me To Church fame, suggests in Jackie and Wilson that with his

Mid-youth crisis all said and done

I need to be youthfully felt ’cause, God, I never felt young…

We’ll name our children

Jackie and Wilson,

Raise ’em on rhythm and blues.