Here we go:
1. Is a validly baptized baby baptized into the Catholic Church or are they merely baptized as a Christian (whatever that means)? Is it better to say that they are baptized into Christ, but not necessarily the Church (although I do not see how that is possible)
All people who are baptized are placed in communion with Christ and his Church. This communion will be complete is nothing obstructs it. If something does obstruct it then the communion will be real but incomplete.
If someone baptizes a person intending that person to be Catholic then there is nothing obstructing on these grounds and the person's communion with the Church is full, the person counts juridically as a Catholic and is subject to canon law.
If someone baptizes a person intending that the person will not be Catholic then there is something obstructing the person's communion with the Church and so it is partial and the person is not juridically a Catholic and is not bound by canon law.
If someone baptizes a person and is unclear about whether the person is to be Catholic or not then the situation is legally unclear and we'd need further guidance from the Church on how to handle such cases juridically.
2. If they are baptized Catholic, is the relationship merely material or formal? If the relationship is merely material (whatever that means in this case, borrowing from a poster, above), when do they become a formal Catholic? At no time, unlike those entering the Church from a Protestant denomination, are cradle Catholics required to take an oath of allegiance.
The Church does not use the categories "formal" and "material" in this context, so far as I know, and I'm not sure what they would mean here.
A person becomes a Catholic by baptism at the moment they are baptized with the intention that they be Catholic. No further act is needed to make them Catholic, though their communion with the Church will grow through the other sacraments of initiation and their assimilation of the teachings of the faith.
If the relationship is formal, then since no formal defection is now possible, such baptized babies, if raised as a Protestant or worse, are really being spiritually abused since their natural heritage is being damaged.
I don't know that the Church would use the language of abuse, but there is a contradiction between what the child objectively, ontologically, and juridically is and the way it is being raised.
3. Since formal defection is not possible, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, so the old argument that Canon Law does not bind people outside of the Church is harder to apply to those cases where the baptism is in the Catholic Church and the person leaves for a Protestant denomination.
Correct, although it was only in the three marriage canons that there ever was an exception for formal defection. All other laws were still binding on a person who had been baptized or received into the Church. There was no automatic dispensation, e.g., from needing to observe holy days of obligation or days of fast and abstinence. Now it's (going to be) consistent across the board, marriage laws included.
They are no longer to be considered outside of the Church, since there is no process by which this may happen, except by excommunication.
Correct, except that excommunication does not place one outside the Church. Despite its name, excommunication's effects do not include making one not-a-Catholic (cf. CIC, can. 1331).
As such, unless there are exceptions provided for in the Canons (the in extremis exceptions of Can. 1116 have already been mentioned), such people must seek to be married in front of a priest or else their marriage will be invalid.
Yes.
4. I thought, however, that the marriage of any two baptized people was sacramental.
Yes. Any valid marriage between two baptized people is sacramental.
By law, the marriage can be blocked (rendered invalid) by a defect in form.
Yes.
However, simply exchanging vows without a priest (two witnesses are required), in extremis, must be the minimal form necessary for a valid marriage.
Under current canon law, yes. Before Trent, that wasn't the case. Witnesses were not needed for validity. Nor was a priest. This caused lots of problems, which is why form was established in the first place.
This implies that there must be something in addition to the minimum form required for a normal form Catholic marriage, just as in the case of baptism, where, ordinarily, it is to be done in a Church by a priest.
"Minimum form" is not the right way to phrase it, but essentially, yes. The conditions that are required for form are spelled out in canons 1108-1116.
5. Since baptism performed in a Protestant assembly, where considered valid by the Church, is not administered by a priest but a laymen, these baptism are considered not normal, but of an emergency variety.
I don't know that this is the best way to put it. Such baptism are valid. Applying additional categories like ordinary/extraordinary/normal/emergency/etc. may not add much, conceptually, outside of a Catholic context.
Are weddings performed in a Protestant assembly also to be considered of an emergency or in extremis variety?
Ditto. They're valid. And there is even less basis for calling them extraordinary or emergency or anything like that since if you are not bound by canon law there is no requirement whatsoever to observe the Catholic form of marriage.
6. In any case, do Catholics incur any responsibility to inform other Christians of the requirements of the Church, since they cannot defect from it (probably not, under the usual rules for fraternal correction, I assume).
If someone has never been baptized into the Catholic Church or received into it then the person is not bound by canon law (CIC, can. 11) and there is no need for Catholic to inform them of the requirements of canon law because they don't apply to them . . . . unless the non-Catholic is doing something like trying to marry a Catholic outside the Church without a dispensation from form, in which case a Catholic is involved and the Catholic party is subject to canon law.
7. How can there be a dispensation from cult if a Protestant cannot defect from the Church?
Protestants do not need a dispensation for disparity of cult (e.g., to marry a Jew or a Muslim or whatever) because they are not subject to canon law and thus the impediment arising from disparity of cult does not apply to them.
These questions were all easier to answer when I thought the statement, "Those outside of the Church are not bound by her laws." Now, I am not sure who is outside and who is inside the Church. This is the fundamental question on which all of the other questions are based.
Divine and natural law binds everyone. Divine positive law (e.g., don't get baptized again if you've already been baptized) applies to all the baptized. Latin rite merely ecclesiastical law binds those who are members of the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, per canon 11:
Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, possess the efficient use of reason, and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, have completed seven years of age.
Hope this helps!
That was very concise. Great questions Chicken and great answers Jimmy!
This helps clear the decks for the important questions to come.
Like whether it’s a defect in form if you’re getting married in formae ranis.
I think perhaps Maureen means in forma ranae – but that should only apply to bewitched princes 🙂
This reminds me of a question I’ve been wondering about for awhile. Since my husband is not religious (no faith in anything), he can’t get baptized in the Church because you have to profess the creed. So would it be good for me to take him to get baptized at a different denomination where they just baptize people willy-nilly (without any declaration of faith)? I would rather hold out for the possibility of him becoming a Catholic convert, but there’s the risk that would never happen.
And since he isn’t baptized, am I correct that our marriage isn’t sacramental? Bummer! We had a mass.
I think the aspect that troubles the Chicken is this:
If someone who is baptised Catholic but is raised in another faith gets married to another baptised person in that faith, then the Church views the marriage as null and void. I think a lot of us know many wonderful people in this very situation. And we’re probably invited to a lot of their weddings. So it’s kinda a hard pill to swallow, and one wonders if perhaps the Church’s canon is making the wrong assumption.
Obviously, one would want to think that such a person’s marriage did have sacramental grace. And I (personally) think there’s a possibility. But it’s also fairly irrelevant. That person did not seek a sacramental marriage in the Church, so why should the Church’s Canon Law go out of it’s way to recognize it.
A similar issue: When Pope Leo declared that Anglican orders were null and void, a lot of Anglican clergy took that concern seriously. Many were re-ordained or conditionally ordained by Old Catholics, trying to ensure that they had valid orders. The Catholic Church, however, never revised the original decision and still assumes the orders are null and void.
Anglican priests becoming Catholic are unconditionally ordained Catholic priests because the Church doesn’t recognize their orders. There is speculation from some that their orders might already be valid, but once again, when one pursues Anglican priesthood, one is not seeking priesthood in the Catholic Church in communion with the pope.
Why should the Church go out of its way to investigate whether the necessary elements for the conferrence of sacramental grace take place in another religion? Similarly, why should the Church go out of it’s way to determine the same for marriages outside the Church?
If someone wants to have their marriage recognized as valid in the Catholic Church, they can get married in one.
Regarding #2
I thought one of the cultural points of Confirmation is to be a fully “adult” Catholic. Especially since its modern practice grew out of parishes baptizing people but waiting for the bishop to confirm them later.
Thanks, Jimmy, for all of the answers to my questions and for taking time out of your busy schedule to do the work.
After I posted my questions and had time to really think about it, I finally figured out that while a sacrament may be valid, there may be additional elements, such as sin, or circumstances such as environment and upbringing, that render them either less effective in conferring grace or distance the relationship of the individual from the Church. All sacraments which are valid must have a connection to the Church, since only the Church validly dispenses sacrament, but that connection need not be pure and it need not be dense in order for the sacrament to be valid.
When the Church said, in the encyclical, Dominus Jesu, that Protestant ecclesial bodies have a connection to the Church, it showed that it was through this connection that baptisms and marriages are sacramentally valid, although they may be defective in how they are realized in the life of the individual with regards to spiritual growth. Even a pagan, who baptized in necessity, if the baptism is valid, for the instant of the administration of the sacrament, is supplied a connection to the Faith of the Catholic Church, even though the pagan may not desire baptism for himself.
In any case, it is the “extra” or non-Catholic elements that contaminate a baptized Protestant’s relationship with the Church which renders him not bound by the canon law of the Church, although, technically, he is bound under the moral (Divine and natural) law (although, possibly, of diminished culpability because of invincible ignorance).
This has been a nice exercise in apologetics, for me. No yelling, no screaming, just simple questions and simple answers with the potential for follow-up questions, hee, hee 🙂
The Chicken
I’m still waiting for Jimmy to discuss the real question about marriage, which is this: when the Star Trek transporter disassembles you on the molecular level, which surely counts as death, whether you need to be remarried when you are reassembled on the other side.
Why should the Church go out of its way to investigate whether the necessary elements for the conferrence of sacramental grace take place in another religion? Similarly, why should the Church go out of it’s way to determine the same for marriages outside the Church?
There are many answers to this question, but the simple answer is that a valid sacrament supplies things such as grace as well as (in some cases) a change in ontological status that invalid sacraments do not. A Catholic priest really and truly causes a change in the ontological status (substance) of bread and wine from mere bread and wine into the body, blood soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, while retaining the accidents of bread and wine; a Protestant minister who does not possess valid Orders (a few, rare ones, do, by accident of history) does not change the bread and wine.
When Catholics have a Eucharistic exposition, when the Eucharist is placed in a monstrance and put on the altar for us to adore, we truly adore Christ present, body, blood, soul, and divinity. If a Protestant minister without valid Orders were to do this, his congregation would be worshiping bread, which technically, would be a sacrilege (although the congregation would probably be invincibly ignorant).
In fact, this can literally mean life or death, heaven or hell. If a Catholic priest forgives a mortal sin, it is forgiven. A Protestant minister cannot do this. It is possible for the sinner to make a perfect act of contrition whether Catholic or Protestant when no priest is present, but that is a risk which should be borne only in the gravest of situations, since an imperfect act does not forgive mortal sins. G. K. Chesterton said that one reason he became a Catholic was so that he could be certain that his sins were forgiven.
What about anointing of the sick? A Catholic priest really and truly imparts grace through the sacrament for the forgiveness of sin and salvation and healing of the individual. Although some Protestant ministers anoint members of their congregation, it is merely ceremonial and may give some comfort, but does not impart any grace.
The Church does not, ordinarily, interfere in the rites of other Christian groups, but if these groups try to do something that resembles a Catholic sacrament, they have a right to know whether or not what they do is valid. In fact, this is an act of both justice and mercy towards the other groups and helps avoid scandal both within and outside of the Church.
The Chicken
Hey, Too Embarrassed,
I was once going to submit an article to This Rock questioning whether or not Spider-man could be validly married in the Church, if he and Mary Jane were Catholics. I went so far as to write the article, with all of the nuances involved with deciding whether or not Spider-man were, in fact, still human enough to be married and whether there were any other impediments, such as the inability to produce human off-springs and even if the marital act were possible between a human female and a human/spider amalgam. In addition to this, the stress on the marriage being married to a special needs husband also had to be taken into account.
My conclusion – yes, they could get married, but Mary Jane should first see a psychiatrist to prove she were of sound judgment 🙂
Needless to say, when it came time to submit the article, I chickened out.
As for the Star Trek question, if you are, in fact, killed by the transporter, then you can’t be remarried because you would be a walking corpse.
Hmm, I was also going to write an article for This Rock entitled, “Better Apologetics Through Science Fiction,” but I doubt the editor would have gone for it.
Oh well, happy shopping, all, on this panic Saturday before Christmas.
The Chicken
It is still unclear to me how this plays into a formal defection from the faith except as it related to the specific canons as noted.
I am probably just thick.
A good real-life example would be Sarah Palin. She was baptized a Catholic, but her parents apparently fell away from the church when she was still a very small child. Her marriage is therefore invalid.
Now, it’s not that the church is being unfair here, because the Church is always available to these people, but there’s a good argument to be made that the canons could be changed in the future to give the MANY people in this situation the graces of a sacramental marriage (or a natural marriage if one party isn’t baptized).
Ed Peters takes this position, I believe, though he also has indicated that there are reasons on both sides of the marriage form debate.
Isn’t another answer “because if they get divorced and then one of the participants wants to marry a Catholic, the Church owes it to the Catholic
to determine whether it is possible to contract marriage to that participant?” Like it or not, it needs to be clear who is married and who is not.
Agreeing with what Eileen R. said… It seems there is a major group of people that through no fault of their own are prevented from having a valid marriage. Case in point. My brother and I were baptized Catholic. When we were very small (I was like 3 and my brother like 1) my mom left the Church and became a protestant. We were so young that we didn’t even know/realize that we were Catholic. It never would have occurred to either of us in a million years that we were anything other than Lutherans like everyone else at our church. So many years later my brother (a strong believing Christian) married a baptist woman. So here we have two Christians in good faith and one of them incapable of having a valid marriage and he has no way of even knowing that is a possibility. I didn’t know any of this until many years later when I discovered the Catholic Church (I thought for the first time) and then “converted”. Apparently, I found out during the process, I was just returning to the Church because I had a Catholic Baptismal certificate. So my brother, who never even knew he was a Catholic, is apparently incapable of having a valid marriage? It seems to me that in situations like this the last cannon might come into play, seeing as a non-valid marriage can have a negative impact on the salvation of a soul. Even if he isn’t culpable of a particular sin, he is in an objectively sinful situation that must have spiritual effects.
Regarding #2
Isn’t one of the cultural effects of Confirmation the answer to this, considering the candidate has studied and is “tested” by the bishop?
I’m well aware that the Eastern Rite practices infant Confirmation–I’m an example–which is why I am qualifying culture.
A good real-life example would be Sarah Palin. She was baptized a Catholic, but her parents apparently fell away from the church when she was still a very small child. Her marriage is therefore invalid.
Sarah Palin was married on August 29, 1988, five years after the new CIC went into effect. At that time, the ideas of defection from the Church were different under law (one of the reason for the new moto proprio was to change the law back to the understanding in the 1917 Code). As Jimmy pointed out in the post before this (Once a Catholic, always a Catholic):
[My emphasis]
Clearly, Sarah Palin falls into the second category when what constituted formal defection was unclear. There is an old Roman saying, “Where there is doubt, the law does not apply.” In this case, one may presume that Sarah Palin was acting in invincible ignorance and thus incurred no sin in contracting the marriage, with regards to a dispensation. As to whether or not the marriage were valid, the presumption should be in the affirmative, I believe.
This whole issue is pushing my apologetics chops. Not the marriage issue – that is fairly easy to apply once the relevant data has been collected, but a related issue involving baptism is giving me some nightmares that I never thought it would. It doesn’t affect anything substantial about baptism and does not contradict the Faith. I’m just trying to understand what, exactly, the Church teaches on a specific question regarding baptism, and unfortunately, the texts seem a bit muddy to me. I thought I understood, but the more I think about it, the more contradictions seem to crop up. Hopefully, I can resolve the matter privately. If not, I’ll send Jimmy an e-mail and he can decide if it is important enough (because of my mistaken notions) to say something on the blog.
I always like it when I get challenged, apologetically, because then I get to grow.
The really sad thing to contemplate, you know, is that since Santa Claus is really St. Nicholas and he was an unmarried bishop, there is no Mrs. Claus. Children have been lied to. Now, that is a real problem with marriage where Catholic and non-Catholic notions collide.
The Chicken
Can. 15 §1. Ignorance or error about invalidating or disqualifying laws does not impede their effect unless it is expressly established otherwise.
§2. Ignorance or error about a law, a penalty, a fact concerning oneself, or a notorious fact concerning another is not presumed; it is presumed about a fact concerning another which is not notorious until the contrary is proven.
Can. 1124 Without express permission of the competent authority, a marriage is prohibited between two baptized persons of whom one is baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it after baptism and has not defected from it by a formal act and the other of whom is enrolled in a Church or ecclesial community not in full communion with the Catholic Church.
Jimmy cited “the green CLSA commentary (which is pretty typical on this point of what you find in other commentaries)” regarding formal defections between 1983-2006: “The following may be considered to have defected from the Catholic Church by a formal act: those who have made a public declaration of their abandonment of the Catholic faith, either in writing or orally before two witnesses, and those who have formally enrolled by some external sign in another Christian church or another religion [commentary on c. 1117].”
Re: baptism and other sacraments
Can’t imagine why people would have any trouble understanding something, when sometimes it works like a natural law of cause and effect (you got baptized, it’s indelible spiritually, ergo you can’t be unbaptized!) and sometimes it is subject to being affected by the people involved or surrounding it, or the state of canon law binding-and-loosing at the time. 🙂
Re: theoreticals
Well, it’s hard to get emotional over the question of whether Peter Parker is still human (teratogenic stuff is too late to affect your humanity), or whether a frog can get validly married under the laws of the Church or the State of Louisiana. 🙂 That’s helpful, because then people can think about principles.
In our society, we have a great need to think about principles.
Something I have never quite been able to grasp is, what is the form of a non-Catholic sacramental marriage? I realize there needs to be one man and one woman and they both need to be baptized. Do you need two witnesses? Do vows need to be exchanged? Do certain things need to be said in the vows? etc… If not, is it just two baptized people claiming the sacrament of marriage?
If there is a document that could be pointed to also, that would be great.
Well there was a time when all you needed was to exchange the words of marriage and if you had consummating the union they weren’t too picky about what the words were.
Since they aren’t bound by the Council of Trent, the Protestants have to form a martial union intending it to be life-long, faithful, mutually supportive, and not excluding fertility. Whatever they do that shows they intend to form a union will no doubt qualify.
SDG,
We want movie reviews, we want movie reviews, we want movie reviews…
I figured out a way to save Hollywood a lot of money (and where’s my check?). They could combine movies. The movie aliens from Avatar could have been Alvin and the Chipmonks, only a lot taller 🙂
The Chicken
“Lutherans” baptize fully intending them to be catholic.
Jay D, I agree that Lutherans fully intend to become a part of the “invisible” Catholic Church in baptism. I don’t think they have any intention to become a part of the institutional Church in communion with the Pope. They have no baptismal record at a Catholic parish when they get baptized, therefore I don’t think Canon Law applies to them.
Here’s a question: I think that the Eastern Catholic Churches have their own canon law. If that’s so, do any of them not have the requirement for the bishop’s permission to marry and could a Latin Rite Catholic become a member of an Eastern Catholic Church in order to marry without his bishop’s permission?
Another question relating to my personal situation. I came back to the Catholic Church while preparing for marriage. The diocese where I live requires 6 months or a year or something like that of marriage preparation. The diocese where I grew up and where the wedding was held requires only that you complete the pre-cana course – there’s no set time for preparation. At this point it was too close to our set date to fulfill the requirements for the diocese where I was living, so I went through the pre-cana program in my hometown dioceses. I’m not saying this was the right thing to do, but it’s what happened.
Another wrinkle to the situation, I had starting attending Mass again at my local parish before I got married and attempted to sign up as a member of the parish but on the day I did they ran out of forms and I wrote my information down on the back side of someone elses form. The person who entered the information into the system never saw my record on the back of the form and I wasn’t enrolled in the parish – I didn’t realize this and fill out a new form until after we were married. So I was still technically a member of the parish my hometown diocese at the time of the wedding which is where we were married.
So who are Catholics required to get permission to marry from – is it the diocese of the parish you’re a member of, is it the diocese you live in, or is it the diocese where the wedding takes place? I had permission from the diocese where I was “on the books” and where the wedding took place, but not the diocese I was living in.
Jay D, I agree that Lutherans fully intend to become a part of the “invisible” Catholic Church in baptism. I don’t think they have any intention to become a part of the institutional Church in communion with the Pope.
There is no difference. Lutherans do indeed intend to be baptized into the said institutional Church. As for, “in communion with the Pope”, that is my question. I suppose I’m not since I don’t think a priest would let me receive communion if I asked.
What makes my baptism not Catholic? Because it wasn’t at a Catholic™ parish? I find this strange. If someone asks me why I’m not Catholic™, my answer is that it is because I wasn’t baptized in a Catholic™ parish. If someone asks me why I don’t become Catholic™ I will say, what do you mean? The Catholics™ themselves tell me I’m not Catholic™. Who am I to argue? They should know who is Catholic™ and who isn’t.
Exactly how could you become a Catholic if you were one already?
I suppose I’m not since I don’t think a priest would let me receive communion if I asked.
Actually, there are provisions for this, in emergency situations, but the person must profess, in receiving the Eucharist, to believe what the Catholic Church holds in receiving the Eucharist: that it is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus under the accidents (but not substance) of bread and wine. No consubstantiation allowed.
From the papal encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, by Pope John-Paul II:
46. In my Encyclical Ut Unum Sint I expressed my own appreciation of these norms, which make it possible to provide for the salvation of souls with proper discernment: “It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive these sacraments, freely request them and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to these sacraments. Conversely, in specific cases and in particular circumstances, Catholics too can request these same sacraments from ministers of Churches in which these sacraments are valid”.97
These conditions, from which no dispensation can be given, must be carefully respected, even though they deal with specific individual cases, because the denial of one or more truths of the faith regarding these sacraments and, among these, the truth regarding the need of the ministerial priesthood for their validity, renders the person asking improperly disposed to legitimately receiving them. And the opposite is also true: Catholics may not receive communion in those communities which lack a valid sacrament of Orders.98
The faithful observance of the body of norms established in this area 99 is a manifestation and, at the same time, a guarantee of our love for Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, for our brothers and sisters of different Christian confessions – who have a right to our witness to the truth – and for the cause itself of the promotion of unity.
Lutherans do indeed intend to be baptized into the said institutional Church. As for, “in communion with the Pope”, that is my question.
Since one is not binding yourself to obey the Pope in Lutheran baptism, this is an impediment to full communion with the Church and makes the baptism real and valid, but not fully realized in the life of the person (Jimmy’s “incomplete” in the answer to question 1, above), since the grace of any valid baptism is to tend towards full communion with the Church.
The Chicken