Edinost in Dialog (Dec 2023)
Characteristics of Western and Eastern Christian Traditions Regarding Marriage
Abstract
The article addresses the main factors in contracting a Christian marriage. It shows the origins of the different valuation of marital consent and priestly blessing, based on the conditionality of the Western and Eastern Christian traditions. In the Latin Church, the prevailing doctrine has always been that marriage is contracted by the consent of the betrothed and that the two confer the sacrament on each other. In the Eastern tradition, the minister of the marriage is the priest who performs the sacred rite. Proceeding from the traditional doctrine of the indissolubility of contract and sacrament and from the terminological distinction between the essential nuptial act, which is the consent to marriage, and the essential liturgical rite with the priestly blessing, it is concluded that the priestly blessing in the Eastern Churches only has the character of an essential rite. When positive human law conflicts with natural law due to unforeseen circumstances, natural law prevails. In this case, the marriage would be valid even without the priestly blessing as an essential rite. The ministers of the sacrament of matrimony are the spouses themselves in both the ordinary and extraordinary forms of marriage. The priest who blesses the newlyweds in the Eastern Churches, where a sacred rite is required for validity, can thus be considered a minister of the sacrament in the liturgical sense.
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