Article Six. On the Celebration of Mixed Matrimony.

658. On licit assistance. 1. By common law, even in licit mixed marriages it is not permitted to furnish anything except passive assistance, which now consists in this, that the parish priest asks the questions concerning consent (perhaps with a brief address), but besides these is present by no positive act and by no sacred rite.¹

a. Active assistance is therefore especially forbidden so that the faithful may be admonished that the Church detests mixed marriages and never ceases to deter the faithful from contracting them.

b. Therefore a matrimony of this kind must be contracted outside the church, without sacred vestment and without any ritual ceremony. From a declaration of the Holy See, the cassock or customary prelatial garments are not considered sacred.²

2. Nevertheless, where graver evils would be feared from the denial of absolutely all active assistance, the ordinary can permit the matrimony to be celebrated in church with some of the customary ecclesiastical ceremonies, always excluding the celebration of Mass with the nuptial blessing.³

a. Licit assistance is partly passive, partly less solemn active assistance; not only the votive Mass for spouses, but also any other Mass which would be considered as a complementary matrimonial ceremony, is always excluded. Therefore it is permitted to celebrate the matrimony in church, to use a surplice and stole, and to employ some sacred rite, e.g. the blessing of the spouses such as is usually contained in diocesan rituals.

b. The evils for the prevention of which the Holy See permits some active assistance are especially these: complaints and hatreds of heretics against the faithful and the Church; the danger of civil matrimony or of matrimony before a heretical minister; the danger that the cautions will not be observed or that the Catholic spouse will defect from the faith, and like things.

3. In illicit mixed marriages, namely those in which the due cautions have not been furnished, not even passive assistance can be furnished. Nevertheless Pius VIII on 25 March 1830 and Gregory XVI on 30 April 1841 granted merely passive assistance for Prussia, Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary. This assistance consists in this, that those about to marry express consent before the parish priest, who does not ask for the consent and does not employ any liturgical rite.

a. Since the questions concerning consent are required for the validity of matrimony by the decree Ne temere and by the new Code, the Holy See declared that these same questions are not necessary for validity in illicit mixed marriages, but that merely passive assistance is tolerated according to the concession and instruction of Gregory XVI.

b. Finally, on 5 August 1916 the Holy Office declared that merely passive assistance is tolerated only for those regions to which special concessions were given before the decree Ne temere; but in other regions mixed marriages, even if contracted with merely passive assistance, are invalid. Since such concessions were given for Austria, Hungary, and Transylvania, mixed marriages contracted there with merely passive assistance are valid.

¹ Cn. 1102, 1, 2.

² S. Officium, 17 Jan. 1877.

³ Cn. 1109, 3; Cn. 1102, 2.

659. On approaching a heretical minister.¹ a. It is permitted to approach a heretical minister as a civil official, whether before or after the contracted matrimony, for a grave cause, where for example civil law prescribes this for fulfilling the civil act.

b. It is not permitted to approach a heretical minister as a sacred minister for celebrating matrimony; and those who do this sin gravely by reason of the ecclesiastical prohibition, scandal, and forbidden communication in sacred things, and furthermore they incur an excommunication reserved to the ordinary.²

c. If the parish priest certainly knows that the spouses have already approached the heretical minister or are going to approach him, let him not assist at their matrimony except from a most grave cause, scandal being removed and the ordinary first consulted.³

But if they approach the parish priest after they have already contracted before a heretical minister, as far as can be done care must be taken that the cautions be furnished and that the Catholic party, repenting of the deed, first be absolved from the committed sin and from the contracted censure.

¹ Here belongs the twofold instruction of the Holy Office, 17 Feb. 1864, to the bishops of the kingdom of Hanover, and 12 Dec. 1888, to the bishops of the oriental rites; Cn. 1063.

² Cn. 2319.

³ Cn. 1063, 2.