 |
| Part of a series on the |
| Canon law of the Catholic Church |
|---|
 Catholicismportal |
Ne Temere was a decree issued in 1907 by the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Council regulating the canon law of the Church regarding marriage for practising Catholics. It is named for its opening words, which literally mean "lest rashly" in Latin. [1]
The decree was issued under Pope Pius X, 10 August 1907, and took effect on Easter 19 April 1908. It concerned the validity of all marriages involving Catholics. Marriages in Germany were exempted by the subsequent decree Provida. [2]
To the clandestinity requirements of the decree Tametsi of the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent, the decree reiterated the requirements that the marriage be witnessed by a priest and two other witnesses (adding that this requirement was now universal), added requirements that the priest (or bishop) being witness to the marriage must be the pastor of the parish (or the bishop of the diocese), or be the delegate of one of those, the marriage being invalid otherwise, and the marriage of a couple, neither one resident in the parish (or diocese), while valid, was illicit. It also required that marriages be registered. [3]
On the success of a divorce action brought by a non-Catholic spouse, the Catholic spouse was still considered married in the eyes of the Church, and could not remarry to a third party in church.
It explicitly laid out that non-Catholics, including baptized ones, were not bound by Catholic canon law for marriage, and therefore could contract valid and binding marriages without compliance.
In 1911, Ne Temere was criticised by Richard Hely-Hutchinson, 6th Earl of Donoughmore in the then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for declaring that the Catholic Church would consider invalid for a Catholic a marriage that they entered into in any way other than before the parish priest or a Catholic priest delegated by him, even if in civil law it was valid. [4]
In March 1911, the issue of the Roman Catholic Church's canon law declaring invalid marriages that were recognised as valid by the State raised political and judicial issues in Canada when a judge of Quebec's Superior Court confirmed the annulment by the Roman Catholic Church of the marriage of two Catholics which had been performed by a Methodist minister. The wife subsequently appealed the decision, saying that she had offered no defense in the original civil suit because she feared she might lose custody of her child. The appeal's judge declared that the Ne Temere decree had "no civil effect on said marriage," and that the Archbishop's ecclesiastical decree of annulment had "no judicial effect in said case". The previous civil judgement was declared nullified. [5]
In New South Wales in 1924, the legislature came within one vote of criminalising the promulgation of the decree. [6]
The McCann case of 1910 served as an example to Protestant Unionists of what would happen if Home Rule, or "Rome Rule" as they saw it, was implemented. [7] The case concerned a couple in Belfast that had been married in a Protestant ceremony. The husband, who was Catholic, allegedly left his Protestant wife by the urging of a priest to the Ne Temere decree, taking their children with him. The controversy sparked outrage among the Protestant Unionists, and more than likely increased opposition to Home Rule.
Ne Temere focused on the validity of marriages in which only one party was a Catholic. Although it did not specifically make any mention of children born to such marriages, it did require the issuance of a dispensation. A condition of the granting of said dispensation was a promise that any children born of such union would be raised in the Catholic faith.
In common law jurisdictions the father, by what is called the principle of "paternal supremacy", has the right to decide the religious upbringing of all the children of the marriage. [8] At first, this held also in the Republic of Ireland, even if he had entered into a contrary agreement in writing. The Supreme Court of Ireland still upheld paternal supremacy in 1945 in a judgement that the children, whose father had died, should be kept in a Protestant orphanage rather than be placed in the charge of the Catholic mother. [9] It attributed no force to the signed promises that the father had made before the marriage nor to the argument that the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, adopted eight years earlier, declared that "the State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society", and that it "acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family". [10] Largely because this judgement ignored the promises made in the prenuptial agreement, it caused deep resentment in Catholic circles. [11]
In 1951 the Irish Supreme Court made a contrary judgement, upholding on appeal a 1950 High Court decision in a suit brought by a Catholic mother seeking the return of the four children whom their Protestant father had placed in a Protestant home to be raised as Protestants. The High Court ruled that the father was bound by the written undertaking he had given before marriage. The Supreme Court directed its attention to whether the prenuptial agreement was binding. Its own reasoning was that, "in upholding the contractual validity of the pre-marriage promise given by [the father, it] was rejecting an archaic principle of British law that would be the object of public scorn if it still applied in Ireland today". [12] It ruled that under the Irish Constitution the parents had "a joint power and duty in respect of the religious education of their children" and that neither parent had a right to dissolve an established contract. [13] The 1950−1951 decision was confirmed in a 1957 ruling of the Irish High Court that was not appealed, and corresponds to a New York court's decree upholding the binding character of such a prenuptial undertaking. [14]
In its 2010 documentary Mixing Marriages, BBC Radio Ulster broadcast an account of how in 1908, although the Ne Temere decree did not declare invalid the marriages previously entered into otherwise than before the parish priest of the Catholic spouse, a Catholic father, who in vain demanded that his Presbyterian wife, whom he had married in a Presbyterian church, repeat the ceremony before a Catholic priest and allow their children to be brought up as Catholics, abandoned her and took away their two small children. Ensuing publicity by the local Presbyterian minister was a factor in turning Presbyterians against Irish Home Rule. [15] [16]
Ne Temere was superseded in 1970 with the motu proprio Matrimonia mixta issued by Pope Paul VI.
The Pope: [17]
Section 15 revoked the automatic latae sententiae excommunication imposed by the 1917 Code of Canon Law for marrying before a non-Catholic minister or for failing to secure the Catholic upbringing of the children. [18] [19] The 1970 apostolic letter made the granting of a dispensation by the Ordinary conditional on a promise by the Catholic spouse to remove all danger of defecting from the faith and to do all that he or she can to have all the children baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church. The non-Catholic partner was to be made aware of these promises made by the Catholic spouse (sections 4 and 5). [18] [19] [20]
This removed the Ne Temere requirement that both the Catholic and non-Catholic spouse must pledge to raise their children as Catholics during the wedding, which was criticized as "legislating for Protestants". [21]
The regulations in Matrimonia mixta have been maintained in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. [22] In 1996, in a letter to the Irish Times, the Director of the Catholic Press and Information Office, Dublin stated "[T]he Catholic Church's current practice in relation to mixed marriages [...] the new [1991] [standard prenuptial inquiry] form includes the following questions to be asked of all Catholics [...] Do you promise to do what you can within the unity of your partnership to have all the children of your marriage baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith? [...] nothing more in the way of undertakings is required of the Catholic partner in a mixed marriage than is required of Catholics marrying one another." [23] The letter therefore makes it clear that nothing less in the way of undertakings was required of the Catholic partner in a mixed marriage than was required of Catholics marrying one another.
In 1972, two years after the abolition of the Ne Temere decree, the New Ulster Movement publication "Two Irelands or one?", commenting also on the related 1957 Fethard-on-Sea boycott, declared: The removal of the protection of the courts, granted since the Tilson judgement of 1950, to the Ne Temere decree of the Roman Catholic Church. This decree which requires the partners in a mixed marriage to promise that all the children of their marriage be brought up as Roman Catholics, is the internal rule of one particular Church. For State organs to support it is, therefore, discriminatory. [24] The NUM dissolved in 1978.
The banns of marriage, commonly known simply as the "banns" or "bans", are the public announcement in a Christian parish church, or in the town council, of an impending marriage between two specified persons. It is commonly associated with the Catholic Church, the Church of Sweden (Lutheran), the Church of England (Anglican), and with other Christian denominations whose traditions are similar. In 1983, the Catholic Church removed the requirement for banns and left it to individual national bishops' conferences to decide whether to continue the practice, but in most Catholic countries the banns are still published.
Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, sui iuris marriage, informal marriage, de facto marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal marriage despite non-compliance with the requirements for a statutory marriage, at least in the jurisdictions where marriage can still be contracted this way.
A prenuptial agreement, antenuptial agreement, or premarital agreement is a written contract entered into by a couple before marriage or a civil union that enables them to select and control many of the legal rights they acquire upon marrying, and what happens when their marriage eventually ends by death or divorce. Couples enter into a written prenuptial agreement to supersede many of the default marital laws that would otherwise apply in the event of divorce, such as the laws that govern the division of property, retirement benefits, savings, and the right to seek alimony with agreed-upon terms that provide certainty and clarify their marital rights. A premarital agreement may also contain waivers of a surviving spouse's right to claim an elective share of the estate of the deceased spouse.
A civil marriage is a marriage performed, recorded, and recognized by a government official. Such a marriage may be performed by a religious body and recognized by the state, or it may be entirely secular.
Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place. In legal terminology, an annulment makes a void marriage or a voidable marriage null.
Clerical celibacy is the requirement in certain religions that some or all members of the clergy be unmarried. Clerical celibacy also requires abstention from deliberately indulging in sexual thoughts and behavior outside of marriage, because these impulses are regarded as sinful. Vows of celibacy are generally required for monks and nuns in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and other religions, but often not for other clergy.
Marriage in the Catholic Church, also known as holy matrimony, is the "covenant by which a man and woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring", and which "has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized". Catholic matrimonial law, based on Roman law regarding its focus on marriage as a free mutual agreement or contract, became the basis for the marriage law of all European countries, at least up to the Reformation.
"Rome Rule" was a term used by Irish unionists to describe their belief that with the passage of a Home Rule Bill, the Roman Catholic Church would gain political power over their interests in Ireland. The slogan was popularised by the Radical MP and Quaker John Bright during the first Home Rule crisis in the late 19th century and continued to be used in the early 20th century.
Clerical marriage is the practice of allowing Christian clergy to marry. This practice is distinct from allowing married persons to become clergy. Clerical marriage is admitted among Protestants, including both Anglicans and Lutherans. Some Protestant clergy and their children have played an essential role in literature, philosophy, science, and education in Early Modern Europe.
Marriage is available in England and Wales to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples and is legally recognised in the forms of both civil and religious marriage. Marriage laws have historically evolved separately from marriage laws in other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom. There is a distinction between religious marriages, conducted by an authorised religious celebrant, and civil marriages, conducted by a state registrar. The legal minimum age to enter into a marriage in England and Wales is 18 since 27 February 2023. Previously the minimum age of marriage was 16, with parental permission. This also applies to civil partnerships.
In the jurisprudence of the canon law of the Catholic Church, a dispensation is the exemption from the immediate obligation of law in certain cases. Its object is to modify the hardship often arising from the rigorous application of general laws to particular cases, and its essence is to preserve the law by suspending its operation in such cases.
A defender of the bond is a Catholic Church official whose duty is to defend the marriage bond in the procedure prescribed for the hearing of matrimonial causes which involve the validity or nullity of a marriage already contracted. In current Canon Law the role is provided for in Book VII, Title 1, which deals with marriage processes.
Clandestinity is a diriment impediment in the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church. It invalidates a marriage performed without the presence of three witnesses, one of whom must be a priest or a deacon.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, an impediment is a legal obstacle that prevents a sacrament from being performed either validly or licitly or both. The term is used most frequently in relationship to the sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders. Some canonical impediments can be dispensed by the competent authority as defined in Catholic canon law.
In the Catholic Church, a declaration of nullity, commonly called an annulment and less commonly a decree of nullity, and in some cases, a Catholic divorce, is an ecclesiastical tribunal determination and judgment that a marriage was invalidly contracted or, less frequently, a judgment that ordination was invalidly conferred.
Tametsi is the legislation of the Catholic Church which was in force from 1563 until Easter 1908 concerning clandestine marriage. It was named, as is customary in Latin Rite ecclesiastical documents, for the first word of the document that contained it, Chapter 1, Session 24 of the Council of Trent. It added the impediment of clandestinity and established the canonical form of marriage for validity in the regions in which it was promulgated.
The Provincial Councils of Baltimore were councils of Roman Catholic bishops that set the pattern for Catholic organisation in the United States of America. They were seen as having a unique importance for the Church in the United States, inasmuch as the earlier ones legislated for practically the whole territory of the Republic, and furnished moreover a norm for all the later Plenary Councils of Baltimore covering the whole country. This article touches upon only those parts of the canonical legislation which may seem in any way to individualize the discipline of the Church in the United States or depict the peculiar needs and difficulties of its nascent period.
An interfaith marriage, also known as an interreligious marriage, is defined by Christian denominations as a marriage between a Christian and a non-Christian, whereas an interdenominational marriage is between members of two different Christian denominations, such as a Lutheran Christian wedding a Catholic Christian, for example.
The Fethard-on-Sea boycott was a controversy in 1957 involving Sean and Sheila Cloney, a married couple from the village of Fethard-on-Sea, County Wexford, Ireland. It resulted in a sectarian boycott, led by the local Catholic priest, of some members of the local Protestant community.
There are seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, which according to Catholic theology were instituted by Jesus Christ and entrusted to the Church. Sacraments are visible rites seen as signs and efficacious channels of the grace of God to all those who receive them with the proper disposition.
The new rules eliminate the requirement that the non-Catholic partner promise to raise the children in the Catholic faith. Instead, they require only that the non-Catholic be informed of his spouse's commitment to bring up the children as Catholics.