Folia Canonica 8. (2005)
STUDIES - Wojciech Kowal: Norms for Preparing the Process for the Dissolution of the Matrimonial Bon din Favour of the Faith
92 WOJCIECH KOWAL OMI solution of ratified and consummated marriages. Canon 11419 states the theological principle that no human authority can dissolve a ratified and consummated marriage. In other words, such a marriage enjoys absolute extrinsic indissolubility as far as human authority is concerned. On the other hand, however, c. 1141 does not state that the pope does not have the vicarious or ministerial power as the vicar of Christ to dissolve a ratified and consummated marriage. Therefore, some writers maintained that the pope has such power. It must be remarked, nevertheless, that no pope has ever given evidence that he thought that he possessed the authority to do so. On the contrary, one may quote a number of papal documents that seem to exclude the pope’s having the power, even as vicar of Christ, to dissolve a consummated sacramental marriage.10 Recently, in his Allocution to the Roman Rota of January 21, 2000, John Paul II spoke expressly about the limits of the Roman Pontiffs power over ratified and consummated marriage which cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death (CIC, c. 1141; CCEO, c. 853). By its very nature this formulation of canon law is not only disciplinary or prudential, but corresponds to a doctrinal truth that the Church has always held. Nevertheless, there is an increasingly widespread idea that the Roman Pontiff’s power, being the vicarious exercise of Christ’s divine power, is not one of those human powers referred to in the canons cited above, and thus it could be extended in some cases also to the dissolution of ratified and consummated marriages. In view of the doubts and anxieties this idea could cause, it is necessary to reaffirm that a ratified and consummated sacramental marriage can never be dissolved, not even by the power of the Roman Pontiff.11 The Pope maintains that the opposite assertion would imply the thesis that there is no absolutely indissoluble marriage, which would be contrary to what the Church has taught and still teaches about the indissolubility of the marital bond.12 John Paul II concludes that “[...] the non-extension of the Roman Pon9 The English translation of the canons of the 1983 Codex iuris canonici is taken from E. Caparros — M. ThÉRIAULT - J. THORN (eds.), Code of Canon Law Annotated, 2nd ed. revised and updated of the 6th Spanish-language ed., prepared under the responsibility of the Instituto Martin de Azpilcueta, Montréal, Wilson & Lafleur Limitée, 2004. 10 See Gregory XVI, Letter Accepimus, 8 February 1836, no. 3, in P. Gasparri (ed.), Codicis iuris canonici fontes, vol. 2, Romae, Typis polyglottis Vaticanis, 1948, no. 491, 769; Pius IX, Allocution Verbis exprimere, 15 August 1859, in ibid., no. 525, 929; Leo XIII, Encyclical letter Arcanum, 10 February 1880, no. 25, in ibid., vol. 3, 1933, no. 580, 166; Pius XII, Address to recently married couples, 22 April 1942, in Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII, vol. 4, 47. 11 John Paul II, Allocution to the Roman Rota, 21 January 2000, no. 6, in AAS, 92 (2000), 353 (English translation in Woestman [ed.], Papal Allocutions to the Roman Rota 1939-2002, 257). 12 See ibid.
