Go Make Disciples
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Go Make Disciples
Canon Law & Order | "Who's Right About Rites?" (S1 E2)
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In this episode, Father Will and Father Jerome widen the lens on canon law so it stops being shorthand for “annulments” and starts looking like what it really is: the Church’s way of protecting communion, truth, and real people. Along the way we trade myths for specifics, from Eastern Catholic rites and ordinations to juridic persons, Catholic identity, and why a decree of nullity is not “Catholic divorce.”
In this episode, we will cover:
• why every priest studies some canon law and why canonists exist
• the 1917 code versus the 1983 Code of Canon Law and why dates matter
• reading canons through the mind of the legislator and the role of Latin
• how Eastern Catholic Churches are governed and how baptism affects enrollment
• why Orthodox Christians entering communion typically become Eastern Catholic
• what the code says about married priests and limits around episcopal ordination
• dimissorial letters and how the Church prevents rogue ordinations
• physical persons versus juridic persons and why institutions have obligations
• the bishop’s role in guarding Catholic identity and the use of the name Catholic
• religious institutes proper law and the charism of the foundation
• what makes an assignment letter valid and how obedience can create stability
• why there is no such thing as a Catholic divorce and what annulments examine
• consent defects, coercion, conditions, and partial simulation as nullity grounds
• pontifical degrees, academic colors, and canon law behind sainthood causes
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Canon Law Basics And Code History
SPEAKER_00In the Catholic Church, the faithful are bound by canon law, a set of individual paragraphs of set law that the church interprets and applies to given situations, established by the church to maintain order, govern, and protect her people. Here's how it works.
SPEAKER_03I am Father Will Bonowski, the judicial vicar. And with me for a second time is Father Jerome Krug, he of many assignments.
SPEAKER_01One or two.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Now I do have to correct a mistake from last week's or last two weeks' episode. Um on the question does every priest study canon law? Not every priest does the licentiate program, right? That three-year program.
SPEAKER_01Which is what you did.
SPEAKER_03Which is what I did, but every priest takes two semesters of canon law.
SPEAKER_01Just enough to be dangerous.
SPEAKER_03Just enough to be dangerous.
SPEAKER_01To know just enough, but not quite enough.
SPEAKER_03Just enough to get yourself in and out of trouble.
SPEAKER_01But that's why we have canon lawyers.
Because I Wrote The Canon
SPEAKER_03That's why we have canon lawyers. Um, and actually, we had as our professor for that year um one of the uh OG uh canonists coming out of the the Second Vatican Council, um, father, I guess now Cardinal Girlanda, John Frank uh Girlanda, um, who is one of the key um architects of the 83 code. The 83 code, what is it like so there's the 1917 code that was promulgated that was pretty much the the law of the church.
SPEAKER_01It's like the year of our lord 1970.
SPEAKER_03The year of our lord 1917, um, and then 1983 um was when the current code was out, which is why when we get um annolma petitions and the marriage takes place before 83, we kind of have to look at the older the older code. Okay. Um, but he's a legend, and he's also a legend for one particular moment when he kind of shut down one of our classmates.
SPEAKER_01So we actually took our first two semesters of canon law together, which is how we have this shared story. And if I remember it correctly, Father Girlanda, Cardinal Girlanda, he was trying to explain some some principle or what a certain canon meant. And in canon law, and you would know more about this than I do. One of the really important factors is the mens legislatoris or the mind of the legislature. Don't don't correct my Latin, please.
SPEAKER_03Well, and it's also important that the code, well, the language of the church is still Latin. We never got rid of Latin. In fact, it's it's kind of annoying whenever I get letters from the courts in Rome because I have to translate everything from Latin to English. Um, thankfully, AI has gotten a lot better. Um, but it was also talking about the translation.
SPEAKER_01And and so, yeah, mind of the legislator, you you have to try to read the canons in in light of what the original legislator or the holy father or council who who promulgated this canon, and this one student was kind of arguing back and forth with Cardinal Girlanda, who, of course, is a great, like you were saying, a great Titan, one of the real architects of the 1983 Year of our Lord, 1983 code of canon law. And so they're going back and forth, and she's like, Well, how do you know that's what the mind of the legislator was on this canon? And he responded, in Italian, Perché lo scritto io, which means I'm the one who wrote it because I wrote it. Because I wrote it. So he actually was the person who wrote the canon. So kind of amazing.
SPEAKER_03And we actually we were the last class to have him uh before he retired. Wow, which was kind of a little bit of a feather in our in our caps.
Eastern Churches And Baptismal Belonging
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, so one of the things that that I was hoping to do on this episode, right? Because I mentioned l last time that most of what people think when they think of canon law is marriage, but there's so much that goes just beyond that. Um, for example, one of the classes that I took when I was studying canon law uh dealt with uh canonization of saints, which was really cool. We got to go tour um that, well, that dicastri um in Rome and get half class there and learn how to write uh part of the cause for the uh Positio. Um, but really I mention baptism being a key. Um and there's some unique stuff with the baptism, because I mentioned, right, there's the eastern code. Um the two are parallel, but the two kind of cover the different sort of ecclesial realities. So we have the Western Church, most the Roman Catholic Church. Then we have the 23 Ecclesiastes Auries of their own law, their own right, of which we have two um parishes here in the archdiocese. Um Holy Family, which is Sierra Malabar. It's Holy Family, right?
SPEAKER_01I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Um Sierra Malabar in in South Oklahoma City, and then Our Lady of Lebanon, um Catholic Church, Maronite Catholic Church, um down in Norman. So both of those two communities um are really primarily governed by the code. And so there's this kind of reality, right? We're all in communion together, but how does one belong to which? And the codes, the two codes kind of help branch that reality. So for example, what happens if you have, for example, a Maronite Catholic wife and a Roman Catholic father, and they take their kids to be baptized? What church, the you know, which of the 24 Catholic churches, you know, the one, you know, do they belong to are is the kid Maronite or is the kid Roman? Because that would be two different Ecclesias or Uris, yes. And so what the code says, both the C C E O um and the CIC, the CIC's Codex Uris Canonicis, the code with the code of canon law, C C E O, the uh code of canons for Eastern, you know, churches. Um, so it's just abbreviated C I C, C C E O, or if you're Italian where everything is a ch uh yeah, I can't say it, it's just it's okay. Uh Chi C E O um would say unless they're agreed upon beforehand, the child is the right, the the church of the father. So in this situation, if they didn't agree upon, um, that kid would be Roman Catholic. Um if the if if they agree though that they're gonna go on the mother, then that kid would be Maronite Catholic. And so these are kind of the things that the code looks at and and kind of governs and say, okay, yeah, we're all kind of one communion, but we have these different patrimonies of the faith. Um and so it's important to kind of separate that and kind of and so one of the kind of other things the code says is just receiving the sacraments in one right uh doesn't change your right. So, for example, if you are uh Ruthenian Catholic, um, which is an Eastern European kind of Ukrainian Catholic um community, and you don't have any near you, so you're going to a Roman Catholic church and you baptize your kid there, that doesn't mean that your kid is automatically Roman Catholic. He stays in that right, it comes from the family, it comes from the family, and you know, um, and in fact, um when it comes even to for holy orders, right? Um, because uh, and I'm not gonna say any names, if he's watching this, he knows who he is, but we have a deacon um here in the archdiocese who is Maronite Catholic. So for when he became was ordained a deacon, he actually had to get permission from the Maronite eparchy to be able to be ordained in the Roman Rite, um, by I guess it would have been Beltran at the time. So, like these this sort of protecting right of of the patrimony, um, which is kind of I think neat and kind of cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, in fact, it's really interesting. Um, you know, so we have you so we know the Eastern Orthodox churches, right? There's Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Antiochian. Um you know, in fact, we have uh St. Elijah's here in Oklahoma City, where a lot of our Lebanese community here in Oklahoma City attend. So, what would happen if one of them would want to become Catholic? Could they become Roman Catholic? What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03No. No, no. So the Holy Mother Church, the Holy See, wants to preserve the patrimony of the Eastern Churches. They don't want it to get lost. So it's really difficult, almost impossible for someone from an Eastern Catholic Church to become Roman Catholic. It's a lot easier to go the other way. So for someone who is Orthodox becoming Catholic, they actually become a member of the closest Ecclesiastes to Uris to their Orthodox communion. Well, so I'm learning new things. Yeah. So someone who is Ukrainian Orthodox would become Ukrainian Catholic. Someone who's Sero Malabar Orthodox would become Sero Malabar Catholic. Um, again, to preserve that patrimony, that unique church. There also is sort of um understood rule that if a Roman Catholic man becomes Eastern Catholic, there's an impediment to holy orders. So there's not like a flood of uh uh Roman Catholic men becoming uh Eastern so that they can become married priests.
SPEAKER_01Because Eastern Catholics have married married priests.
SPEAKER_03Because uh priestly celibacy, which I think is a beautiful thing and an important thing and should be kept, is a discipline, not a dogma. So in the Eastern Catholic churches, um, you can be a married priest. It wasn't until maybe five years ago you could be a married priest in the US before they said no married priests in the US.
SPEAKER_01Too confusing.
SPEAKER_03Too confusing. Um, but if you are a married priest, you can't become a bishop. No married bishops, no married bishops. So I'm sure there are a lot of people who marry just for that reality. In fact, a lot of Eastern Catholic seminaries in Europe, uh, once you finish second theology, if you plan on getting married, you have to leave and get married before you can come back. Because once you're ordained, no marriage. No marriage, you're locked in.
SPEAKER_01A ordained priest in the Eastern Catholic Church can't get married, but a married man in the Eastern Catholic Church can be ordained. Right. Okay. Just like in a married permanent deacon in the Latin rite, in the Latin, in the Roman Catholic Church, he can be married when he's ordained, but after he's ordained, he can't marry even if his wife passes away.
SPEAKER_03Even if his wife passes away. Um yeah. In fact, I think it was you at the deacon ornation back in November, because I guess they had copied and paste from the transitional one, and we were looking at the promises, and it mentioned celibacy, and I was like, ugh. Uh oh.
SPEAKER_01Don't promise that.
Ordination Permissions And Episcopal Safeguards
SPEAKER_03And so I listened very closely and was like, okay, good. They didn't mention that promise. But it was in the program. It was in the program, but they didn't promise it, so I didn't have to start writing uh Rome for dispensation from celibacy for those men. Um, and in fact, I mean, Rome requires a lot of different things when it comes to ordinations in general. You and I, this is just kind of just talking about different realities of the code governs that we don't think about. So you and I, we were ordained transitional deacons by uh Cardinal Danardo, um the Archbishop Emeritus of Galvest at Houston. So do you remember the process that we had to go through to be ordained by him, even though he wasn't our ordinary?
SPEAKER_01Vaguely. There was a letter involved. We had to write a letter to Archbishop Coakley, and Archbishop Coakley had to write a letter, or can you remind me?
SPEAKER_03It's a demissorial letter.
SPEAKER_01Dismissorial?
SPEAKER_03Not dismissorial, demissorial letter.
SPEAKER_01That's a bad letter.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, that's more like Dimasorial. You are fired. Um, but we had to write that letter getting permission. Um Dimasorial. Dimissorial. And part of that is to be ordained by someone who is not our bishop, not our ordinary. And so um normally, right, in the ordination, right, you put your hands like this, the bishop puts his hands around you and you make the promise of obedience. It says, You promise obedience to me and my successors. Respect, respect and obedience. Obedience, oh yes. I I respect you, Archbishop Coakley, I promise.
SPEAKER_01Do you promise, do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Whereas when it's not your ordinary, it says, Do you uh promise respect and obedience to your ordinary?
SPEAKER_01Uh there's a funny moment when Cardinal Donardo was asking me that question. You know, so my hands are between his hands. Do you promise respect and obedience to your ordinary? And there is a picture of it because they had really good photographers there. And if you look in the background, Archbishop Coakley is actually leaning out of his row just to watch that I said that I said I would be obedient.
SPEAKER_03Have you been?
SPEAKER_01I've tried.
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, and so and part of that is to protect bishops from going rogue in ordinations, right? Because the ordinary has to protect um the interests of his diocese and has the right to ordain the men that he deems worthy. Um, and so, like, let's say, for example, there's a bishop who ordains someone who's not a seminarian without the demissorial letter. That bishop, according to the code, is automatically banned from ordinations for an entire year.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03So he cannot ordain anyone for that entire year.
SPEAKER_01Because he did so without the proper permission. So you can't just a bishop can't ordain someone who's not in his di from his diocese.
Juridic Persons And Catholic Identity
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And also, uh, you can't ordain a bishop without approval from Rome. Um, look at a USSPX. Um if you're not aware of what's going on, read the pillar. Um, we support the pillar on this show. They're both good canonists. Um, in fact, one of the things that they talked about on their podcast before is uh persons considered in the code.
SPEAKER_01Um Yeah, this is confusing for me. I've had two semesters of canon law, but can you explain the different kinds of persons?
SPEAKER_03So the law is applied to persons in the code, but it's applied to the whole church. So the church makes two distinctions on persons.
SPEAKER_01Like good persons and bad persons?
SPEAKER_03Uh no, that's that's that's for Jesus. Okay. Um sheeps and goats. Sheeps and goats, left and right. Um, so there are physical persons and juridic persons.
SPEAKER_01Whoa.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, I know. It's like big words. So physical person would be like you and I. We are physical people, at least yeah, physical. I'd slap you, but I don't want there to be evidence of me slapping you on camera. Um and so we would be physical persons. So so because we are we are human, um, the laws apply to us. Then you have Juridic persons. So you're at St. Eugene's, right? Correct. And you're at the Mount. Correct. Are those persons? No.
SPEAKER_01False.
SPEAKER_03They are Juridic persons. They are they are given personage. I don't even know if that's a word.
SPEAKER_01Personhood?
SPEAKER_03Personhood. That sounds like a political buzzword. Um, but they are given the status of person um on the virtue of of the law. So they're a juridic person per uh person. Um religious institutions.
SPEAKER_01So the parish of St. Eugene and the Catholic High School of Mount St. Mary are Juridic persons. Juridic persons in the code, meaning they have rights and responsibilities. Yep. Just like a a a person.
SPEAKER_03They're govern and they're governed through that.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_03Um, and so that's those those two distinctions.
SPEAKER_01What about a Catholic hospital? Juridic person?
SPEAKER_03Juridic person. The other thing you just actually I'm glad you mentioned that. One of the things governed by the code, and this is something that has kind of popped up um when you have Catholic groups who kind of say they're Catholic, but then they advocate for things that are not authentic Catholic teaching. The bishop governs what entities in their diocese and their territory can call themselves Catholic. So let's say you had a Catholic high school that went rogue. We'll just call it like St. Adalbert High School, Catholic High School, whatever. I'm not gonna try. I think all our three high schools are are pretty solid um in their Catholicity. Let's say you had St. Adalbert Catholic High School, and they just decided um just to completely just go off the rails, just off the rails, um, you know, um liturgical dance, you know, uh all sorts of, you know, debauchery or whatever, you know, church teaching is wrong, this is how this is be. If they are, well, if they're a diocese in one institution, the bishop will just come in and clean house. But let's say they're run by a religious order. Um the bishop can say, no, I'm sorry, you cannot call yourself Catholic in my diocese because you are not upholding. I'm a hand talker, my mother's from Spain, um, it's genetic. If I were to break my arm, I would have a speech impediment. So I apologize to those of you who might be distracted by my hands. Um, so that yeah, they would be able to take away and say, No, you can't call yourself Catholic anymore because you are not Catholic.
SPEAKER_01So the bishop is the one who is the guardian of the Catholic identity in the diocese.
SPEAKER_03Well, he's the guardian of the the totality of the faith in the diocese.
SPEAKER_01So it it's his responsibility to ensure that the Catholic institutions are living up to the name Catholic. Yes. Well, that's a lot of responsibility.
SPEAKER_03It is. And um we're very fortunate. We have a wonderful bishop.
SPEAKER_01The best.
SPEAKER_03And and I pray daily that uh neither you or I ever end up with a pointy hat.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_03I uh, you know, I I I trust the Holy Spirit to not lead the church astray, so I'm very confident that I will not get that pointy hat.
SPEAKER_01That's right. But we're blessed with a good bishop.
SPEAKER_03We're blessed with a good bishop. Um, but it's not just diocese, right? Um religious institutions are covered um by the actually, I had a classmate, um, Father Stephen Wolfe, who's a Jesuit um from Wisconsin. He was one of the few Americans in my class. Um, myself, him, uh, Father Alberto Vargas from Saginaw, Michigan, and then Father Shane Houston up in Tulsa, um, who's a classmate of ours. Yeah. And he and I were talking, and I just said to him, like, for the life of me, I just cannot get the concept of the section in the code in book two on religious institutes um and consecrated life. And he goes, Oh, that's funny, because I can't understand diocesan curia because he's a Jesuit, so he doesn't belong to a diocese.
SPEAKER_01Um personal experience.
Assignments Stability And The Freedom To Obey
SPEAKER_03But even, you know, when you look at the religious institutes, the code kind of governs how you can create it, how you establish it, what the statutes need to be, and all that. Um, and one of our professors who taught that, he's a Japanese Jesuit, um, Father uh Yugi uh Sugawara, who's brilliant, he would write all his notes in Japanese kanji and then spot translate into Italian during his lectures. But he said on the spot. Wow. And he said, if you want to make sure you pass my exam, you need to remember these two things. Um the dipende del diritto proprio, those depends on the proper law of so the statute. Um, and the la carisma della fundazione, the charism of the foundation, not the charism of the founder, because sometimes founders of religious institutes end up being not to great people, but the charism of the foundation. And so as long as you could remember those two things, he was gonna pass you. So when I had him for my final comps, um the first thing I said before he asked me any questions, I said those two things, and he smiled. Um so there's it's just there's this reality, right? Um that everything that lives and breathes in the church um is beholden to the code. Um another thing, right, governing the code um is assignment letters. Assignment letters? Well, you know, it's that season where the bishop is calling priests and they panic on whether or not that call is gonna move them or not. Umedience. Um and so, but in order for that um assignment to be valid, it has to be communicated. In a letter, and that letter needs to have the name of the priest, the name of the parish, the effective starting dates, the terms of the assignments, as well as the city and dates of the signing, the seal of the archdiocese, the signature of the bishop, and the signature of either the chancellor or the vicar general. Without those things, that assignment doesn't really happen. Doesn't really happen. It's invalid.
SPEAKER_01So priests don't choose their own assignments?
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_01They're given them?
SPEAKER_03They're given them. And we go because our life is gift. That's right. Our life is gift. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, uh on the one hand, it's like, well, I'm obedient and so I don't pick where I work or where I live. But in another sense, I'm free because I don't have to worry about where I'm gonna live or where I'm gonna work.
SPEAKER_03Right. There's a sense of stability there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh a difference of stability than like religious institutions, like our good friends out in Shawnee.
SPEAKER_01The monks of St. Gregory's St.
SPEAKER_03Gregory's, because their stability is their belonging to the Abbey. So pretty much all of their governance belongs in in book two of the code on the institutes of religious life and consecrated life. And so for them, right, when we talk about the uh dito proprio, their proper law, it would be the proper law, uh, both the statutes of the abbey in particular, but also the Benedictine order globally. And the charism of the foundation will be the charism of Benedict, aura at Labora, the work and the rule of St. Benedict.
SPEAKER_01We were both educated by Benedictines.
SPEAKER_03We were conception, Saint Mindred.
SPEAKER_01And and so the you know, the freedom that comes from obedience kind of also gets to the heart of what we were talking about with law last time, that law isn't just arbitrary restrictions on my free will as a rugged individual, but it's actually a way that I'm freed from having to decide what is the best thing for me. And that sounds kind of anti-modern, and in a certain sense, it sort of is. We don't define ourselves, but we we're actually guided in the direction we're meant to go, which is freeing, or you can view it through the lens of like a secular vision, which would see it as limiting.
SPEAKER_03Right. That attitude where you can't restrain me, you can't take this away from me, whereas there is that freedom that comes from from submitting oneself to to church teaching and to Christ teaching. You know, you were talking about that obedience, it reminded me of something that uh Bishop Tony Taylor said. Um, Bishop uh Taylor, who is the Bishop of Little Rock, Arkansas, who also just happens to be our brother priest. He's a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. And he said, There are no bad assignments, only bad attitudes. And I think that's true just in being a disciple in general, is when we don't want to submit ourselves. It's not like there's no unjust rule or law in the church, but just bad attitudes.
SPEAKER_01Which any of us can fall into. It's a good reminder that there's no such thing as a bad assignment, just not approaching it from the best perspective.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but that'd be that's true of anything. I mean, whether it be your work, your home, um watching football, weather, you know, weather, well, yeah. Schizophrenic. We're we're running schizophrenia season for our weather here in Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_01It's been back and forth. Yeah.
Annulments And What Makes Marriage Valid
SPEAKER_03And so, so yeah. And so I think it's really important for us as Catholics, uh, and I mentioned this last time, but I just kind of want to go more in depth, that when we think about the code, that we don't just limit it to the reality of marriage and annulments. And I'm gonna look in the camera and I'm gonna break the fourth wall right here. And we'll talk about annulments later on and go more in depth. But there is no such thing as a Catholic divorce. If you ever come up to me on the street and you refer to annulments as Catholic divorce, I will do my best not to slap you, but I will be tempted. There's no such thing as a Catholic divorce because the adulment is actually a lot more powerful than that. Because what the adulment really isn't looking at, it doesn't really care about the life of the marriage, to be honest. It cares about the things leading up to the consent and immediately after. What is the defects there? Like, like what are the things that are impediments there? What are the things that lessens the freedom of the will or the capacity to discern, or what are the things that you're withholding rather than giving over into the marriage, and then looking at the events leading up to the consent or the I do and immediately after to look and say, did a sacrament actually happen? Because sometimes we can go through what we think is a sacrament, but then when we look at it, it's like, oh, actually, there's not a sacrament here. Now, the code does say that marriage has the favor of the law, and all marriages are presumed valid until proven otherwise. But when you then prove it, you can say, okay, there's no sacrament here. You know, for example, if someone puts a gun to your head and says, You have to marry my daughter, you're not free to marry. That's that's not a marriage.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03You know, um, and so that's the important thing to remember about a decree of nullity. Now it's not saying that the life of the marriage didn't happen. It doesn't make your children illegitimate. The civil effects of the marriage still happen, but it just says there was no sacrament here. Yeah, your life was here, which is why I love um that from Matthew, um, in the Gospel of Matthew, when he goes and he's talking about divorce, and he goes, Um, what what uh God has put together, no man can tear asunder unless the marriage is unlawful. And and I'm gonna go in a bit of a rabbit hole here because I'm gonna pick on the uh King James Version translation. Um, first off, the Bible was never written in English, it was written in Greek and Hebrew. Um, sorry, I once saw a uh Protestant preacher say that the best translation of the Bible is the King James. It's like I'm pretty sure it's the Koine Greek, um, but that's just me. Um their translation says unless there's adultery, which is not what Jesus was saying, which is not what the evangelists intended in compiling the gospel, because what he was looking at is when a lot of the Hellenite, a lot of sort of the Greek diaspora were joining, you know, they were coming from communities where there were marriages where there was no real kind of rule on consanguinuity. And so, you know, so there were marriages that were too consanguity, consanguinity means like by blood relation, you know, like brother marrying sister, cousins, marrying, you know, kind of thing. And so he was really talking about how there were people coming into the church who had marriages that that were unlawful based off of these certain rules. So even in the beginning of the church, you start to see like validity in marriage there. So when G when they say unlawful, that's that's what they mean. Like, um, whereas um you get to the King James and it says unless there's an adultery, which ends up creating some null marriages, because if you go in thinking, oh, there's an escape clause to marriage, it's not permanent. If this thing happens, I can leave. Well, then you're not whole giving over a marriage that is for life.
SPEAKER_01With no conditions or reservations, the marriage vows have to be made, right? You make these vows without reservation or condition. So if I'm trying to reserve right.
SPEAKER_03If you go into marriage and say, if they cheat on me, I'm out. And that's your thought process when you say I do.
SPEAKER_01That's not a full that's full.
SPEAKER_03That's what they call partial simulation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Or you can say, I will give my life to my spouse, but I'm gonna have a side piece because you know, yeah, it's 2026.
SPEAKER_03Or, or if you go in and saying she's gonna be my maid or he's gonna be my butler, that would be against the because marriage is ordered to the good of both spouses. Marriage is ordered to the good of both spouses, not just the husband or the wife. I say that because sometimes uh men try to marry May, sometimes women try and marry butlers. Like it happens. Marriage is ordered to the good of both spouses. Bonum conugum.
SPEAKER_01So all these are just different ways that when you do the in-depth investigation of the lead up to the wedding, right? Because you don't really investigate the marriage itself, but you look at all of what led up to the wedding, right? Then in the moment of the wedding, if there's any of these ways of r uh having something with reservation or condition in the vows, then that would lead to grounds for proving that it was null. And so rather than like making it null, it's just pointing out, oh Right.
SPEAKER_03For example, if you were cheating on your intended spouse before the wedding, and then we're cheating, you know, within the first year of the marriage, probably a good indicator you do not intend fidelity, you know, or uh being in the south where we are, the whole concept of the shotgun wedding, that's a totally invalid sacrament because you are forcing through fear um the uh creation of of the sacrament. He's like, you are gonna do this because I'm making you.
SPEAKER_01Um that's just you know, that's that's so that's that's that's to whet the appetite. That's to whet the appetite just kind of further talk on marriage in a moment. Hopefully, for that conversation, you can have another learned canon lawyer for that part.
Degrees Saints Processes And Holy Week
SPEAKER_03No, that's that's the plan. That's the plan.
SPEAKER_01Um, unless you want an amateur like me.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes. Well, I mean, you you do have a license though.
SPEAKER_01I do. I do a license uh in sacred theology, which is not the same as a license in canon law, but uh license in moral theology.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And so there are three degrees of pontifical degrees, which are all postgraduate degrees, so after having a bachelor's degree. So there's the bachelor of sacred theology, which is the STB. Um, there's also a bachelor's in philosophy, if I remember correctly. Um, and then you go to the licentiate. So I have a license in canon law or a JCL, Yuri's Kanoichi Licentia. Yours is in sacred theology. Um, you can also get a license in philosophy, um, biblical studies. Um, biblical studies, I believe, falls under sacred theology. And then you go to the doctorate. So a JCD would be a doctorate in canon law, but also each sort of discipline has a different academic color. So I have what's called an academic beretta. No, it's not a pistol, it's the the hat that the priest wears. And mine has green piping with a green pom-pom because green is the color of canon law. So, in fact, when I turned in my my uh thesis for my licentiate, I had to print it off on green paper because that's the color of the faculty of canon law. Yours would be red, which is the color for sacred theology, and blue is the color for philosophy. I don't know who made up the colors. Um I'm not wearing blue because of philosophy. I'm wearing blue because uh I decided to look professorial and I had an Argyle sweater vest.
SPEAKER_01Well, those are some good pieces of trivia to know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you know, and that's the thing is, and really what I hope with this series is just to broaden the mind of what the scope of canalize. In fact, um when they were getting ready for the beatification, they had to do the exhumation of Blessed Stanley Rother, and there had to be canonical kind of committee representatives there to see that to for the exhumation of the body. So they had some medical professionals, other people of good moral character. Um, the judicial vicar at the time, Monsignor Rick Stansbury was in there, they were all sworn to secrecy. So I we we can't know what they saw. It was a secret, but they had to do that for the exclamation of the body, um, to look and see about incorruption and things like that, and then also to take fragments for for relics.
SPEAKER_01Um the more you know, the more you know. Well, that's a lot of a lot of information for one day. Yeah, it's a lot of kind of you know I think enough to whet the appetites for people to keep coming back.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so our hope is to get one of these uh out every two weeks. Um, so there won't be one next week. Of course, it's holy week, so there won't be one next week. Hope to have one um the week after Easter. Um, but so uh but as we enter into this sacred time, into the sacred trituum, um I think it's just a good time to really just reflect on the the freedom that really comes with the Paschal mystery. You know, we talk about the freedom of submission and obedience to Christ, but really that all stems from um the freedom that comes from the breaking of the chains of sin and death. So I hope you all have a blessed and holy Easter, uh holy week and a blessed Easter, and we'll see you on the next one.