Thread by @jdflynn

The bishops of Helena and Baltimore permit outdoor weddings under limited circumstances, a fact that has become a source of confusion or frustration for some Catholics, who say that marriage "belongs" in a Church. But is this true? Has it always been true? Here's a thread.

The Church teaches that consent makes marriage, and that when two parties who are baptized consent to be married, that marriage is, by virtue of their baptism, a sacrament.

If two baptized Protestants get married on horseback in Vegas, the Church presumes they have a sacrament.

But Catholics are required to observe 'canonical form' for the validity of their marriage- this means that they must marry (ordinarily) in a sacred place, in the presence of a priest, deacon, or duly designated lay person, and according to a certain formula.

The bishop can dispense from some of those things, or give permission for them to do otherwise, but those are the baseline requirements for Catholics to have a valid (and therefore sacramental) marriage.
(for simplicity, I am only referring to the Latin Church.)

(Incidentally, this rule applies to everyone who is a baptized Catholic. If a person is baptized a Catholic but raised a Protestant, or with no faith, and does not consider himself to be a Catholic at all, he still can only validly contract marriage according to canonical form.)

There is one sacrament of marriage, and it is the same sacrament for baptized Catholics and baptized non-Catholics. But while baptized non-Catholics can confect the sacrament in a variety of ways and places, baptized Catholics can (usually) only do so according to canonical form.

Before the Council of Trent, the Church allowed for Catholics to be married according to the various customs of their cultures, so long as consent was clearly and demonstrably exchanged.

In 1215, at the 4th Lateran Council, the Church forbade clandestine marriages (in which couples exchanged consent in secret, and in private.) Even while forbidding them, it still recognized them as be valid.

But clandestine marriages were a big problem, even after the 4th Lateran Council. And once Luther emerged, the problem became even more acute: Luther argued that the Church endorsed clandestine marriages, which he considered a scandal against the believing community.

Luther said that clandestine marriages were necessarily invalid, and that the Church was enabling them. This, he argued, sowed scandal and social disorder.

At first, the Council of Trent considered responding to Luther with an anathema, through this proposal made in 1547:

"If anyone says that secret marriages entered by free consent of the parties are
not true and valid marriages and that the parents have the power to validate or
invalidate them: let him be anathema. However, the Church prohibited
such matrimonies for good and reasonable causes."

But the council fathers at Trent didn't go for that. It didn't solve their problem. They came upon another solution. While consent really does make marriage, they said, we can require Catholics not to exchange consent outside of a prescribed form as a condition of validity.

Since the Church has the authority to regulate the celebration of the sacraments, this allowed them to put an end to clandestine marriages involving Catholics while, at the same time, recognizing their theoretical possibility.

They debated for a while. Some of their other ideas seemed to undercut the doctrinal understanding the sacrament of marriage is established by consent among the baptized. They didn't want it to seem as if the priest, instead of the bride and the groom, "made" the marriage.

But eventually they established canonical form as a normative requirement for the valid marriage of Catholics, and though it took a while to really get established, it has been a normative requirement ever since.

Think about that for minute. This means that for the first 1500+ years of Western Christianity, Catholics get married validly (and therefore sacramentally) in a variety of ways. Those marriages were as sacramental, and as holy, and as real, as any marriage celebrated now.

The requirement of canonical form for validity was established to resolve a particular cultural/ecclesial/pastoral problem that existed in the 16th century. It is not a matter of divine law or precept. It is malleable, according to the judgment of the Church.

Since Trent, however, a lot of reasons for the requirement of form have circulated that are not the original reason. The idea that a Church is a more proper place for a sacrament, or that getting married in a Church conveys the sacredness of the thing.

Those are nice ideas, but they are not the reasons why we have canonical form. And they ignore the fact that sacramental marriages are effected by baptized non-Catholics outside of canonical form every single day.

So now some bishops are deciding to respond to a pastoral need of TODAY, not of 500 years ago, with policies they believe respect the fact that people have a right to attempt marriage, and that it is better for people to have sacramental grace than not have sacramental grace.

Those are pastoral judgment calls.

Just like the imposition of the requirement for canonical form was at the Council of Trent.

The Church is called to be as generous with grace as she possibly can be.

If bishops recognize that following cultural trends is more important to some nominal Catholics than following Church norms, and thus ppl are going to attempt marriage outside no matter what the Church says, they may not see a reason to keep those ppl from the grace of marriage.

It seems clear to some bps that it would be good if as many ppl who intend marriage could actually have a valid marriage, and the sacramental grace that goes along with it.

And this isn't progressive, it's actually super-traddy, b/c it's pre-Trent.

In fact, some very orthodox bishops have said that the requirement of form for validity has served its purpose, but now more frequently stands in the way of the right to marriage than supports it. And thus, some say, it stands in the way of grace.

All of that will have to be meted out in the years to come, but some bishops are beginning to take steps to respond pastorally, within the bounds of what the Church teaches, to a breakdown of the family and a decline of marriage in our country.

If you ask me, that's pretty damn commendable.

salus animarum suprema lex est.