[Question:]{.underline} What are we to think of the reversal of the exemption from the canonical form for marriage?
[Answer:]{.underline} The 1983 Code of Canon Law contained a radical novelty concerning the sacrament of matrimony. It was an exemption from the canonical form, according to which all Catholics are bound to marry in the presence of a Catholic priest and two witnesses. It was also an exemption from the prohibition against the marriages of Catholics with disparity of cult (with non-baptized persons) or mixed marriages (which prohibitions are rarely enforced, but still exist in the Church’s law).This exemption was granted to all those who had abandoned the Church by a formal act, that is who had formally apostasized. The novelty lay in the admission that once a person was baptized in the Catholic Church and had received the indelible mark of baptism on his soul, he could cease to be a Catholic, so that he was no longer bound by the laws of the Catholic Church.
This iniquitous law, found in Canons 1086, 1117 & 1124 of the 1983 Code, was directly a consequence of the spirit of religious liberty, allowing a person to determine his own religion, according to his conscience, and consequently allowing him to leave the Catholic Church and still marry validly outside the Church in the eyes of God, and consequently even to receive the sacrament of matrimony, if marrying a baptized person. This is tantamount to accepting that a person once baptized Catholic can abandon his obligations to the Church, and to accepting his status outside the Church as pleasing to God. But how can a person be pleasing to God who has deliberately abandoned the one true Church in which he was baptized? In practice, this exemption caused great confusion, for the marriages of formal apostates had then to considered valid. What happens when such a person’s marriage (without grace) breaks up, and he attempts to return to the Catholic Church? He finds out that he is no longer free to marry before God. The other difficulty about the interpretation of this law was that of determining precisely what is a formal act of apostasy.
Consequently the October 26 Motu proprio, “Omnium in mentem”, of Benedict XVI, released on December 15, 2009, is most welcome. It abolishes entirely the exemption from the canonical form of marriage for those who have formally left the Catholic Church, and retains the general principle that they, like all baptized Catholics, are subject to the Church’s laws (Canon 11 of the 1983 Code). Archbishop Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, gave this explanation: “this clause, following much study, was held to be unnecessary and inappropriate” (Zenit). It is the least one could say.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.