The meaning of the canonical form of the celebration of marriage since the Second Vatican Council and CIC 1983

Abstract

The matrimonial agreement is the form through which the institution of marriage and family is born. Both, the Church and the state are called to contribute to the elaboration of those specific conditions by which the notion of the marriage covenant is consolidated and clarified. The form of the marriage celebration is one of the aspects that generated and generates deep analyses and positions in front of what is and represents the way of manifesting the agreement, as well as its role. The crisis of the institution of marriage, the diversity of forms of conjugal union as well as the effects that derive from them, create the specific environment for an analysis and debate that questions the role and function of the canonical form in achieving that conjugal union that is based on the free act, the consent of the bride and groom as the will of the spouses to live together with the requirement to be transformed into a formal act, a legal expression by which the accord of the spouses fulfils all the normative aspects with a view to legal validity and implicitly with a view to the birth of the marriage. In this sense, the pre-conciliar, conciliar and post-conciliar debates reach a unitary expression in the vision of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.