Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage

Heavenly Father, through the intercession of the Holy Family, help us treasure the gift of marriage that reflects the love of Christ for the Church, where the self-giving love of husband and wife unites them more perfectly and cooperates in your plan for new life created in your image. Help us support men and women in their vocation of marriage, especially in difficult times when they join in their sufferings to the Cross. Help us uphold the institution of marriage in our society as the place where love is nurtured and family life begins. Help us acknowledge that our future depends on this love and on your providential care for us. Amen.
-- Marriage Prayer
Office for Marriage, Family & Life

Catholic Teaching on Marriage

The Catholic Church believes that marriage is an indissoluble, sacramental bond when contracted by two baptized persons who are free and capable of consenting to this union. Marriage is a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and love directed toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children.

The Church's teaching also respects a natural bond of marriage whenever one (or both) of the persons who marries is unbaptized. This is rooted in Jesus' teachings in the Gospels, the writings of Saint Paul, and centuries of Christian tradition. The Church holds that a couple's spiritual bond is sealed by God and does not end, even if the emotional and physical bond has ended in civil divorce. Moreover, the Catholic Church shares the belief of other religious bodies and of society that marriage is not just the private affair of a couple, but rather it is a public reality, affecting civil and religious societies and serving as their foundation.

Civil and Religious Aspects of Marriage

In each case, the Church recognizes a civil marriage which has legal implications, such as the legitimacy of children, property and inheritance rights, and a legal relationship between spouses. Consequently, decisions of the tribunal have no effect whatsoever on the legitimacy of children, the decrees of the civil courts regarding alimony or child support, or decisions regarding property made by the civil courts in the divorce proceedings.

The tribunal's concern is with the religious or sacramental aspects of marriage. It begins with the presumption that every marriage, including those contracted according to the laws of other religious bodies, is valid (canon 1060). When the evidence shows that this presumption of validity is not true, then a declaration of nullity may be granted. A declaration of nullity says that a particular marriage is not a valid sacramental or natural bond because some aspect of the requirements for validity was absent from the beginning. Thus, a declaration of nullity is not a dissolution of a sacramental or natural bond, but a declaration that such a bond did not exist.

A declaration of nullity does not deny that a civil bond existed, nor does it imply that it was entered into with moral fault. There is no attempt to determine guilt. A declaration of nullity is a statement by the Church that the marriage did not include the necessary elements for a sacramental or natural bond according to canon law and Church teaching.