Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/763

 MAR&IAGE

710

ICABaiAOE

tained by the Greek and by Oriental theologianfl in general.

Doubts as to the thoroughly sacramental character of marriage arose in a very few isolated cases, when the attempt was made to formulate, according to speculative science, the definition of the sacraments and to determine exactly their effects. Only one prominent theologian can be named who denied that marriage confers sanctifying grace, and consequently that it is a sacrament of the New Law in the strict sense of the word — Durandus of St. Pourgain, after- wards Bishop of Meaux. Even he admitted that mar- riage in some way produces grace, and therefore that it 3iould be called a sacrament; but it was only the actual help of grace in subduing passion, which he deduced from marriage as an effect, not ex opere operatOf but ex opere operanlis (cf. Pcrrone, " De matri- monio christiano", I, i, 1, 2). As authorities he could cite only a few jurists. Theologians with the greatest unanimity rejected this doctrme as new and opposed to the teachmg of the Church, so that the celebrated theologian of the Council of Trent, Domi- nlcus Soto, said of Durandus, that it was only with diflficulty he had escaped the danger of being branded as a heretic. Many of the leading scholastics spoke indeed of marriage as a remedy against sensuality — e. g. Peter IvombSrd (whose fourth book of sentences was commentated by Durandus), and his most distin- guished coinmentators St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bona- venture, Petrus de Palude. But the conferring of sanctifying grace ex opere operato is not thereby ex- cluded; on the contrary, it must be regarded as the foundation of that actual grace, and as the root from which springs the right to receive the Divine assistance as occasion requires. That this is the teaching of those ffreat theologians is evident partly from their explicit declarations concerning the sacrament of marriage, and partly from what they defined as the essential element of the Sacraments of the New Law in general. It is sufficient here to give the references: St. Thomas, Bona venture, " In IV Sent.", dist. II, iii; XXVI, ii.
 * 'InIVSent.",dist.Il,i,4; II,ii, 1; XXVI, ii, 3; St.

The real reason why some jurists hesitated to call marriage a grace-giving sacrament was a religious one. It was certain that a sacrament and its grace could not be purchased. Yet such a transaction took place in marriage, as a dowry was ordinarily paid to the man. But this objection is baseless. For, although Christ has raised marriage or the marriage contract to the dignity of a sacrament (as will be shown below), yet marriage, even among Christians, has not thereby lost its natural significance. The dowry, the use of which devolves on the man, is given as a contribution to- wards bearing the natural burdens of marriage, i. e., the support of the family, and the education of the offspring, not as the price of the ^crament.

For a better understanding of the sacramental character of Christian as opposed to non-Chrii+'an marriage, we may briefly state the relations of the one to the other, especially as it cannot be denied that every marriage from the beginning has had, and has, the character of something holy and religious, and may therefore be designated as a sacrament in the broader sense of the word. In this connexion we can- not pass over the instructive encyclical of IjCO XIII mentioned above. He says: * * Marriage has God for its Author, and was from the verj' beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of the Divine Word; consequently, there abides in it a something holy and religious; not extraneous but innate; not derived from man, but implanted by nature. It was not, therefore, without good reason that our predecessors, Innocent III and Honorius III, affirmed that a * certain sacrament of marriage' existed ever among the be- lievers and unbelievers. We call to witness the monu- ments of antiquitj', as also the manners and customs of those jKJoples who, being the most ci\ilized, had a

finer fenM of eouity and right. In the minds of all of them it was 'a aeeply rooted conviction that marriage was to be regaraed as something sacred. Hence, among these, marriages were commonly celebrated with religious ceremonies, imder the authority of pontiffs, and with the ministry of priests — so great, even in the souls ignorant of heavenly doctrine, was the impression produced by the nature of marriage, by reflection on the history of mankind, and by the consciousness of the human race.''

The term "sacrament", applied by the pope to all marriages, even those of infidels, is to be taken in its widest sense, and signifies nothing but a certain holi- ness inherent in marriage. Even among the Israelites marriage never had the importance of an Old Testa- ment sacrament in the strict sense, since even such a sacrament produced a certain holiness (not indeed the interior holiness which is effected by the New Testament sacraments, but only an external legal purity), and even this was not connected with the marriage contract among the Jews. The sanctity of marriage in general is of another kind. The original marriage, and consequently marriage as it was con- ceived in the original plan of God before sin, was to be the means not merely of the natural propagation of the human race, but also the means by which personal supernatural sanctity should be transmitted to the individual descendants of our first parents. It was, therefore, a great mystery, intended not for the per- sonal sanctification of those united by the mamage tie, but for the sanctification of others, i. e. of their offspring. But this Divinely ordered sanctity of mar- riage was destroyed by original sin. The effectual sanctification of the human race, or rather of indi- vidual men, had now to be accomplished in the way of redemption through the Promised Redeemer, the Son of God made Man. In place of its former sanctitv, marriage retained only the significance of a type feebly representing the sanctity that was thenceforth to be acquired; it foreshadowed the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the close union which God was thereby to form with the human race. It was reserved for Christian marriage to symbolize this higher super- natural union with mankind, that is, with those who unite themselves to Christ in faith and love, and to be an efficacious sign of this union.

III. Minister op the Sacrament; Matter and Form. — ^Although the Church realised from the first the complete sacramentality of Christian marriage, yet for a time there was some uncertainty as to what m the marriage contract is the real essence of the sac- rament; as to its matter and form, and it« minister. From the earliest times this fundamental proposition has been upheld: Mairimoniumfacit conscnsits, i. e. Marriage is contracted through the mutual, expressed consent. Therein is contained implicitly the doctrine that the persons contracting marriage are themselves the agents or ministers of the sacrament. However, it has been likewise emphasized that marriage must be contracted with the blessing of the priest and the approbation of the Church, for otherwise it would be a source not of Divine grace, but of malediction. Hence it might easily be inferred that the sacerdotal blessing is the grace-giving element, or form of the sacrament, and that the JT^'icst is the minister. But this is a false conclusion. The first theologian to desig- nate clearly and distinctly the priest as the minister of the Sacrament and his blessing as the sacramental form was apparently Melchior Canus (d. 15C0). In his well-known work, "De locis theologicis", VIII, v, he sets forth the following propositions: (1) It is, indeed, a common opinion of the schools, but not their certain and settled doctrine, that a marriage contracted with- out a priest is a true and real sacrament; (2) the con- troversies on this point do not affect matters of faith and religion; (3) it would be erroneous to state that all theologians of the Catholic school defended that