Why does the Catholic Church accept the marriage (without sacrament) outside the Church (Protestant) and require an annulment by the Catholic Church for remarriage?
Dora
Dora,
You may be surprised to find out that baptized non-Catholics do in fact have sacramental marriages. Canon 1055.1 of the Code of Canon Law states, "The matrimonial covenant...has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized." However, if only one party is baptized then it is not a sacrament. To more fully understand the issue of annulments we need to look at the nature of marriage itself. The Catholic Church recognizes marriage as part of the natural law. That is, natural law ( a Greek philosophical construct not a Catholic religious teaching) shows that by the order of nature (whether or not one cites God as the author of creation) one can deduce the institution of marriage as founded in biological design and in cultural anthropology. Any two persons of sufficient maturity and not related too closely to each other can enter into marriage by their own mutual consent. Once this consent is truly given it can never be revoked. This is what is known as a natural marriage, not a sacramental marriage. All persons regardless of their religion can do this according to natural law. However, in addition the Catholic Church requires for validity that Catholics be married according to "form." Because they are members of Christ's Church and the Church has care of their souls the marriage must be properly entered into and recognized in the manner that the Church sets out. For non-Catholic Christians the Catholic Church recognizes for the validity of the marriage the "form" set out by their respective bodies. In most cases, however, other Christian communities do not have a specified form and by default accept as valid what is prescribed by the state. For this reason an Orthodox Christian marriage is only valid if done according to the Orthodox marriage ceremony whereas a Baptist can be married validly (if not to a Catholic) by the justice of the peace. Non-Catholics who have been previously married must go through the annulment proceedings for the same reason that a Catholic does, to find out if no real marriage existed at all. This is the case if full consent of one or both of the parties was never given or they were not free to enter into marriage due to a previous valid marriage. An annulment, while it can determine if in fact a Catholic marriage is invalid, also seeks to discover if a non-Catholic marriage is invalid in order to determine if the respective party is free to remarry. Of course the only reason why a non-Catholic would be seeking an annulment would be to marry a Catholic. However, many non-Catholics who divorce and remarry are in reality not free to do so and do enter into invalid marriages yet this issue is not a concern to them and is not brought to light until they seek to marry a Catholic.
