When I used to teach RCIA, by far the biggest issue that always came up with people preparing to enter the Church was the issue of invalid marriages or marriages with a defect of form. It can often be messy business to educate people about why the Church teaches what she does about marriage, and why it needs to be straightened out before one can proceed in the process of becoming Catholic. This is because, despite all the issues in the world and the Church herself, she really does take marriage seriously.
There is also the taking of the words of the Lord seriously, as he warns in Luke 16:18: "Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband, commmitteth adultery." Because the means and ends of marriage have become so distorted today, people can sometimes find themselves in this situation without even realizing it. And because it can affect our salvation, it needs to be addressed in the often messy and sensitive issues surrounding irregular marriages.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, and for purposes of clarity, it might be helpful to share this infographic on just what the constitutes a marriage in the Church's eyes:
There are three terms here used that must be understood and extrapolated: natural, valid, and sacramental.
Because marriage is a natural good, and obviously people of all faiths have been getting married since the beginning of time whether Catholic or otherwise. With regards to what the Church and canon law considers a "natural marriage," and how it differs from a sacramental marriage,
"While a matrimonial bond is the union resulting from the gift of self that spouses make to each other, the form it takes (either natural or sacramental) results from whether or not the spouses are baptized Christians. In this light, marriages between a man and woman are natural bonds when those who have vowed themselves to each other have not been baptized, or when one or the other of the spouses is not baptized. Thus, a non-baptized man and a non-baptized woman who marry form a natural marriage bond, as does a non-baptized person marrying a baptized person. If, and only if, both the man and the woman are baptized is it possible for the marriage to be a sacrament.
Why is this important, especially if natural bonds of marriage are already holy, as noted above? The game changer between natural and sacramental marriages is the fact of the change in the souls of those who are baptized. Baptism is what transforms a person into an adopted child of God, cleansed from all sin and thus made a true worshipper of God through Christ and given the grace of the Holy Spirit to fulfill this new way of life.
The soul is even marked indelibly, such that every act that a baptized person does, whether good or evil, is done precisely as a person marked as belonging to Christ. Nothing but nothing is done apart from the fact of being baptized, and baptism, going all the way to the soul, cannot be undone, any more than someone can his or her ethnicity or blood ties. This means that when a baptized man and a baptized woman exchange marriage vows, they do so as belonging to Christ in a new way, and even their very act of marriage becomes a Christian form of worship of God. The difference between natural and sacramental marriage is not a degree of holiness, but the end (as in goal) of each kind of marriage. Natural marriage has natural ends, goals which are for the good of life on earth. Sacramental marriage, however, includes all the ends of natural marriage and, in addition, has the purpose of the spouses helping each other (and their children) to attain heaven through the special sacramental graces that come from belonging to Christ and being married in Him."
If this speaks to the difference between a natural and a sacramental marriage (dependent on baptism), we can see that two non-Catholic but baptized Christians can have a valid, sacramental marriage. But when it comes to a marriage being considered valid in the eyes of the Church for the Catholic Christian, even when marrying a non-Catholic, there is something else to consider.
A valid Catholic marriage results from four elements: (1) the spouses are free to marry; (2) they freely exchange their consent; (3) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children; and (4) their consent is given in the canonical form, i.e., in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized church minister.
My wife and I were baptized Catholics who married in a Catholic Church by a priest, so we have a valid, sacramental marriage. We're in it for life--no grounds for annulment, no out. Thanks be to God!
But the more I learned about this element of canon law and the requirements for a marriage to be considered valid in the eyes of the Church, and the more I reflected, I realized this was not in fact the case for my parents. Though married for over forty years and fully committed to one another for life, their marriage was in fact not a valid one.
My father, a baptized Catholic had married my mother, a baptized Christian (Episcopalian). Though this wouldn't have been an issue if done according to form, it wasn't. Neither of my parents were practicing their faith at the time they got married in 1978, nor did my father have any real understanding of what the Church requires for a valid, sacramental marriage. They were married in an Episcopal church by an Episcopal priest without approval from the Catholic bishop (since my father is an Eastern-rite Catholic, in this case, the Eparchy). This is what would be considered a defect of form.
I was a little disturbed when I realized this a few years ago in light of what I had learned. What did this mean for my father, for his standing in the Church? Was there even any solution to it? And if so, how to tell my mother though they had a natural marriage, it was not in fact 'valid' from a canonical point of view?
This is when I found, through some investigation, that the Church provides an option to set right such a situation in a kind of retroactive validation that does not depend on a con-validation ceremony with something canon law calls a radical sanation. So what is this obscure term, and what does it mean and depend on? From Catholic Answers:
"Assuming that there is nothing like a previous, putative marriage that needs to be taken care of first (through a decree of nullity), and assuming that you both still have valid matrimonial consent, your marriage can be rendered valid using a canon law procedure known as radical sanation.
This term comes from the Latin phrase sanatio in radice, meaning “healing in the root.” According to the Code of Canon Law, “The radical sanation of an invalid marriage is its convalidation without the renewal of consent” (CIC 1161:1). This means you do not have to go through a new marriage ceremony.
For a radical sanation to take place, several conditions must apply. First and most basically, “A radical sanation is not to be granted unless it is probable that the parties intend to persevere in conjugal life” (CIC 1161:3). If there is evidence the one or both of the parties intends anything less than a permanent marriage, radical sanation is ruled out.
Second, “A marriage cannot be radically sanated if consent is lacking in either or both of the parties” (CIC 1162:1). You and your spouse must have valid consent regarding your marriage, and this consent must exist simultaneously in the two of you. At some point you must have consented freely to the marriage in a way that did not exclude any of the essential properties of marriage (monogamy, fidelity, permanence, and openness to children). This consent is presumed to have been given in your marriage ceremony outside the Church unless there is evidence otherwise (CIC 1107), and the consent is presumed to exist at the present unless one party has indicated otherwise.
Third, any impediments that exist must be taken care of. Many of these can be resolved as part of the radical sanation itself. In general, “A marriage which is invalid due to an impediment or due to defect of legitimate form can be sanated provided the consent of each party continues to exist” (CIC 1163:1). This would apply in your case because your marriage was invalid due to a defect of form (you failed to get a dispensation for a marriage ceremony outside the Church).
Some impediments cannot be dispensed in this manner: “A marriage which is invalid due to an impediment of the natural law or of divine positive law can be sanated only after the impediment has ceased to exist” (CIC 1163:2). Examples of such impediments include having a previous marriage bond or total, permanent impotence (which is different from sterility). The first example can cease to exist if the previous spouse is dead or if one has obtained a decree of nullity to show that there never was a valid marriage in the first place.
If your spouse would have an extremely bad reaction to the sanation procedure, then, for the sake of domestic peace, he would not need to be told about it: “A sanation can be granted validly even when one or both of the parties are unaware of it, but it is not to be granted except for serious reason” (CIC 1164). The extreme reaction of your spouse could count as the serious reason needed for this.
Normally your local bishop would be the one granting the sanation: “In individual cases radical sanation can be granted by the diocesan bishop, even if several reasons for nullity exist in the same marriage, provided the conditions mentioned in canon 1125 concerning the sanation of a mixed marriage are fulfilled” (CIC 1165:2).
Chief among the latter is the condition that “the Catholic party is to declare that he or she is prepared to remove dangers of defecting from the faith and is to make a sincere promise to do all in his or her power in order that all the children be baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church” (CIC 1125). In other words, you must promise to remain a Catholic and to do what you can to see that your children will be Catholics."
To discover this was, in fact, a great grace. My parent's marriage would have met all these conditions for it to be rendered, especially in light of what it provides in cases of serious reasons against a con-validation ceremony (in this case, the 'extreme reaction' by my mother as noted above). When I brought it up to my father (who is in his early seventies) as something he would want to take care of before he died, he was amenable, but we didn't know where to start.
As it turns out, it was mostly just a matter of paperwork. We drove to meet with an Ukranian priest, who sent off my father's baptismal record and marriage certificate to the Bishop of the local Eparchy (for a Roman Catholic, it would be the the Bishop of the diocese). A few weeks later, the letter from the bishop granting the sanation arrived, and the "healing in the root" was accomplished; my parent's marriage was retroactively made valid in the eyes of the Church.
Though canon law can be kind of a stodgy thing, in this case it provided a great grace for healing and "making things right," even if it was just a matter of episcopal paperwork. It took a little investigating, but my father (and me) have a peaceful assurance now. I'm sharing this post in the event someone reading it may happen to find themselves or someone they know in a similar situation and not know where to start. If that's the case....there you go!
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