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Notes -
Thank you for the reply. I am sorry that I didn’t wait to post until I had time to lay out my thoughts better and to respond more promptly.
In trying to understand the Roman Catholic view of the sacraments, the best examples for me have been baptism and the eucharist, both because we Protestants also acknowledge them as sacraments – whether individual denominations use that word or not – and because the R.C. view is pretty clearly defined: There are certain requirements of form and matter, and if they are met you have a valid sacrament ex opere operato. If those requirements are met under forbidden circumstances you have a sacrament which is valid but illicit. So far I understand.
As a Protestant I regard marriage as a creation ordinance, and I do not see a category of sacramental marriage distinct from natural marriage. But Rome does, and interestingly it puts a wedding between two Protestants in a Protestant church into the sacramental category. So such a wedding must meet the requirements of form and matter, and it must do so with an officiant who is not in communion with Rome and whom Rome does not regard as a validly ordained priest.
My expectation would be that a wedding of two Roman Catholics performed by an SSPX priest would be valid but illicit. They have met at least the same requirements of form and matter as the Protestant spouses have, but they have done so in contravention of canon law. Yet the Vatican’s announcement and the canon you quoted say that such a wedding is invalid. What gives? I am particularly weirded out by this passage:
Does this mean that canon law can add requirements to a sacrament, affecting its validity as well as its lawfulness? If so, that’s a rather startling claim. If not, this canon law must be restating requirements of form or matter that already exist for other reasons; but then how are Protestant marriages, which don’t meet those requirements, valid? Consider two silly thought experiments:
Edit: Corrected some typos, and now pinging @urquan too.
The problem is with the wife and husband to be. If they are both Catholics, for a valid catholic marriage they need to be married by a properly ordained catholic priest. If two Catholics get married by protestant pastor, their marriage is invalid from catholic perspective. This is an interesting situation - for instance if there are two atheists who married in front of Elvis and who later convert to Catholicism, their marriage is considered as valid natural marriage and it is automatically promoted to sacramental marriage upon baptism. If one of them was atheist but the second one was baptized catholic in apostasy and they both married in front of Elvis, then their marriage is null and void from catholic perspective, they are just living in concubinage as lovers. They need to remarry right after baptism of the atheist and after the apostate goes through general confession (the special confession taking into account his whole life).
This seems strange, but from the standpoint of Catholic Church the Catholics as soon as you are baptized you are bound by the canon law for life. You agree that the Church is providing the legal structure to your life. Protestants or atheists did not do that, so they are not obligated to follow it.
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