Iosif Iacob: The meaning of the canonical form of the celebration of marriage since the Second Vatican Council and CIC 1983

The matrimonial agreement is the form through which the institution of marriage and family is born. Both, the Church and the state are called to contribute to the elaboration of those specific conditions by which the notion of the marriage covenant is consolidated and clarified. The form of the marriage celebration is one of the aspects that generated and generates deep analyses and positions in front of what is and represents the way of manifesting the agreement, as well as its role. The crisis of the institution of marriage, the diversity of forms of conjugal union as well as the effects that derive from them, create the specific environment for an analysis and debate that questions the role and function of the canonical form in achieving that conjugal union that is based on the free act, the consent of the bride and groom as the will of the spouses to live together with the requirement to be transformed into a formal act, a legal expression by which the accord of the spouses fulfils all the normative aspects with a view to legal validity and implicitly with a view to the birth of the marriage. In this sense, the pre-conciliar, conciliar and post-conciliar debates reach a unitary expression in the vision of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.53438/PZJC4827

Dialog 50-10 Iacob

Iosif Iacob: Marriage as a divine and human reality in the vision of the Second Vatican Council

The institution of marriage and the family it is one of the social and ecclesial realities, difficult to stick in its full meaning. It, as a natural reality, involves the whole life of man, of each man, both as a right and as a possibility. In his great redemptive plan, God, through Jesus Christ, in the New Law established by the sacrifice of love to the ultimate sacrifice, assigns a saving dimension to natural marriage. This new dimension makes marriage a supernatural and profoundly human reality, anchored in social realities in a continuous becoming. The current situation that the Church is experiencing in the pastoral field through the different choices that believers make regarding the sacrament of marriage invites us to deepen and analyze all the aspects that affect the choice of the type of marital union.
All these motivations makes us to take in consideration the different spheres of human existence as well with visions of living life to see the way marriage as a natural and sacramental reality, involving every human being, presents itself to contemporary society in all its complexity, or in what way society’s problems come to be reflected and also involves the institution of marriage.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.53438/MEFE1550

Dialog 49-10 Iacob

Eduard Giurgi: The Importance of the Teaching of Gaudium et spes for the Introduction of Dolus as a Ground for Marriage Nullity in the 1983 Code of Canon Law

The present essay is aimed to highlight the impact of the teaching of Vatican II, through the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes, on the introduction of a new ground for marriage nullity, namely, dolus. In order to reach this aim, the essay provides a short presentation of the teaching of the 1917 Code of Canon Law. The essay emphasizes that in this code was stressed more the procreative end of matrimonial consent and less the importance of matrimonial love in giving consent. The 1917 Code of Canon Law had the advantage of offering juridic clarity on marriage, yet the disadvantage was that the legislation was very much removed from experience of most married members of the Church. To this disadvantage the personalist view of some theologians and canonists was to give equal importance to procreative end of marriage and to matrimonial love. The personalist proposal was accepted and included in the teaching of the Council of Vatican II, more precisely, in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes. The council eliminates the hierarchical ordering on the ends of marriage and it teaches that both ends are equally important for a valid marriage. The council stresses the importance of the love between the man and the woman for a valid matrimonial consent. The teaching of the council led to the introduction of a new ground for marriage nullity in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In fact, according to the teaching of the council, the consent consists in the mutual giving and accepting of the spouses. When one of them is deprived of knowledge of an important quality of the other party by dolus, the mutual giving and accepting in consent is incomplete or truncated. Also, the partnership of life and love about which the council teaches is seriously disturbed in such a case. As a consequence, it was necessary to be introduced this new ground for marriage nullity in the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.53438/GQMY8527

Dialog 49-5 Giurgi