Gulf Pine Catholic
•
July 1, 2016
13
Too many couples do not understand marriage is for life, pope says
BY CINDYWOODEN
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- Because most people today do not
understand that sacramental marriage really is a bond
that binds them to each other for life, many marriages
today can be considered invalid, Pope Francis said.
Raising a point he has raised before, and one also
raised by now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis
insisted June 16 that the validity of a marriage implies
that a couple understands that sacramental marriage is
a bond that truly binds them to another for their entire
lives.
“We are living in a culture of the provisional,” he
told participants in the Diocese of Rome’s annual pas-
toral conference.
Answering questions after giving a prepared talk,
Pope Francis told the story of a bishop who said a uni-
versity graduate came to him saying he wanted to be a
priest, but only for 10 years.
The idea of commitments being temporary “occurs
everywhere, even in priestly and religious life. The
provisional. And for this reason a large majority of sac-
ramental marriages are null. They say ‘yes, for my
whole life,’ but they do not know what they are saying
because they have a different culture,” he said.
The Vatican press office, publishing a transcript the
next day, adjusted the pope’s words to read, “A part of
our sacramental marriages are null because they (the
spouses) say, ‘Yes, for my whole life,’ but they do not
know what they are saying because they have a differ-
ent culture.”
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokes-
man, said transcripts of the pope’s off-the-cuff remarks
always are reviewed for precision and clarity prior to
publication. “When dealing with particularly important
topics, the revised text always is given to the pope him-
self. That happened in this case, therefore the published
text was approved expressly by the pope.”
Attitudes toward marriage are influenced strongly
by social expectations, the pope said, telling the story
Pope Francis walks next to Cardinal Agostino
Vallini, papal vicar for Rome, as he arrives to attend
the opening of a meeting of the Diocese of Rome
�
s
annual pastoral conference at the Basilica of St.
John Lateran in Rome June 16.
CNS photo/Tony Gentile,
Reuters
of a young man who told the pope he and his fiancee
had not celebrated their wedding yet because they were
looking for a church with decor that would go well with
her dress. “These are people’s concerns,” the pope said.
“How can we change this? I don’t know.”
Pope Francis told participants that when he was
archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, he banned
“shotgun weddings” from Catholic parishes because
the strong social pressure to marry placed on a couple
expecting a baby could mean they were not fully free to
pledge themselves to each other for life through the
sacrament.
It was important, he said, that the couples were not
abandoned, but were assisted by the church. Many of
them, he said, “after two or three years would marry. I
would watch them enter the church -- dad, mom and the
child holding their hands. They knew well what they
were doing.”
“The crisis of marriage is because people do not
know what the sacrament is, the beauty of the sacra-
ment; they do not know that it is indissoluble, that it is
for one’s entire life,” he said. “It’s difficult.”
Meeting in July 2005 with priests in northern Italy,
Pope Benedict also raised the question of the validity of
marriages that, while performed in church, bound
together two baptized Catholics who had little under-
standing of the faith, the meaning of the sacraments and
the indissolubility of marriage.
Asked about Communion for a divorced and civilly
remarried person, Pope Benedict had responded, “I
would say that a particularly painful situation is that of
those who were married in the church, but were not
really believers and did so just for tradition, and then
finding themselves in a new, nonvalid marriage, con-
vert, find the faith and feel excluded from the sacra-
ment.”
Pope Benedict said that when he was prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he asked
several bishops’ conferences and experts to study the
problem, which in effect was “a sacrament celebrated
without faith.”
He said he had thought that the church marriage
could be considered invalid because the faith of the
couple celebrating the sacrament was lacking. “But
from the discussions we had, I understood that the
problem was very difficult” and that further study was
necessary.
According to the Code of Canon Law, “For matri-
monial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be
at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent part-
nership between a man and a woman ordered to the
procreation of offspring by means of some sexual coop-
eration.”
In a formal speech in 2015 to the Roman Rota, a
marriage tribunal, Pope Francis said: “The judge, in
pondering the validity of the consent expressed, must
take into account the context of values and of faith --
their presence or absence -- in which the intent to marry
was formed. In fact, ignorance of the contents of the
faith could lead to what the code (of canon law) calls an
error conditioning the will. This eventuality is not to be
considered rare as in the past, precisely because world-
ly thinking often prevails over the magisterium of the
church.”
On April 21-24 the Hispanic Community of the Diocese of Biloxi held the ACTS
men retreat #15 at PB Johnson State Park in Hattiesburg. Fifty-nine (59) men
experienced the ACTS retreat for the first time. The directors for this retreat
were: Director: Abel Magana, St. Alphonsus Parish; Co-directors: Jesus Anima,
Sacred Heart parish, Hattiesburg; Elmer Hernandez, St. Alphonsus parish and
Cristino Hernandez, Immaculate Conception parish. The spiritual directors for
this retreat were Father Lalo Mora, parochial vicar, Our Lady of Fatima Parish,
Biloxi, and Father Sergio Balderas, director of Hispanic Ministry. Father Sergio
appreciates the support he receives from priests and parishes to continue with
this program that is very helpful for the Hispanic community.
Father Charles Nutter, pastor of St. James Parish in Gulfport, is celebrating the
10th anniversary of his priestly ordination. St. James parishioners and friends of
Father Nutter honored the beloved priest on June 12 with a luncheon following
the 11 am Mass.
Hispanic ACTS #15
Father Charles Nutter’s 10th Anniversary as priest
