Section — Merkelbach, Pastoral Questions
§ 2. Concerning the Subject of the Sacrament of Matrimony
- I. All baptized persons contracting among themselves and laboring under no impediment are a subject capable of a valid sacrament of matrimony.
Not only Catholics, but also heretics and schismatics or apostates, cannot contract valid matrimony without by that very fact receiving the sacrament of matrimony, provided that they are truly baptized and contract with a baptized person.
This is altogether certain and admitted by all.
"§ 1. Christ the Lord raised the matrimonial contract itself between baptized persons to the dignity of a sacrament.
§ 2. Therefore between baptized persons there cannot be a valid matrimonial contract without its being by that very fact a sacrament" (can. 1012).
- II. The worthy and fruitful reception of the sacrament of matrimony besides requires that the spouses be free from every prohibiting impediment and endowed with the state of grace.
For the sacrament of matrimony is a sacrament of the living, which therefore is received sacrilegiously if the soul is not living by the supernatural life of grace. Nevertheless sacramental grace in matrimony more probably revives afterward, when the obstacle of sin is removed by sincere conversion.
- III. Valid matrimony between a baptized person and an unbelieving party is not a sacrament, not even on the part of the faithful one.
Although many contradict it, this opinion seems certain. "For matrimony," says the Angelic Doctor, "cannot limp."1 If the matrimonial contract is invalid on one side, it must necessarily be invalid also on the other side. Similarly, if the sacrament is lacking on one side, neither is it present on the other side. But no one doubts that an unbelieving party is incapable of the sacrament. Therefore neither does the baptized party receive the sacrament.
"But the opinion of the adversaries seems to have arisen from this, that in the sacrament they see nothing other than the exterior rite by which grace is immediately conferred; for certainly, as to receiving sacramental grace, each of the spouses is entirely independent of the other party, and the condition of one cannot impede the gratification of the other. But if you keep before your eyes that grace is not conferred except through the mediation of the sacramental bond, and that the sacramental bond itself is the sole immediate exterior effect of the sacrament, then there will not be even a doubtful matter for you. For the bond is a certain relation between two, and indeed a relation of equiparance of the same account in each; therefore, if one is absolutely incapable of the sacramental bond because of the defect of baptism, the other, although baptized, seems likewise incapable of a sacramental nexus, not absolutely indeed, but with respect to the non-baptized person. Therefore there is no sacrament there, where no sacramental effect can either exist or be conceived."2
2 Billot, S.J., De Ecclesiae Sacramentis. De matrimonio, thesis 38, apud Prummer, op. cit., p. 444.
- IV. If of two non-baptized spouses only one is baptized, that matrimony does not become a sacrament, even for the baptized party.
The same reason is valid here as for establishing the preceding opinion.
But it is astonishing here that almost no one contradicts it. Truly, they do not dare, because such a matrimony, even if after the baptism of one party it has been consummated, remains liable to dissolution by the Pauline privilege or even by pontifical dispensation, as was said above nn. 13, 7° and 14, 2°; and it is entirely unheard of that a matrimony which is a sacrament should be dissolved after consummation. But is there not here a new and valid argument in favor of the preceding thesis? For why does the matrimony previously legitimate not become, for the converted party, a sacramental bond, as it does when both spouses are baptized, unless because "matrimony cannot limp?"
- V. If both spouses are converted and baptized, their matrimony by that very fact becomes a sacrament.
It is the more common opinion, which few contradict.