Sect. 279The Church’s Control Over Marriage—impedimentsThe Church’s Control Over Marriage—impediments

I. The relation between man and wife has such an important bearing upon the religious and civil welfare of the community, that marriage cannot be said to be a mere contract. There must be some restriction as to the parties competent to marry, and some regulation as to their mutual rights and duties, and as to the continuance of the relation. To whom should this control belong? The State claims it on the ground of the civil consequences of marriage. On the other hand, Christian marriage is a sacrament, and therefore, like all else that is sacred, belongs to the Catholic Church. Leo XIII. (Encyc. Arcanum) teaches that Christ entrusted to the Church the entire control over Christian marriage. It is hers to limit, for wise reasons, the competency of certain persons to contract with each other, or at all. She has the right to decide whether error, or force, or fraud has annulled the contract. Above all, she is the guardian of the unity and perpetuity of the marriage bond. These powers she has always and everywhere exercised, not as derived from the consent of governments, but as given to her directly by her Divine Founder. When Christ condemned polygamy and divorce, He was not acting as the delegate of the Roman governor of Judæa, or of the tetrarch of Galilee. St. Paul’s judgment on the incestuous Corinthian in no way assumed the tacit consent of Nero. The Councils of Aries, Chalcedon, and many others down to Trent, have all issued decrees concerning marriage independently of emperors and kings. Nay, the three great imperial jurisprudents, Honorius, Theodosius the Younger, and Justinian, acknowledged that in matters relating to marriage they were merely the guardians and defenders of the sacred canons. “Therefore,” says Leo XIII., “rightly was it defined at the Council of Trent that the Church has the power of establishing diriment impediments of matrimony (sess. xxiv. can. 4), and that matrimonial cases belong to ecclesiastical judges (can. 12).”

Although the Pontiff teaches that Christ entrusted to the Church the entire control (totam disciplinam) of Christian marriage, he does not say that the State has nothing to do with marriage. On the contrary, he insists that the Church does not wish to interfere with the civil consequences of marriage. In her regulations she ever pays attention to circumstances of time, place, and character, and does her best for the public welfare. Her greatest desire is to be at peace with the State, seeing that so much good results when the two work together. It is worthy of note that a few great theologians and canonists have held that the State also has the power of establishing diriment impediments, but this opinion is now commonly rejected.

II. Just as civil contracts are subject to the laws of the State, in like manner the contract of marriage is governed by canon law. The chief laws concerning marriage are those treating of the capacity or incapacity of certain classes of persons to enter into the contract. The impediments are of two kinds: forbidding (impedientia), and diriment (dirimentia). The former render marriage unlawful; the latter make it null and void. Persons who marry under a forbidding impediment contract really and truly, but sin grievously thereby. When the impediment is diriment, those who attempt marriage not only sin grievously, but are not married at all. The full treatment of these impediments belongs to moral theology.

Scholion. Though Christian marriage is a sacrament, the Council of Trent has condemned those who hold “that the married state is higher than the state of virginity or of celibacy, and that it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity or in celibacy than to be united in matrimony” (sess. xxiv. can. 10).

The teaching of the Council is based upon the words of St. Paul and of our Lord Himself. “He that is without a wife,” says the Apostle, “is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord: that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of the world, how she may please her husband” (1 Cor. 7:32–34). “There are eunuchs,” says our Lord, “who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it” (Matt. 19:12; cf. Apoc. 14:3, 4). St. Thomas Aquinas has treated of virginity in his usual masterly fashion (Contra Gent., iii. c. 136). The reader will there find a complete answer to the common objections against the unmarried state.

On matrimony see St. Thomas, Supp. qq. xli.–lxviii.; Sanchez, De Sancto Matrimonii Sacramento; De Augustinis, op. cit., lib. iv.; Palmieri, De Matrimonio Christiano; Ballerini; op. cit., vol. vi.; Card. Gasparri, De Matrimonio; Scheeben, Mysterien, p. 471; Atzberger, op. cit., p. 769; Didon, Indissolubilité et Divorce; Turmel, op. cit., pp. 157, 346, 469.