Folia Canonica 8. (2005)

STUDIES - Grigorios D. Papathomas: An Open Ecclesial Communitarism: Dispar-Mixed Marriages and Adult Converions

FOLIA CANONICA 8 (2005) 151-161.

GRIGORIOS D. PAPATHOMAS

AN OPEN ECCLESIAL COMMUNITARISM: DISPAR-MIXED MARRIAGES AND ADULT CONVERSIONS

STATUS QUAESTIONIS: Marriage: an Ethno-Religious Area or a Communion of Persons?', Church Theology, I. Ecclesiastical (Canonical) Marriage; II. Dispar (Interreligious) Marriage; III. Mixed (Interchristian) Marriage; IV. Civil (according to State law) MARRIAGE; Conclusions - PROPOSALS: Example I: The Case of a Non-Baptised Member (without Religions); Example 2: The Case of a Person that Professes another Religion.

Status Quaestionis

The problem caused by the issue of “Mixed Marriages and Adult Conversions” must be clarified and urgently resolved in our time when lack of freedom and compulsory double religious belonging can no longer stand in the light of our pluralistic civic society, much less in the light of Church Theology. However, it seems that the practice followed by the Church both in the last years and nowadays, has not given proper attention to the problem and has fallen into the pitfall of lack of freedom, pushing its own members or those of other confessional and religious Communities towards a compulsory creedal or double religious belonging, not to mention that it could reflect — which would be much worse — other deeper and serious alteration of the ecclesial body. Without going as far as to denounce a radical alteration of the Church, it is questionable whether we must reduce the problem specifically to double belonging or rather avoid any kind of exclusivism in general.

In other words, mixed marriage, as well as dispar marriage, which was historically anterior to mixed marriage, must exist both now and in the future in such a way that they guarantee, as they used to, the wilful adherence to a certain Community, when required, and the prevention, by all means, of compulsory conversion which paves the way for a double-community perspective.

Marriage: an Ethno-Religious Area or a Communion of Persons?

In the framework of the coexistence of Religious Communities within a pluralistic civic society, marriage was, and still is, either a meeting point or an entrenchment point between Communities, as well as between their members. Through the ages, practices have not been the same in all places and at all times.