News scritte da Schöch Nikolaus

The canonical form for marriage expresses the religious identity of the spouses. If one of them belongs to the Catholic Church (Latin or Eastern sui iuris) and the other to one of the Orthodox Churches, then inter-organisational conflicts emerge, especially concerning the form of the celebration. It should be in the interests of both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, even for ecumenical purposes, to reduce such conflicts to a minimum, ensuring, if not the liceity of the celebration of mixed marriages, then at least their validity in the Catholic canonical system, in the Orthodox legal systems, and inasmuch as possible, in the civil system. To this end it is desirable that some accords would be reached between the Catholic Churches sui iuris and their respective Orthodox counterparts, such as the one signed at Sharfé in Lebanon on 14 October 1996. As a last resort for avoiding that a marriage not be recognised by the legal system of the Orthodox party, recourse could be had, in individual cases, to a dispensation from canonical form, with full awareness that the obligation to canonical form expresses not only the faith of the Church but also that of the spouses.