“A marriage is established by the conjugal covenant, that is, the irrevocable consent of both spouses, by which they freely give themselves to each other and accept each other.”¹ In other words, “the consent of the parties, legitimately manifested between persons qualified by law, makes marriage.”² Consent is the “efficient cause”³ and “indispensable element”⁴ that gives rise to marriage and thus confers the sacramental grace of matrimony. These authoritative teachings, though, do not get us to the matter and form of this sacrament, as they do not explain the essence of matrimony in these terms.

This lack of clarity most likely results from the fact that marriage was first a natural institution which, although not conferring grace, could be considered a “sacrament” in the broader, patristic, sense of a sign of a sacred thing.⁵ Marriage “was from the very beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of [God’s] Son.”⁶ Yet, even if “holy by its own power, in its own nature, and of itself,”⁷ such a natural covenant did not receive specific solemnities of ratification from its divine author, who left the valid celebration of matrimony open to extremely broad variation in law and practice. Our Lord did not abolish this inherent variability when elevating the natural bond but simply added the power of conferring grace when contracted between the baptized. “Thus, whatever belongs properly to a contract, belongs also to the sacrament,”⁸ and whatever legitimate consent gave rise to a marriage among unbaptized parties automatically results in a sacramental marriage once both parties have received the grace of baptism. After all, “a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.”⁹

Consequently, the search for matter and form must resist the details of this or that method of contracting marriage and instead consider how matrimonial consent, at the general level, relates to the framework of matter and form.

Content of Consent

Because marriage is ordered by its nature to “the procreation and education of offspring,”¹⁰ the rights and duties to which one consents necessarily relate to the spouses’ bodies.¹¹ Accordingly, some authors, including St. Alphonsus, posited that the bodies of the contracting spouses supply the remote matter of the sacrament.¹² Yet the bodies themselves are not exchanged in the marriage rite, and rights to physical intercourse are granted in potential; mutual agreement to forego their use does not vitiate consent.¹³ Hence, insofar as any remote matter is described, theologians generally qualify this as “the mutual right of the body of each relative to procreation,”¹⁴ and thus not as a material substance.

But immaterial remote matter can only be applied (as proximate matter) through words or signs, and accordingly the most common opinion is that matter and form coincide in the celebration of matrimony while remaining theoretically distinct. “Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which a man and a woman mutually give and accept each other.”¹⁵ The giving in a contract remains somewhat indeterminate unless completed through acceptance by the other party. Hence, the words or signs manifesting consent, insofar as they hand over a right, are considered the matter; insofar as they accept the right given by the other, they are the form.¹⁶ This theory was advanced by Benedict XIV and had gained enough acceptance by the 20th century to be not only common opinion but, in the minds of some, certain.¹⁷

For consent to be exchanged validly, the parties must express it freely. “‘To be free’ means: not being under constraint; not impeded by any natural or ecclesiastical law.”¹⁸ Those laws might render certain persons incapable of marrying at all (because incapable of consenting to or fulfilling the duties of marriage), marrying each other (due to various relationships), or marrying without fulfilling requisite conditions. Strict requirements regarding the number and type of witnesses for all Catholics,¹⁹ or the priestly blessing for Eastern Catholics,²⁰ are currently necessary for validity. Yet, if we are to speak of the theoretical bounds of matter and form, the lack of such obligations prior to the Council of Trent²¹ proves that the canonical form now required is not essential to the sacrament. Even some current norms which seem more fundamental, such as the inability to exchange consent without the parties being physically present to one another—at least by proxy²²—impose restrictions that did not hinder marriages in the past and do not currently bind non-Catholics. Thus, if the laws to which the parties are subject allow, it is theoretically possible to exchange marital consent by telephone, radio, or letter.²³

How Soon Is Now?

All the same, as “nothing is willed without being known beforehand,”²⁴ consent must necessarily be both deliberate and concern a specific, determined person.²⁵ Furthermore, as a promise to marry in the future brings about engagement rather than matrimony, valid consent must be regarding the present. “The contract must be consented to here and now.”²⁶ In order for both parties to express a present agreement, the consent must be simultaneous, not in the sense of spoken or signed at the exact same time, or even within a few moments (marriage by proxy, especially, might involve decisions made at considerable remove from one another). Instead, “by natural law there must be at least a moral simultaneity of mutual consent, so that the consent of one perdures when the other consents.”²⁷

Neither natural nor divine law establishes a certain verbal formula or sign for expressing consent.²⁸ Thus, while the Church herself prescribes certain formulae, the Roman Rite allows conferences of bishops to seek adaptations of the typical edition’s words of consent.²⁹ Even if the words are changed further by a couple celebrating matrimony, “the use of the precise words of the Roman Ritual concerns the liceity and not the validity of the marriage consent.”³⁰ Although the law requires those capable to use words to answer forms of consent posed as questions,³¹ answers expressed via other signs or gestures would still be valid. The Catechism distills the Roman formula down to “I take you to be my wife/husband,”³² and such minimal expression would in fact suffice, since the agreement “to marry” need not explicitly address all essential properties of matrimony.

While by no means exhaustive of all possibilities, we may explore the range of formulae by consulting the options provided in the Order of Celebrating Matrimony (62) for use in the United States:

1. I, N., take you, N., to be my wife. I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life. (This translates the typical edition’s Ego N. accipio te N. in uxorem meam et promitto me tibi fidem servaturum, inter prospera et adversa, in aegra et in sana valetudine, ut te diligam et honorem omnibus diebus vitae meae.)
2. I, N., take you, N., for my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish until death do us part.
3. For celebrations in Spanish: N., ¿quieres ser mi esposa? Sí, quiero. N., ¿quieres ser mi esposo? Sí, quiero. N., yo te recibo como esposa y prometo amarte fielmente durante toda mi vida. N., yo te recibo como esposo y prometo amarte fielmente durante toda mi vida. (This has no official English translation, but each party asks: “N., do you want to be my wife / husband?” and answers “I do.” They then declare “N., I take you as my wife / husband and promise to love you faithfully all the days of my life.”)

1. Order of Celebrating Matrimony (OCM), 2.
2. Can. 1057 §1.
3. Council of Florence (1439), Decree for the Armenians.
4. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1626.
5. Felix M. Capello, SJ, Tractatus Canonico-Moralis de Sacramentis, 5th ed., vol. 5 (Rome: Marietti, 1947), 24.
6. Leo XIII, Arcanum, 19.
7. Arcanum, 19.
8. Nicholas Halligan, OP, The Administration of the Sacraments (Staten Island: Alba House, 1963), 422.
9. Can. 1055 §2. Cf. OCM, 7; Pius XI, Casti connubii, 39.
10. Can. 1055 §1.
11. Matrimony entails “the mutual exchange of the right to sexual intercourse.” John M. Huels, The Pastoral Companion: A Canon Law Handbook for Catholic Ministry, 3rd rev. ed. (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 2002), 212.
12. Capello, 27.
13. Eduardo F. Regatillo, SJ, Ius Sacramentarium, vol. 2 (Santander: Sal Terrae, 1946), 310; Capello, 542. Still, only a consummated marriage is absolutely indissoluble; a natural or even sacramental marriage that has not yet been consummated may be dissolved by the Roman Pontiff. See Can. 1141-1142.
14. Halligan, 416. Cf. Dominic M. Prummer, OP, Handbook of Moral Theology (Mercier: Cork, 1956), 401.
15. Can. 1057 §2.
16. Regatillo, 117. The same author, on p. 311, elaborates: “It is not required that handing over and receiving be expressed by separate words, for it is a mutual obligation and mutual right; hence by the very fact that the man says ‘I want to be yours,’ he says, ‘I receive you.’” Cf. Halligan, 422.
17. Capello, 28-29.
18. CCC, 1625. The unbaptized and ecclesial communities lacking their own marital law are bound by civil law. See Huels, 228.
19. Can. 1108 §1.
20. Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO), Can. 828.
21. Council of Trent, Session XXIV, ch. 1 (a law commonly referred to by its first word Tametsi).
22. Can. 1104 §1.
23. Huels, 245; Capello, 597.
24. Regatillo, 311.
25. Capello, 542.
26. Halligan, 429.
27. Halligan, 428. Cf. Prummer, 402.
28. Halligan, 436.
29. OCM, 41.1.
30. Huels, 245.
31. Such as those provided at OCM 62 and 63.
32. CCC, 1627.