The Sacrament and the Statute: Pastoral Challenges in Promoting the Family Institution in the African Context “What God has Joined Together, Let No One Separate” — Matthew 19:6

Abstract

Marriage is one of the most complex institutions in human society. The Church recognises marriage as a sacrament, a sacred covenant instituted by God. It was elevated by Christ to a sign of His own union with the Church and governed by divine and Church Law. Civilly, marriage is recognised as a legal contract between two persons, governed by the state and dissoluble according to its terms. This distinction brings some pastoral challenges. These challenges include less value being given to the sacramental marriage because couples believe they have “security” with the civil marriage. In civil circles a marriage can be dissolved by the court; the court cannot force people to remain in their marriage if they do not see it workable. The civil law does not wrong anyone by doing so. It operates in its proper sphere, as Canon 1059 rightly acknowledges. The pastoral problem arises, however, when Catholics internalise the civil law’s contractual understanding of marriage as the whole story. As Nzekwe and Iroegbu (2010) rightly observe, the African understanding of marriage has always carried something of the covenantal character that the Church affirms, a bond between families, communities and the living and the dead.
Canon 1055 captures the Church’s vision with precision: marriage is a covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, ordered to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children and raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptised. The Second Vatican Council, in Gaudium et Spes (1965, n.48), deepens this understanding by describing the marital covenant as a “community of life and love” willed by God himself, sealed by a mutual and irrevocable gift of self. Pope John Paul II, in Familiaris Consortio (1981, n.11), further affirms that Christian spouses are not only a sign but a participation in the covenant love of Christ for his Church. It is this covenantal depth that the contractual framework of civil law cannot contain, and it is the pastoral task of the Church to help the faithful understand the difference.