II.

Brief History

Matrimony is a holy sacrament, officiated by a priest, of uniting a man to a woman.

Through this holy sacrament, the man and woman become one, for as the Lord Jesus said in

Matthew 19:5,6 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his

wife and the two shall become one flesh. So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore

what God has joined together, let not man separate

So from the beginning, the approach of the Church to marriage has been anchored in

Genesis, when God saw that it is not good for a man to be alone so He made a suitable helper for

him. It was then believed that the first marriage ceremony between the first people, Adam and

Eve happened. (Gen. 18-24) Marriage became sacred for it was specifically designed by the Lord

for unity and the genuine partnership between man and woman, also for procreation and

protection against adultery and fornication. It became an analogy between the relationship of

husband and wife as to Christ and the Church that can attest to the significance of marriage.

This historical introduction will sketch the beginning of a Christian theology of marriage

where we can understand deeply the response of the Church to challenges to its doctrine from

sixteenth century reformers and secular authorities, the renewal of Catholic thinking about

marriage at Vatican II whose teaching has left its unmistakable imprint on the revised code of

canon law.

During the early Christians time, the idea of marriage was rejected by the Gnostics for

they view procreation as evil, since it resulted in the imprisonment of still more souls in

corporeality. Also the Manicheans, a syncretistic sect strongly espoused a radical ontological

dualism and held that marriage and procreation were to be shunned as intrinsically evil.
 Augustine defended the goodness of marriage and believed that it was a sacred reality.

But he saw that the real problem lies within the fallen humans that were infected with the

spiritually deadly virus of lust that refused to be mastered by reason and will. Therefore even

within marriage, sexual relations could rarely be without the commission of at least venial sin.

With the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the settlement by largely Germanic

peoples in its former territory, the Church confronted marriage customs that were markedly

different from those of the Roman Empire. For these people, marriage was more than the

exchanged consents, but as the end of a process involving several steps. Each of which was

necessary to constitute marriage: a mans or his fathers petition to a womans father for her

hand. Betrothal by public agreement of the parties families, provision of a dowry to the womans

family, the handing over of the woman to the man, and the physical consummation of the union

by sexual intercourse. Until all of these steps had been completed, the marriage was incomplete.

As the Church gradually acquired jurisdiction over marriage, it was forced to adjudicate

matrimonial disputes. Two schools of thought emerged: the School of Paris, represented

especially by Peter Lombard, held that marriage was constituted solely by the spouses consent in

words concerning the present (as opposed to words concerning the future, which gave rise only

to betrothal): while the School of Bologna, represented especially by Gratian held that consent

initiated a marriage but a marriage was not fully constituted (and therefore, could be dissolved)

until it had been physically consummated. This scholarly dispute with its enormous practical

implications was ultimately resolved by a series of decisions by Alexander III and his successors

in the 12th century. These popes held that consent by the parties alone made a marriage but that,

prior to consummation, it could be dissolved for sufficiently grave cause and that consent in

words concerning the future followed by consummation transformed betrothal into marriage
without the interposition of consent in words concerning the present. The consequence of these

papal decisions was to transfer power to constitute marriage from families to the parties

themselves and, thereby, to open the door to the social scourge of clandestine marriages, unions

entered into without any public form.

The sixteenth-century reformers challenged the Catholic Churchs teaching and discipline

on marriage. They rejected the sacramentality of marriage, the Churchs jurisdiction over

marriage, and its prohibition of remarriage after divorce in cases of adultery. They also sharply

criticized the Churchs failure to impose a mandatory public form for the celebration of marriage

to eradicate clandestine marriages.

The Council of Trent responded to this challenge by defining matrimony as truly and

properly one of the seven sacraments of the evangelical law, instituted by Christ the Lord and

by reaffirming the Churchs authority to establish barriers to marriage to generally regulate it.

As the Age of Enlightenment dawned, secular authorities sought to reclaim jurisdiction

over marriage from the Church. The Churchs response to this was to affirm with increasing

passion the inseparability and the identity of the marriage contract and the marital sacrament

among the baptized. The 1917 code which held that, since the matrimonial contract among the

baptized had been raised by Christ to sacramental dignity, a valid matrimonial contract could not

exist among the baptized without its being by that fact a sacrament. It also consolidated a

number of other aspects of the Churchs theology and discipline on marriage that had been

slowly developing during the post-Tridentine era. While the 1917 codes articulation of the ends

of marriage and the object of consent had the advantage of juridical clarity, it was far removed

from the lived experience of most married members of the faithful and smacked of arid legalism.

In 1951, Pius XII affirmed that the essential subordination of the secondary ends of marriage to
the primary end is a principle which the very internal structure of the natural order reveals, which

the heritage of the Christian tradition embodies, which the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly

taught, and which finally is crystallized into legal form by the Code of Canon Law.

The Second Vatican Council sought to highlight some major features of the churchs

teaching that marked a watershed in the Churchs understanding of marriage. Avoiding the

familiar term contract, the council consistently spoke of marriage as a covenant. This approach

was evident in the their description of Marriage as an intimate sharing of married life and love

and in its repeated emphasis on the importance of conjugal love. The council did not present this

conjugal love as a purely spiritual reality. Instead, it taught that love is uniquely expressed and

perfected through the marital act. The actions within marriage by which the couple are united

intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones. Expressed in a manner in which is truly

human, these actions signify and promote that mutual self-giving by which spouses enrich each

other with a joyful and thankful will. Ignoring the 1917 codes articulation of the object of

consent as the perpetual and exclusive right to the body, the council defined consent as that

human act whereby spouses mutually bestow and accept each other.

The revised code has attempted to translate this conciliar teaching into canonical

language as well as to integrate it with the rest of the canonical tradition.

Despite these historical variations, the Church has always sought to contextualize

marriage into its married members religious and spiritual journey. Above and beyond the legal,

psychological and sociological dimensions of marriage that society typically identifies, the

Church expands the definition of marriage and describes it as a holy union whereby a man and

woman struggle together toward sanctification and eternal life within a community of faithful.