Marriage

Definition Of Marriage

The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman established between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, and which by its very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has, between the baptized, been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.

Consequently, a valid marriage contract cannot exist between baptized persons without its being by that very fact a sacrament.

The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility; in Christian marriage they acquire a distinctive firmness by reason of the sacrament.

Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which a man and a woman by an irrevocable covenant mutually give and accept one another for the purpose of establishing marriage.