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To: Mrs. Don-o
Not sure what you mean by your "context" here. A marriage is not considered "null" even if one or both parties is known to be infertile. This happens more frequently than one might think, and the couples are still validly married. In other words, fertility is not what makes a marriage valid, nor was this ever the case. Or am I misunderstanding you?

There was a case a few years back where the RCC denied a couple a church wedding because the man was not physically able to have sex due to spinal cord damage. IF the couple knows this and understands this they should be allowed marriage in any church. It was a FR thread years ago I can't remember how far back right now.

But on the other hand thanks to the intercession of a couple of Nuns at a hospital you & I are familiar with right before my second marriage our wedding her severe despite disability took place. Though it was in a Catholic Chapel our Baptist minister did the service. But the hospital Chaplain at the time {Priest} and Nuns were there also.

I'm not anti-Catholic & my dads family is about 50% Catholic. I just think some of the rules are a bit too much. St Mercy as most call it now due to several recent name changes hid my then girlfriend now wife in the hospital real well from an abusive EX wanting to do more harm. One Nun a black-belt kept a close eye on her.

The first time I got married I asked my cousin to officiate. He said he couldn't because neither of us were Catholic. That's fine no problem. When she passed three years later he did do her funeral service at my request. That he was allowed to do but no Last Rites which was fine also.

52 posted on 06/30/2013 4:32:36 PM PDT by cva66snipe (Two Choices left for U.S. One Nation Under GOD or One Nation Under Judgment? Which one say ye?)
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To: cva66snipe
"...the RCC denied a couple a church wedding because the man was not physically able to have sex due to spinal cord damage. IF the couple knows this and understands this they should be allowed marriage in any church."

The RCC was right to deny a church wedding in this case, because the attempted marriage would not have been valid, sacramentally, since it was not consummated physically. The meaning of marriage, according to the Bible, is that the two become one flesh. They are not one flesh if they cannot or do not perform the Act of Marriage.

This is why, as well, two men cannot get married, or two women, or two surgical neuters that don't have sexual organs at all. They may love each other, be beautifully and sincerely committed to each other, want to spend their lives together in mutual fidelity and unity of heart and mind --- might they not? two loving men? --- but they cannot marry precisely because they can not minister to each other the holy Act of Marriage, which is sacred bodily union of the type by which the human race is procreated.

It doesn't matter whether one or both of them are infertile. What matters for the Sacrament, is that they can and do perform the unique, specific act which makes them one flesh.

BTW, two men do not become "one flesh" no matter how tenderly devoted to each other they may be, and no matter what kind of jiggery-pokery they do. If it does not involve the husband ejaculating into the wife's genital tract, it is not a completed act of natural intercourse.

Historically, this is why the RCC Church said that King Henry VIII's marriage with his first wife, Catherneof Aragn, was valid and indissoluble. Henry said the first marriage was not valid because he was married to his brother's (Arthur's) widow. The Church said that although Catherine and Arthur had been married in Church, the marriage was never consummated (Arthur was very sick at the time of his marriage, and died not too long after) and therefore Catherine had validly married when he wedded Henry, and the marriage could not be annulled.

Thus having a rather serious impact on the course of history, as everybody knows.

54 posted on 06/30/2013 6:07:29 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("A man leaves his father and mother, and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh.")
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