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Love and Marriage

Proof of invalidity

Usually,  such a process takes a long time,  since a  marriage is always assumed to be valid and it is up to the married couple to unquestionably prove invalidity. A validly concluded and consummated marriage cannot be  declared invalid by the Church unless there are reasons for invalidity such as  fraudulent  marriage  intentions,  force,  deception, or when  partners are too closely related.

With  reference   to  the  Gospels,  the  Church  is  certainly  right  in  maintaining that a marriage is insoluble.  But the question is: what can the Church do when a marriage does not succeed, perhaps without any personal fault?  Is  it not beyond the strength of many people to have to go through life alone, perhaps after having been married for just a few years?  Are there not clauses for exceptions in the writings of Paul and Matthew (see Cor 7, 12-15; Mt 5,32)?

However, on the other hand: does not every exception weaken the stability of a marriage? Looking at the whole picture, does a divorce not bring more suffering than the tragedy of an  unsuccessful  marriage?  The possibility of legal separation  takes away the support a married couple needs, especially in a crisis situation.

For many years  the  Church  has been facing these pressing questions. She must, without any doubt, follow Christ's demand: "preach the word, be it urgent in season and out of season..." (2 Timothy 4,2). But when a marriage has finally failed and a new civil marriage been concluded, should the Church in these cases refuse to give the strength of the Sacraments to the persons involved who need it so urgently? The Church has seriously concerned herself with this problem and there are suggestions that this issue should be cleared  worldwide. God does not abandon anybody who turns toward Him and no man will be written  off by the Church either. There is always a way of faith  out of a ruined life.  A  personal  conversation with a priest is recommended in cases like this.

Matrimonial and sexual morals

Apart from the position of the Church regarding divorce,  it is above all her attitude toward the questions of matrimonial and sexual morals which causes the most heated discussions. Here, the discrepancies between generally accepted social opinions and those of the  Church  become  particularly evident. What is right ... being socially "in" or agreeing with what the Church says?

We cannot  and  do  not  want to discuss every single question, so we will limit ourselves to the basics:  Man's  conscience  needs points of orientation. These are  the regulations of the Church which no one may ignore as long as he or she wants to Popes Paul VI and John Paul II do not intend to make final, authoritative and binding decisions.  Furthermore,  the  Church  resolutely  defends any personal decision of  conscience.  She  knows  that  every  human  being is a unique and  distinct person with freedom, responsibility, conscience and an individual life history.

Love and Marriage

Marriage and faith

Many young couples hesitate to proceed with this final commitment, knowing that marriage is exposed to unforeseen developments. But we cannot plan, secure and  test  everything  to  the last detail. Sometimes, we have to make a decision, because we cannot leave things forever revocable. Having been together for some time, many couples decide to get married, especially with the prospect of raising a family, in order to put their relationship into a firm and legally protected framework. 

The  celebration in the church reinforces the consciousness of finally and forever belonging together. Should a crisis emerge, the fact of a church wedding can give an important support. Many older and experienced married couples confirm this. It is true that marital difficulties cannot simply be resolved by faith and prayer. But faith in the God of love and reconciliation gives us confidence in the possibility of lifelong faithfulness.  This faith helps the spouses  to accept  each other, forgive and allow and dare a new beginning should they disappoint each other and fail.

This shows how  important  it is not to put the religious life into a file after the wedding day, but to continuously care for it together.

Divorce
 

Jesus voiced the opinion that divorce is essentially directed against love. "What God has joined together,  let not man put asunder"  (Matthew 19, 6). The Church derives the insolubility of a validly concluded marriage from this sentence. She does not intend to bind and force people to hold on to the past.  Rather,  the thought of  insolubility  reinforces  the  endeavor to exhaust all  possibilities of living in marital community.

Divorce shows that a couple has  stopped looking to the future  together and trying to find each other always anew.  Therefore,  Jesus radically opposes people continuously looking for new circumstances under which a married  couple might eventually be divorced. Jesus demands of us  free decisions for a faithfulness which excludes loopholes right from the start. The aim of this exigency is not only to avoid marriage breakup  but to influence the partnership in such a way that  divorce becomes out of the question.

Reality,  however,  proves  that  even  with  a Christian marriage, breakup and the entailing separation of partners cannot always be avoided. Separation is often the lesser of two evils. In such cases the Church permits partners to live separately from each other and get a civil divorce because of the civil law consequences.  But  this  does  not  change the legal view of the Church regarding the continuity of the marriage concluded before the altar.

Sometimes, it is said that a married couple was "divorced" by the Pope. In reality the Pope made a declaration of invalidity which has nothing to do with divorce. In this case, it is established through proceedings before the matrimonial court of the Church that a valid marriage was not concluded in the first place.

Love and Marriage

Marriage is a Sacrament

Christian  marriage  shall  reflect  the  love and  trust of Christ for His Church. He loves His Church despite all her faults and imperfections, and He does not leave her. The prototype of  this link between Christ and His Church is  already  shown in  the  love  of  God  for  His people, Israel, in  the  Old Testament.  He  faithfully accompanied  them  through  all  times. This "covenant of God with  His  people" is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible in terms of the image of a marriage. (Isaiah 50,1; Jeremiah 2,2; 5,7).

The unconditional faithfulness of God and Jesus Christ to humanity and the Church should be mirrored in the love of the spouses.  This love can correspond so closely  to  Christ's  relationship  with  the Church that it is not only an image of His love,  but  that  His love itself is becoming present through the love of the married couple.  For this reason,  Paul calls matrimony a "profound mystery".

What happens between two people on a minor scale takes place between Christ and the Church on a large scale.  Thus,  God  can be experienced in the love of the spouses.  Therefore, the Christian marriage is a Sacrament, a sign, a place and  means  for  divine  action.  It is not  merely a  community for the purposes of financial convenience or an institutionalized form of procreation and child raising.

Church wedding

A church wedding is more than just an  extra  blessing compared to a civil ceremony. A man and a woman commit themselves to each other before a priest or deacon  and  at  least  two  witnesses,  but  usually  a  larger  community,  and thereby administer to each other the Sacrament of Matrimony.  The validity of a marriage of Catholics is tied to this rite of the Church, which, like every other Sacrament, has its own distinct form.

The community participates in this celebration and learns that God becomes present in a special way in the  Sacrament of Matrimony not only to the spouses, but also to the members of the community. However, the Sacrament is not limited to the Church wedding but is very closely connected to the couple's history, beginning  long before the wedding and ending with their death.

Although  marriage,  especially  the  Christian  marriage,  is   today  being  called into  question,  the majority of couples opt for a Church wedding. This does not seem  to  jibe with  the  generally  suspected  decrease of the Church's credibility and  the distancing of people from the Church.  For this reason we  often hear that for  many  people  the  ceremony at the Church is just a solemn setting for the wedding. However, in  many  cases,  this is not so. Most brides and bridegrooms,  even  those  who seem little engaged in the Church, feel that marriage is an  important point of their  lives  and that the success of their common plans does not depend solely on themselves.