A reader writes:
I have just a quick question about marriage. I was recently married in the Catholic Church (both my wife and I are strong, faithful Catholics). During the rehearsal, the deacon forgot to mention to us to not recite the vows he was saying because it was just a rehearsal. He wanted us to hear them but not recite them. So, we repeated what he said during the rehearsal. My question is this: does this mean that we were married, in the eyes of God, that night instead of the following day during the wedding mass?
No, you were married the following day. Here’s why.
The Code of Canon Law provides:
Canon 1108
§1. Only those marriages are valid which are contracted before the local ordinary, pastor, or a priest or deacon delegated by either of them, who assist, and before two witnesses according to the rules expressed in the following canons and without prejudice to the exceptions mentioned in cann. 144, 1112, §1, 1116, and 1127, §§1-2.
§2. The person who assists at a marriage is understood to be only that person who [a] is present, [b] asks for the manifestation of the consent of the contracting parties, and [c] receives it in the name of the Church.
The deacon in question may have [a] been present and may have asked you to repeat the vows after him, but since the context was a wedding rehersal he was not [b] genuinely asking for the two of you to manifest matrimonial consent there on the spot, nor did he [c] receive this consent in the name of the Church. Y’all may have gone through all the motions of a wedding, but you were in rehersal mode, not actual performance mode.
Even if the two of you were attempting to exchange matrimonial consent at the time, the deacon had not genuinely asked for it nor did he genuinely receive it. As a result, the Catholic form of marriage was not observed (because of the deacon’s attitude of mind at the time) at this ceremony and so the marriage would be null on defect of form grounds–and that’s assuming that a rehersal ceremony could even be counted as a ceremony to begin with.
The situation is analogous to performing a baptism as part of a stage play. All the right words and actions may be said and done, ane even said and done by people capable of performing and receiving baptism, but without the requisite intent the sacrament is not performed.
In the case of your rehersal ceremony the deacon (at least) lacked the intent needed to do his role as required by canon law. He was acting in the capacity of a wedding reherser, not a wedding officiant. Form was thus not satisfied.
Congrats on your recent marriage, though!
The comparison to a staged baptism in a drama is a good one, and highlights the issue of intention on the part of the one saying the sacramental words — which in the case of matrimony is the bride and groom.
Baptism, after all, can validly be administered by a layperson, a heretic or schismatic, even a non-Christian; there is no requirement that a cleric be present to receive anything. So what makes a baptism in a play not a real baptism (or a sacrilegious attempt at re-baptism)? Simply that the meaning and value of the words is conditioned by intention — and what one intends to do in a play is dramatize the sacrament, not administer it.
Similarly in the case of a wedding rehearsal, what the couple intends to do is to rehearse — not to get married. This point, more than the intention of the deacon, stands out to me, in part because Suzanne and I were married as non-Catholics in a Protestant church and so were not bound by Catholic requirements of form. And we had a wedding rehearsal, and we rehearsed our vows, and yet we also were not married at our rehearsal, even though the absence of a deacon or the intention of the celebrant was irrelevant in our case. Because our intention in saying the vows was to rehearse for our wedding.
Thanks for the answer Jimmy. I hadn’t thought about intent, but that makes perfect sense. I guess I will have to remember just one anniversary date instead of two. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Regarding the analogy though. Imagine there was a baptism “rehearsal” and the infant was dipped and the words were said properly. Would not the sacrament have been confected completely? I ask because when we went through the baptism class before having our 3rd baptised they told us, “don’t do this at home, even as a practice because it will take”.
Chris,
Once again, it would depend on the intention of the one speaking the words. For a baptism to be a baptism, the baptizer must intend to do what the Church does — NOT to rehearse doing what the Church does. If the intention is merely to rehearse, all you have is a rehearsal.
Even if the two of you were attempting to exchange matrimonial consent at the time…
In a purely hypothetical case where one might actually intend to give consent at a rehearsal, he or she might be told to go home and sober up based on Can. 1095, 1 ° .