Now I'm wondering if the French do destination weddings, and if the ceremony must be held at a French embassy/consulate, and whether the destination country considers that a legal marriage ...
I can't find an English-language source, but the French foreign office does imply that if a French couple married abroad, they would need to have this marriage validated by the French embassy in order for it to be legal in France.
Is that "validated" as in "show us the paperwork" (a common request for a change in legal status, no matter the jurisdiction) or "validated" as in @Forthview's claim of "do the whole thing over again in France"?
I can't find an English-language source, but the French foreign office does imply that if a French couple married abroad, they would need to have this marriage validated by the French embassy in order for it to be legal in France.
Is that "validated" as in "show us the paperwork" (a common request for a change in legal status, no matter the jurisdiction) or "validated" as in @Forthview's claim of "do the whole thing over again in France"?
From the source I would say somewhere between the two:
Les futurs conjoints doivent au préalable s’adresser à l’ambassade de France ou au consulat de leur lieu de résidence, qui vérifiera qu’ils répondent aux mêmes conditions et accomplissent les mêmes formalités que celles exigées en cas de mariage en France.
Si le futur époux a son domicile ou une résidence en France, la publication des bans a lieu à la mairie de son domicile ou de sa résidence. A défaut, la publication a lieu au consulat français dont dépend son domicile ou sa résidence à l’étranger.
La publication des bans est obligatoire pour le mariage d’un ressortissant français à l’étranger. Ce n’est qu’au terme de cette publication, à défaut d’opposition et si le mariage remplit les conditions de fond prévues par notre code civil, que l’ambassade ou le consulat de France délivrera à sa demande au conjoint français un « certificat de capacité à mariage ».
Which I translate as:
The future couple must, beforehand, contact the French embassy or the local consulate, who will check that they fulfil the same criteria and complete the same formalities that would be necessary for them to be married in France.
If the future spouse has a home or residence in France, the banns are published in the local council offices of that home or residence. Otherwise, the banns are published in the French consulate appropriate to their home or residence abroad.
Publication of the banns is obligatory for any marriage contracted by a French expatriate abroad. It is only after publication of the banns, without any objections being raised, and provided that the marriage fulfils the basic conditions required by our own civil law, that the embassy or consulate will provide, at the French couple's request, a marriage certificate.
This is followed by a list of the huge number of additional documents that must be provided to the embassy in order to obtain a marriage certificate (forms, birth certificates, evidence of residential address, etc).
Regardless of whether Forthview is correct in what he said, the embassy process does seem to me rather comparable to a Catholic 'convalidation of marriage', by which a civil marriage is upgraded to a sacramental marriage - in the sense that while it isn't a marriage ceremony, it is a bit more than just handing over the civil marriage certificate to be entered in a book.
Correction: 'certificat de capacité à mariage' isn't a marriage certificate, it's a certificate confirming they have the right to get married. IOW, they need the imprimatur of the French embassy before the foreign marriage is considered legally valid.
Regardless of whether Forthview is correct in what he said, the embassy process does seem to me rather comparable to a Catholic 'convalidation of marriage', by which a civil marriage is upgraded to a sacramental marriage - in the sense that while it isn't a marriage ceremony, it is a bit more than just handing over the civil marriage certificate to be entered in a book.
An interesting and related question is whether an already-married couple wishing to immigrate to France would be expected to jump through the same hoops to have their marriage considered valid. If not, it would imply a significant difference between French government and the position of the Catholic Church on sacramental marriage. If so, it would be an interesting way to get your marriages effectively annulled. Just move to France!
The Catholic Church makes no statement about the validity or otherwise of people who do not claim to be Catholic. It is not the job of the Catholic Church to interfere with the ideas of marriage of any non-Catholic.
Go on, pull the other one! This is the same Catholic Church that has fought tooth and nail against legal same-sex marriage wherever it's been implemented, or thought of being implemented? The same Catholic Church that would rather shut down its adoption services than treat a married same-sex couple the same as it would a married opposite-sex couple? Maybe it was some other Catholic Church that did that!
I should give credit to one - and I emphasise one - Catholic bishop here in Australia who, when the plebiscite on same-sex marriage was happening, made a very clear statement to his parishes that this was a vote on what civil marriage would be, and had precisely nothing to do with church doctrine and what the church would be doing.
You would think that the Catholics more than most churches would understand this, precisely because the Catholic policy on divorce has long been different to the civil policy on divorce without the world ending or the church saying "help help we're being oppressed".
And yet, in most cases the Catholic Church very much did believe that the civil definition of marriage was its business.
I should give credit to one - and I emphasise one - Catholic bishop here in Australia who, when the plebiscite on same-sex marriage was happening, made a very clear statement to his parishes that this was a vote on what civil marriage would be, and had precisely nothing to do with church doctrine and what the church would be doing.
And at the same time, ++Glenn took $1m of money which had been given for the general charitable purposes of the diocese* and gave it to the No campaign.
*Read supporting widows, single mothers, and children, the sick and the elderly
Personally, I think marriage is merely a social contract. It is not a sacrament. I will even carry it further by saying the church should not be in the act of tying the knot, as it were.
And personally, I have the opposite opinion. The state's role in my marriage is limited to registering that it happened. Mrs C and I tell the state "we are married" and the state says "OK, we'll make a note of that."
(And it doesn't matter for this part of my opinion whether I'm having a church wedding or a civil one. The state's job is to sit there and say "thanks for letting us know. We've made a note of it.")
Personally I think there are two things that go by the same name and are largely coterminous: state marriage, which has legal purposes as regarding care and feeding of children, life decisions, property, and distribution of estates after death; and church marriage, which has to do with a relationship before God. Various couples have had one without the other (certainly atheists generally don't do the second, and religious folk who can't legally marry for whatever reason can still have a church marriage). So they are clearly separable in thought. I think if we made this separation explicit and behaved accordingly, it would be good for society as a whole, and have few of any negative consequences.
Fully agreed @mousethief. It would be a lot easier if we didn't have different groups of people not only using the same word but thinking that they "own" the concept in that word.
This is especially a problem in the countries (such as most English-speaking ones) where the procedure for recognition fuses the two together, ie religious practitioners are recognised as marriage celebrants for legal purposes and you sign your legal marriage certificate during the religious wedding ceremony.
The question is who, if anyone, is going to budge on terminology. Is anyone going to accept one thing being "marriage" and the other thing getting an adjective at the front? Or is everyone going to use adjectives - will we get to a point where "civil marriage" and "religious marriage" are common terms and if you say "marriage" people will ask you which one you mean?
I would tend to agree with the responses so far. What bothers me, though, is why Jesus said what he's recorded as saying about divorce, whether in Matthew or Mark. After all, it's not like unhappy marriages are a purely modern phenomenon. Why does he take such a hard line?
Clearly the disciples are a bit shocked by it: "if that's how things are, it sounds like we'd be better off not getting married at all!" - response "YES you are in fact correct..."
Sorry about double quote above.
The difficulty comes when lifting biblical quotes without understanding the context of the time. Divorce would have been a huge deal for women who in the main did not have economic independence.
As I understand it a man could divorce his wife, by merely stating three times that he was divorcing her, marriage was arguably a form of social control over women. Jesus was undermining that concept, by beginning the discussion about changing the power imbalance. Admittedly He did not go as far down the road of explicitly promoting full equality, but in context of time was pretty revolutionary.
He did say that those who came after would do greater...
Regardless of whether Forthview is correct in what he said, the embassy process does seem to me rather comparable to a Catholic 'convalidation of marriage', by which a civil marriage is upgraded to a sacramental marriage - in the sense that while it isn't a marriage ceremony, it is a bit more than just handing over the civil marriage certificate to be entered in a book.
An interesting and related question is whether an already-married couple wishing to immigrate to France would be expected to jump through the same hoops to have their marriage considered valid. If not, it would imply a significant difference between French government and the position of the Catholic Church on sacramental marriage. If so, it would be an interesting way to get your marriages effectively annulled. Just move to France!
If I read this site correctly, no, they would not need to jump through those hoops.
Which seems analogous to the somewhat counterintuitive Catholic position, according to which a civil marriage contracted by a Catholic is considered invalid while a civil marriage between two non-Catholics is considered valid (or at least not ipso facto invalid).
When I started practice over 50 years ago (if you count articles) the divorce legislation was called the Matrimonial Causes Act.
It still is in England and Wales.
A difficulty with ‘matrimony’ is that it doesn’t IIRC have a verb, and doesn’t lend itself to coining one. “I’m going to get matrimonied in church tomorrow.”
This is especially a problem in the countries (such as most English-speaking ones) where the procedure for recognition fuses the two together, ie religious practitioners are recognised as marriage celebrants for legal purposes and you sign your legal marriage certificate during the religious wedding ceremony.
The question is who, if anyone, is going to budge on terminology. Is anyone going to accept one thing being "marriage" and the other thing getting an adjective at the front? Or is everyone going to use adjectives - will we get to a point where "civil marriage" and "religious marriage" are common terms and if you say "marriage" people will ask you which one you mean?
In Australia civil marriage celebrants were instituted in 1973 to enable people to avoid the restrictive laws of the main Christian denominations and to enjoy with family and friends a ceremony without having to resort to the rather unceremonial registry office process. The public embraced this and now 80% of marriages are performed by civil celebrants.
I think many would regard their marriage as a spiritual occasion and committment, rather than just a civil/legal contract.
Fully agreed @mousethief. It would be a lot easier if we didn't have different groups of people not only using the same word but thinking that they "own" the concept in that word.
I think the problem is where people frame the debate as 'How should this word be defined?' instead of 'What do we think should happen?'
(Kind of like those debates on 'Are group-X Christians?', which will always generate more heat than light.)
I think the problem is where people frame the debate as 'How should this word be defined?' instead of 'What do we think should happen?'
Yes. Or rather, the problem is that the 2 questions are deeply inter-related (he says having just clocked off on a Friday night from drafting some quite interesting but really rather tricky legislation where I know I have to adjust some defined concepts to deal with a policy adjustment, but which ones?)
Before you can be satisfied with a definition of a word or a phrase, you really have to know what that word or phrase is going to be used for. Here, for example, the proposition that we need 2 words rather than one is because we're going to want to make a distinction between 2 ways of dealing with a relationship, between the same 2 people. So we need to know why we care about that distinction. If we didn't care about the distinction, we could have a single word/phrase that was defined so it covered both ways of dealing with the relationship.
And I say "dealing with" a relationship because it's apparent there's some debate here about whether what is happening is recognition of an existing relationship or creation of a new one. I've actually come across that problem before, many years ago when (in the absence of same-sex marriage), the state of Tasmania established a relationship register. One of the country's most prominent LGBT advocates, who was involved in the policy development, was absolutely convinced that the system created a new type of relationship and wouldn't accept lawyers from other states (including me) telling him that the language used was actually about recognising existing relationships.
This is especially a problem in the countries (such as most English-speaking ones) where the procedure for recognition fuses the two together, ie religious practitioners are recognised as marriage celebrants for legal purposes and you sign your legal marriage certificate during the religious wedding ceremony.
The question is who, if anyone, is going to budge on terminology. Is anyone going to accept one thing being "marriage" and the other thing getting an adjective at the front? Or is everyone going to use adjectives - will we get to a point where "civil marriage" and "religious marriage" are common terms and if you say "marriage" people will ask you which one you mean?
In Australia civil marriage celebrants were instituted in 1973 to enable people to avoid the restrictive laws of the main Christian denominations and to enjoy with family and friends a ceremony without having to resort to the rather unceremonial registry office process. The public embraced this and now 80% of marriages are performed by civil celebrants.
I think many would regard their marriage as a spiritual occasion and committment, rather than just a civil/legal contract.
Given that 80% of marriages are performed by civil celebrants, I'm not sure whether you are saying many of them still regard their marriage as 'spiritual' in some ways, or whether you're claiming that 20% is still 'many'.
But that wasn't my point. My point was that the Marriage Act, which determines who can officiate a marriage for civil purposes, includes a lot of religious practitioners on the basis of the denomination they belong to. If you are a minister in Church X, then the church's recognition of you as such is essentially good enough for the government to accept you, with only very limited exceptions.
Sections 26 and 29 of the Marriage Act cover this.
I hadn't realised that my statement about the marriage laws in France would raise such interest and I thank those who have done some more investigative work on this.
Citizens of the French Republic are subject to the marriage laws of the State if they wish their marriage to be considered as valid by the State.
Citizens of other countries who are either visiting France or living long term there are not subject to these marriage laws if they are not citizens of France.
In the same way people who are not Catholics ( and by that I mean those who do not claim to be Catholics) are not subject to the internal rules for a canonically valid Catholic marriage.
The Catholic Church has no legal right to deny the validity of any marriage conducted according to the laws of any state.
The Catholic Church has the right to state to those who claim to be its followers the conditions for a valid Catholic form of marriage.
That, however, does not mean that as citizens of any particular country (and you will find Catholics in virtually every country in the world) Catholic do not have the right to express their approval or disapproval of state law. Other citizens also have or should have those rights.
The idea that the Catholic Church would actively dismiss the legal or even spiritual, validity of marriages contracted outside of the Church by people who are not Catholics is simply ridiculous.
It would certainly dismiss the spiritual ,but not the legal, validity of the marriage of anyone claiming to be a Catholic, who had not married according to conditions laid down by the Church.
The idea that the Catholic Church would actively dismiss the legal or even spiritual, validity of marriages contracted outside of the Church by people who are not Catholics is simply ridiculous.
I look forward to same-sex couples testing this out.
This is especially a problem in the countries (such as most English-speaking ones) where the procedure for recognition fuses the two together, ie religious practitioners are recognised as marriage celebrants for legal purposes and you sign your legal marriage certificate during the religious wedding ceremony.
The question is who, if anyone, is going to budge on terminology. Is anyone going to accept one thing being "marriage" and the other thing getting an adjective at the front? Or is everyone going to use adjectives - will we get to a point where "civil marriage" and "religious marriage" are common terms and if you say "marriage" people will ask you which one you mean?
In Australia civil marriage celebrants were instituted in 1973 to enable people to avoid the restrictive laws of the main Christian denominations and to enjoy with family and friends a ceremony without having to resort to the rather unceremonial registry office process. The public embraced this and now 80% of marriages are performed by civil celebrants.
I think many would regard their marriage as a spiritual occasion and committment, rather than just a civil/legal contract.
Given that 80% of marriages are performed by civil celebrants, I'm not sure whether you are saying many of them still regard their marriage as 'spiritual' in some ways, or whether you're claiming that 20% is still 'many'.
I was considering the idea that someone would want clarification as to whether a person's marriage was civil or religious. I think that would be very unusual and that most people would not differentiate.
And I don't think that 20% is still 'many'. For the most part churches have lost their role in marriages in Australia and people find other ways to make their weddings a spiritual occasion.
There are 100s,I think, of same sex marriages which have been carried out in Scotland.
I am not aware of the Catholic Church challenging the legal validity of any of these marriages.
None of these marriages will ,however, have been carried out according to the rites of the Catholic Church by an authorised Catholic celebrant.
There are 100s,I think, of same sex marriages which have been carried out in Scotland.
I am not aware of the Catholic Church challenging the legal validity of any of these marriages.
None of these marriages will ,however, have been carried out according to the rites of the Catholic Church by an authorised Catholic celebrant.
I think the point being made is that the RCC intervened very strongly to oppose equal civil marriage.
The RC Church has a perfect right in law to make clear its disapproval of suggested laws ,just as any other citizens do ,or may be they don't ? That is quite different from attempting to mount a legal challenge to the law of the land.
The use of the word 'spiritual' is not confined only to those who are Christians, nor even to those who believe in some form of a divine Being. Lots of people want to have a marriage ceremony which is in some way 'spiritual'
The RC Church has a perfect right in law to make clear its disapproval of suggested laws ,just as any other citizens do ,or may be they don't ? That is quite different from attempting to mount a legal challenge to the law of the land.
They have that right, but they then give up any claim to not be passing judgment on non-Catholic marriages.
I agree with you. If I am right ,Arethosemyfeet, you claim to be a Christian and I think that you claim to be married. In the absence of any other information to the contrary I am more than happy to accept that you are married, even if the marriage ceremony did not take place according to the rites and customs of the Roman Catholic Church.
If your partner were of the same sex as you and you were to produce a valid marriage certificate I would be happy to say that you are married according to the laws of the land.
I am not sure of all the positives and negatives in your statement that 'they then give up any claim to not be passing judgement on non-Catholic marriages'
When I started practice over 50 years ago (if you count articles) the divorce legislation was called the Matrimonial Causes Act.
It still is in England and Wales.
A difficulty with ‘matrimony’ is that it doesn’t IIRC have a verb, and doesn’t lend itself to coining one. “I’m going to get matrimonied in church tomorrow.”
I'd never thought of that. It sounds so wrong doesn't it? Now the Family Law Act BTW.
I should have added perhaps for clarity,Arethosemyfeet .Were you to tell me that you were married to a partner of the same sex I would probably believe you without the production of the valid marriage certificate.
Were you,however,to tell me further that you were a Catholic and that you had been married to a same sex partner according to the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church,I probably would not believe you.
I should have added perhaps for clarity,Arethosemyfeet .Were you to tell me that you were married to a partner of the same sex I would probably believe you without the production of the valid marriage certificate.
Were you,however,to tell me further that you were a Catholic and that you had been married to a same sex partner according to the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church,I probably would not believe you.
And in that you would likely be wrong, unless I specified Roman Catholic. The SEC considers itself part of the Catholic Church and the alt-universe gay version of me would certainly have chosen to marry according to its rites and ceremonies.
There are 100s,I think, of same sex marriages which have been carried out in Scotland.
I am not aware of the Catholic Church challenging the legal validity of any of these marriages.
None of these marriages will ,however, have been carried out according to the rites of the Catholic Church by an authorised Catholic celebrant.
The issue is not when the marriage is carried out. The issue is when the church has some reason to deal with these people in some other context.
Does the Catholic Church not run schools where you live? Does it never hire out halls? Employ people besides priests? Have any other kind of business with the wider world?
And in that you would likely be wrong, unless I specified Roman Catholic. The SEC considers itself part of the Catholic Church and the alt-universe gay version of me would certainly have chosen to marry according to its rites and ceremonies.
If I said Catholic most people would understand that part of the Church which is united in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.
I am happy to count you as a member of the Catholic Church but not to count the services of those Catholic Communities out of communion with Rome to count as authentic (Roman) Catholic ceremonies
Orfeo our local Catholic parish hires out its hall to various groups which have little to do with the Catholic Church ,including groups from a local very evangelical church.
Our local Catholic schools have several staff who are not Catholics.
And in that you would likely be wrong, unless I specified Roman Catholic. The SEC considers itself part of the Catholic Church and the alt-universe gay version of me would certainly have chosen to marry according to its rites and ceremonies.
Why is that specification necessary?
Because Rome doesn't have ownership of the term "Catholic".
An interesting and related question is whether an already-married couple wishing to immigrate to France would be expected to jump through the same hoops to have their marriage considered valid. If not, it would imply a significant difference between French government and the position of the Catholic Church on sacramental marriage. If so, it would be an interesting way to get your marriages effectively annulled. Just move to France!
If I read this site correctly, no, they would not need to jump through those hoops.
Which seems analogous to the somewhat counterintuitive Catholic position, according to which a civil marriage contracted by a Catholic is considered invalid while a civil marriage between two non-Catholics is considered valid (or at least not ipso facto invalid).
I actually see the cases as pretty much exact opposites. France has put up several regulatory barriers to its citizens getting married. Given this, regulations on marriages of French citizens contracted in foreign jurisdictions seem like the usual government exercise in preventing regulatory evasion. (e.g. a couple goes to Luxembourg for the weekend to get hitched to avoid a lot of government paperwork.) In other words, while the process of getting married seems highly regulated by the French government, their acceptance of the foreign marriages of visitors or already-married immigrants shows they don't have a terribly different concept of being married. The same rights and obligations are attached either way under French law.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, with its sacramental view of marriage regards being married differently depending on whether or not the marriage was contracted under their jurisdiction.
Citizens of the French Republic are subject to the marriage laws of the State if they wish their marriage to be considered as valid by the State.
Citizens of other countries who are either visiting France or living long term there are not subject to these marriage laws if they are not citizens of France.
Given that the French government will extend the rights and obligations attached to marriage to married visitors or immigrants, your second statement is grossly misleading. "Marriage law" is about a lot more than just who can get married, covering things like inheritance, decision making in cases of incapacity, etc. As mentioned earlier, the French government does not regard married tourist couples as "unmarried" if they lack a French marriage certificate.
The RC Church has a perfect right in law to make clear its disapproval of suggested laws, just as any other citizens do, or may be they don't ?
The Roman Catholic Church is not a "citizen" of any country in the strictest meaning of the term. They're a corporate entity like General Dynamics, the steamfitters' union, or the Society for Creative Anachronism. Individual members of these entities may be citizens of various countries, but the corporate entities themselves are not. It should be noted that, unlike most natural persons, the Catholic Church has managed to get itself exempted from paying taxes in many of the jurisdictions where it functions, meaning that attempts to jigger the laws of those countries amounts to demands of representation without taxation.
The marriage ceremony which I thought was the subject of debate was about what constitutes the legal recognition of a marriage for a French citizen.
Once again we use words which mean different things.
Assuming that you are in the USA,what constitutes a legally recognised marriage ?
Is it a visit to the Office of a Justice of the Peace and signing a paper stating you wish to marry ?
Is there another form of legally recognised marriage ceremony ?
Are religious marriages legally recognised marriages ?
Can one demand a religious marriage from any recognised religious corporate entity ?
Can a corporate religious entity refuse to carry out a marriage ceremony for anyone who would be legally able to go through a ceremony of marriage in any particular state ?
I think that some states in the USA allow for same sex marriage. Is it the case that all states allow for same sex marriage ? If not are people of the same sex who have been legally married in one state also legally married in a state which does not allow for same sex marriages
Does the Orthodox Church (like the Catholic Church ) have its own internal rules as to whom it will provide marriage ceremonies for, or does it follow the rules of the state ?
Please forgive my ignorance as I have only once been to the USA for two hours.
I would really appreciate any answers to some or all of these questions from anyone who knows the system in the USA.
Assuming that you are in the USA,what constitutes a legally recognised marriage ?
Like many things in the US, this depends on the state in which you live.
I think usually you get some sort of bit of paper from your local bureaucracy, affirming that the couple are free to marry. AIUI, some states require an STI test to issue this.
The marriage is solemnized by some minister of religion or other authorised person, who signs the bit of paper to say that he has done so, and then the couple hand the paper back to the state, who makes a record.
Can a corporate religious entity refuse to carry out a marriage ceremony for anyone who would be legally able to go through a ceremony of marriage in any particular state ?
Yes. Many churches only marry their adherents in good standing.
I think that some states in the USA allow for same sex marriage. Is it the case that all states allow for same sex marriage ?
Yes, since a 2015 Supreme Court ruling. Before that, there was a period where some states married same-sex couples and some didn't. In principle, states are required to give full faith and credit to other states' marriages; in practice, there were legal challenges which all evaporated after that SC ruling.
An interesting and related question is whether an already-married couple wishing to immigrate to France would be expected to jump through the same hoops to have their marriage considered valid. If not, it would imply a significant difference between French government and the position of the Catholic Church on sacramental marriage. If so, it would be an interesting way to get your marriages effectively annulled. Just move to France!
If I read this site correctly, no, they would not need to jump through those hoops.
Which seems analogous to the somewhat counterintuitive Catholic position, according to which a civil marriage contracted by a Catholic is considered invalid while a civil marriage between two non-Catholics is considered valid (or at least not ipso facto invalid).
I actually see the cases as pretty much exact opposites. France has put up several regulatory barriers to its citizens getting married. Given this, regulations on marriages of French citizens contracted in foreign jurisdictions seem like the usual government exercise in preventing regulatory evasion. (e.g. a couple goes to Luxembourg for the weekend to get hitched to avoid a lot of government paperwork.) In other words, while the process of getting married seems highly regulated by the French government, their acceptance of the foreign marriages of visitors or already-married immigrants shows they don't have a terribly different concept of being married. The same rights and obligations are attached either way under French law.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, with its sacramental view of marriage regards being married differently depending on whether or not the marriage was contracted under their jurisdiction.
Your second paragraph is incorrect. The Catholic Church regards most civil marriages, i.e. marriages outside its jurisdiction, as valid, provided there is no question of divorce. A non-Catholic couple who got married and then converted to the Catholic faith would not need to go through a convalidation service in order to make their marriage valid - just as the immigrant couple entering France does not need to jump through any bureaucratic hoops.
What is ipso facto invalid is specifically the situation where a baptised Catholic chooses to enter a civil marriage. AIUI (and with the caveat that I'm not RCC), this is because Catholics are expected to marry in a Catholic church, so if a Catholic chooses not to do so, this is treated as prima facie evidence that they are trying to shirk some aspect or other of the Catholic obligations in marriage, and therefore their intentions are defective. In order for their marriage to be considered valid, they would need a service of convalidation - which corresponds to the French couple marrying in Luxembourg potentially to avoid French regulatory paperwork, and thus needing to jump through the bureaucratic hoops at the embassy for their marriage to be counted as valid.
This is, incidentally, why I am leery of the idea of creating an extra word to distinguish between civil and religious concepts of marriage. ISTM that: a.) the concepts being described here are specific to Roman Catholic theology, and most other Christians wouldn't subscribe them either; and b.) Roman Catholic theology already has a well-established vocabulary to describe different types of marriage (as they see it): natural, sacramental, putative, valid, invalid, illicit, and probably some others that I haven't thought of.
The marriage ceremony which I thought was the subject of debate was about what constitutes the legal recognition of a marriage for a French citizen.
No, it's about what constitutes legal marriage in France. France recognizes as legal marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Married couples don't become unmarried when they go to France. (I'm imagining someone claiming that it doesn't count as cheating because they were in France so technically they were single at the time. I'm guessing that neither an aggrieved spouse nor a court in an at-fault jurisdiction is likely to be very convinced.)
Please forgive my ignorance as I have only once been to the USA for two hours.
I would really appreciate any answers to some or all of these questions from anyone who knows the system in the USA.
First off, there is no "system in the USA". Like a lot of family law, marriage is regulated at a state level, meaning that there are more than fifty different systems (plus the District of Columbia and various non-state territories) in the USA. These systems are all similar but have slight differences and must conform with the overall limits of the federal Constitution. (The most relevant bits of the federal Constitution are the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Full Faith and Credit clause in Article IV of the Constitution.)
@Leorning Cniht covered most of the basics. All states require a couple to obtain a marriage license from the local bureaucracy, usually a registrars office at the courthouse. They have to provide IDs and affirm that they're both able to marry, meaning they're of marriageable age under the laws of the state and not currently married to anyone else. If a previous marriage existed proof of divorce or death of the previous spouse is usually required. After that the license has to be signed by the couple and a qualified officiant (and possibly by witnesses, depending on jurisdiction). Often there's a waiting period (usually a couple days) between the issuing of the license and when signing it is considered valid.
Who counts as a qualified officiant varies from state to state, but every state has some form of non-religious officiant that's recognized as valid (judge, county clerk, justice of the peace, etc.). The state of Pennsylvania allows couples to marry without an officiant, requiring only the signature of the couple and witnesses on the marriage license. This is a nod to the prevalence of Quakerism in Pennsylvania, though you don't have to be a Quaker to take advantage of this law and can have an officiant if you wish. Which religious figures count as a qualified officiant varies from state to state. A lot of them simply specify that anyone recognized as clergy by a registered religious non-profit can officiate, others have a process by which someone who wished to be a wedding officiant can register with the state.
Religious organizations are considered legally akin to private clubs rather than public accommodations so they're free to discriminate in all kinds of ways that wouldn't be permitted to the government. They can refuse to perform inter-racial weddings, same-sex weddings, wedding of non-believers, etc. The one exception that I'm aware of is a court ruling dealing with a wedding chapel, which claimed the same level of exemption from anti-discrimination law. The court ruled that since the wedding chapel had no congregation, no overall religious affiliation, and performed no other function other than marrying people that it was more akin to a business than a religion and thus qualified as a public accommodation and was subject to the same anti-discrimination laws as anyone else.
I think that some states in the USA allow for same sex marriage. Is it the case that all states allow for same sex marriage ?
Yes, since a 2015 Supreme Court ruling. Before that, there was a period where some states married same-sex couples and some didn't. In principle, states are required to give full faith and credit to other states' marriages; in practice, there were legal challenges which all evaporated after that SC ruling.
Having your marital status change when you cross a border can be problematic, which is why most jurisdictions (even France!) are willing to accept as valid marriages contracted in other jurisdictions unless there's some kind of gross deficiency under their system. Before Obergefell [PDF] was handed down, advice columnist Dan Savage used to refer to his spouse as "my husband in Canada/boyfriend in America".
Does the Orthodox Church (like the Catholic Church ) have its own internal rules as to whom it will provide marriage ceremonies for, or does it follow the rules of the state ?
The Orthodox Church will only marry a couple if at least one of the couple is an Orthodox Christian in good standing with a parish in a canonical jurisdiction. (I.e. if your bishop is in communion with the officiant's bishop.) It's possible that some of the more legalistic jurisdictions don't allow non-O's to marry O's but my favorite ROCOR priest is unavailable at the moment.
Okay heard from my ROCOR priest friend. He says "it depends upon circumstances and bishop," by which he means not that some bishops are dead-set against it, but that one needs permission of one's bishop. But the non-O partner must be Christian; an O couldn't marry a non-Christian in the church. If the O tried an end run by marrying the non-Christian in say a civil ceremony or clerk's office, they would be excommunicate.
And in that you would likely be wrong, unless I specified Roman Catholic. The SEC considers itself part of the Catholic Church and the alt-universe gay version of me would certainly have chosen to marry according to its rites and ceremonies.
Why is that specification necessary?
Because Rome doesn't have ownership of the term "Catholic".
What Forthview said.
If you asked anyone here where the local Catholic church was, you'd be told that you go along there and take the 3rd street to the right. 60 years ago, it would have been practice to have added the Roman but that has long gone. It is retained in some pieces of legislation but they date back decades and decades.
Whilst if I were to ask someone in Scotland to direct me to the nearest Scottish Episcopal church I think that I would be directed, if the person knew, to that church which is in full communion with the church of England.
On the other hand one might assume that THE Scottish Episcopal Church is in fact the Roman Catholic Church, which is older and three times stronger than the denomination which came into being after the 'Glorious Revolution.
Yet again I am happy when other Christians do see themselves as a part of the Catholic Church.
Many thanks to those who have explained to me something about what is considered as a marriage service (religious or secular) in the USA.
I'm not clear if there is anything specific which a non-religious celebrant,be it court official, judge etc. ,has to say. Does the officiant merely have to sign a paper stating that the couple wish to marry according to the laws of the state ?
It seems, if I have understood correctly, that religious groups, being treated like private clubs, can freely determine for whom they will provide a marriage ceremony and for whom they will not. Their definitions of what constitutes a marriage are their own and concern only their adherents. (By chance this is the view of the Catholic Church also).
Again if I have understood correctly, a religious marriage ceremony on its own would not constitute a legally recognised marriage.
It would seem also that an Orthodox wedding on its own would not be counted as a legally recognised marriage. Also that a civil divorce would not entitle an Orthodox Christian to marry again in the Orthodox Church until an Orthodox ecclesial divorce was granted by a bishop in communion with the parish where the civilly legally divorced marriage candidate lives.
As I understand is the case in the Orthodox church ,the impossibility of a baptised Catholic to remarry after a civil divorce only concerns the possible wish of that baptised Catholic to marry within the Catholic Church. Many baptised Catholic do marry outside of the Church and they cannot normally be legally prevented from doing so.
According to my understanding of what mousethief says an Orthodox who marries in a civil ceremony would be excommunicated. Roughly the same thing happens in the Catholic Church though the term 'excommunicate' would not normally be used, rather we would say that the person would be suspended from reception of the Sacraments until things, one way or another, were brought into good 'Catholic' order.
Thanks again to everyone for their help.
Comments
Is that "validated" as in "show us the paperwork" (a common request for a change in legal status, no matter the jurisdiction) or "validated" as in @Forthview's claim of "do the whole thing over again in France"?
From the source I would say somewhere between the two:
Which I translate as:
This is followed by a list of the huge number of additional documents that must be provided to the embassy in order to obtain a marriage certificate (forms, birth certificates, evidence of residential address, etc).
Regardless of whether Forthview is correct in what he said, the embassy process does seem to me rather comparable to a Catholic 'convalidation of marriage', by which a civil marriage is upgraded to a sacramental marriage - in the sense that while it isn't a marriage ceremony, it is a bit more than just handing over the civil marriage certificate to be entered in a book.
An interesting and related question is whether an already-married couple wishing to immigrate to France would be expected to jump through the same hoops to have their marriage considered valid. If not, it would imply a significant difference between French government and the position of the Catholic Church on sacramental marriage. If so, it would be an interesting way to get your marriages effectively annulled. Just move to France!
I should give credit to one - and I emphasise one - Catholic bishop here in Australia who, when the plebiscite on same-sex marriage was happening, made a very clear statement to his parishes that this was a vote on what civil marriage would be, and had precisely nothing to do with church doctrine and what the church would be doing.
You would think that the Catholics more than most churches would understand this, precisely because the Catholic policy on divorce has long been different to the civil policy on divorce without the world ending or the church saying "help help we're being oppressed".
And yet, in most cases the Catholic Church very much did believe that the civil definition of marriage was its business.
And at the same time, ++Glenn took $1m of money which had been given for the general charitable purposes of the diocese* and gave it to the No campaign.
*Read supporting widows, single mothers, and children, the sick and the elderly
Personally I think there are two things that go by the same name and are largely coterminous: state marriage, which has legal purposes as regarding care and feeding of children, life decisions, property, and distribution of estates after death; and church marriage, which has to do with a relationship before God. Various couples have had one without the other (certainly atheists generally don't do the second, and religious folk who can't legally marry for whatever reason can still have a church marriage). So they are clearly separable in thought. I think if we made this separation explicit and behaved accordingly, it would be good for society as a whole, and have few of any negative consequences.
This is especially a problem in the countries (such as most English-speaking ones) where the procedure for recognition fuses the two together, ie religious practitioners are recognised as marriage celebrants for legal purposes and you sign your legal marriage certificate during the religious wedding ceremony.
The question is who, if anyone, is going to budge on terminology. Is anyone going to accept one thing being "marriage" and the other thing getting an adjective at the front? Or is everyone going to use adjectives - will we get to a point where "civil marriage" and "religious marriage" are common terms and if you say "marriage" people will ask you which one you mean?
Removed double quotation. BroJames Purgatory Host
The difficulty comes when lifting biblical quotes without understanding the context of the time. Divorce would have been a huge deal for women who in the main did not have economic independence.
As I understand it a man could divorce his wife, by merely stating three times that he was divorcing her, marriage was arguably a form of social control over women. Jesus was undermining that concept, by beginning the discussion about changing the power imbalance. Admittedly He did not go as far down the road of explicitly promoting full equality, but in context of time was pretty revolutionary.
He did say that those who came after would do greater...
Sounds to me like a plausible solution. If we can get people to buy into it.
If I read this site correctly, no, they would not need to jump through those hoops.
Which seems analogous to the somewhat counterintuitive Catholic position, according to which a civil marriage contracted by a Catholic is considered invalid while a civil marriage between two non-Catholics is considered valid (or at least not ipso facto invalid).
It still is in England and Wales.
A difficulty with ‘matrimony’ is that it doesn’t IIRC have a verb, and doesn’t lend itself to coining one. “I’m going to get matrimonied in church tomorrow.”
I think many would regard their marriage as a spiritual occasion and committment, rather than just a civil/legal contract.
I think the problem is where people frame the debate as 'How should this word be defined?' instead of 'What do we think should happen?'
(Kind of like those debates on 'Are group-X Christians?', which will always generate more heat than light.)
Yes. Or rather, the problem is that the 2 questions are deeply inter-related (he says having just clocked off on a Friday night from drafting some quite interesting but really rather tricky legislation where I know I have to adjust some defined concepts to deal with a policy adjustment, but which ones?)
Before you can be satisfied with a definition of a word or a phrase, you really have to know what that word or phrase is going to be used for. Here, for example, the proposition that we need 2 words rather than one is because we're going to want to make a distinction between 2 ways of dealing with a relationship, between the same 2 people. So we need to know why we care about that distinction. If we didn't care about the distinction, we could have a single word/phrase that was defined so it covered both ways of dealing with the relationship.
And I say "dealing with" a relationship because it's apparent there's some debate here about whether what is happening is recognition of an existing relationship or creation of a new one. I've actually come across that problem before, many years ago when (in the absence of same-sex marriage), the state of Tasmania established a relationship register. One of the country's most prominent LGBT advocates, who was involved in the policy development, was absolutely convinced that the system created a new type of relationship and wouldn't accept lawyers from other states (including me) telling him that the language used was actually about recognising existing relationships.
Given that 80% of marriages are performed by civil celebrants, I'm not sure whether you are saying many of them still regard their marriage as 'spiritual' in some ways, or whether you're claiming that 20% is still 'many'.
But that wasn't my point. My point was that the Marriage Act, which determines who can officiate a marriage for civil purposes, includes a lot of religious practitioners on the basis of the denomination they belong to. If you are a minister in Church X, then the church's recognition of you as such is essentially good enough for the government to accept you, with only very limited exceptions.
Sections 26 and 29 of the Marriage Act cover this.
Citizens of the French Republic are subject to the marriage laws of the State if they wish their marriage to be considered as valid by the State.
Citizens of other countries who are either visiting France or living long term there are not subject to these marriage laws if they are not citizens of France.
In the same way people who are not Catholics ( and by that I mean those who do not claim to be Catholics) are not subject to the internal rules for a canonically valid Catholic marriage.
The Catholic Church has no legal right to deny the validity of any marriage conducted according to the laws of any state.
The Catholic Church has the right to state to those who claim to be its followers the conditions for a valid Catholic form of marriage.
That, however, does not mean that as citizens of any particular country (and you will find Catholics in virtually every country in the world) Catholic do not have the right to express their approval or disapproval of state law. Other citizens also have or should have those rights.
The idea that the Catholic Church would actively dismiss the legal or even spiritual, validity of marriages contracted outside of the Church by people who are not Catholics is simply ridiculous.
It would certainly dismiss the spiritual ,but not the legal, validity of the marriage of anyone claiming to be a Catholic, who had not married according to conditions laid down by the Church.
I look forward to same-sex couples testing this out.
And I don't think that 20% is still 'many'. For the most part churches have lost their role in marriages in Australia and people find other ways to make their weddings a spiritual occasion.
I am not aware of the Catholic Church challenging the legal validity of any of these marriages.
None of these marriages will ,however, have been carried out according to the rites of the Catholic Church by an authorised Catholic celebrant.
I think the point being made is that the RCC intervened very strongly to oppose equal civil marriage.
The use of the word 'spiritual' is not confined only to those who are Christians, nor even to those who believe in some form of a divine Being. Lots of people want to have a marriage ceremony which is in some way 'spiritual'
They have that right, but they then give up any claim to not be passing judgment on non-Catholic marriages.
If your partner were of the same sex as you and you were to produce a valid marriage certificate I would be happy to say that you are married according to the laws of the land.
I am not sure of all the positives and negatives in your statement that 'they then give up any claim to not be passing judgement on non-Catholic marriages'
I'd never thought of that. It sounds so wrong doesn't it? Now the Family Law Act BTW.
Were you,however,to tell me further that you were a Catholic and that you had been married to a same sex partner according to the rites and ceremonies of the Catholic Church,I probably would not believe you.
And in that you would likely be wrong, unless I specified Roman Catholic. The SEC considers itself part of the Catholic Church and the alt-universe gay version of me would certainly have chosen to marry according to its rites and ceremonies.
The issue is not when the marriage is carried out. The issue is when the church has some reason to deal with these people in some other context.
Does the Catholic Church not run schools where you live? Does it never hire out halls? Employ people besides priests? Have any other kind of business with the wider world?
Why is that specification necessary?
I am happy to count you as a member of the Catholic Church but not to count the services of those Catholic Communities out of communion with Rome to count as authentic (Roman) Catholic ceremonies
Our local Catholic schools have several staff who are not Catholics.
Because Rome doesn't have ownership of the term "Catholic".
I actually see the cases as pretty much exact opposites. France has put up several regulatory barriers to its citizens getting married. Given this, regulations on marriages of French citizens contracted in foreign jurisdictions seem like the usual government exercise in preventing regulatory evasion. (e.g. a couple goes to Luxembourg for the weekend to get hitched to avoid a lot of government paperwork.) In other words, while the process of getting married seems highly regulated by the French government, their acceptance of the foreign marriages of visitors or already-married immigrants shows they don't have a terribly different concept of being married. The same rights and obligations are attached either way under French law.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, with its sacramental view of marriage regards being married differently depending on whether or not the marriage was contracted under their jurisdiction.
Given that the French government will extend the rights and obligations attached to marriage to married visitors or immigrants, your second statement is grossly misleading. "Marriage law" is about a lot more than just who can get married, covering things like inheritance, decision making in cases of incapacity, etc. As mentioned earlier, the French government does not regard married tourist couples as "unmarried" if they lack a French marriage certificate.
The Roman Catholic Church is not a "citizen" of any country in the strictest meaning of the term. They're a corporate entity like General Dynamics, the steamfitters' union, or the Society for Creative Anachronism. Individual members of these entities may be citizens of various countries, but the corporate entities themselves are not. It should be noted that, unlike most natural persons, the Catholic Church has managed to get itself exempted from paying taxes in many of the jurisdictions where it functions, meaning that attempts to jigger the laws of those countries amounts to demands of representation without taxation.
Would that be conspiracy?
If by "marriage ceremony" you include standing in the Justice of the Peace's office and signing the papers and affirming this is what you want to do.
Once again we use words which mean different things.
Assuming that you are in the USA,what constitutes a legally recognised marriage ?
Is it a visit to the Office of a Justice of the Peace and signing a paper stating you wish to marry ?
Is there another form of legally recognised marriage ceremony ?
Are religious marriages legally recognised marriages ?
Can one demand a religious marriage from any recognised religious corporate entity ?
Can a corporate religious entity refuse to carry out a marriage ceremony for anyone who would be legally able to go through a ceremony of marriage in any particular state ?
I think that some states in the USA allow for same sex marriage. Is it the case that all states allow for same sex marriage ? If not are people of the same sex who have been legally married in one state also legally married in a state which does not allow for same sex marriages
Does the Orthodox Church (like the Catholic Church ) have its own internal rules as to whom it will provide marriage ceremonies for, or does it follow the rules of the state ?
Please forgive my ignorance as I have only once been to the USA for two hours.
I would really appreciate any answers to some or all of these questions from anyone who knows the system in the USA.
I think usually you get some sort of bit of paper from your local bureaucracy, affirming that the couple are free to marry. AIUI, some states require an STI test to issue this.
The marriage is solemnized by some minister of religion or other authorised person, who signs the bit of paper to say that he has done so, and then the couple hand the paper back to the state, who makes a record.
Yes. Many churches only marry their adherents in good standing.
Yes, since a 2015 Supreme Court ruling. Before that, there was a period where some states married same-sex couples and some didn't. In principle, states are required to give full faith and credit to other states' marriages; in practice, there were legal challenges which all evaporated after that SC ruling.
Your second paragraph is incorrect. The Catholic Church regards most civil marriages, i.e. marriages outside its jurisdiction, as valid, provided there is no question of divorce. A non-Catholic couple who got married and then converted to the Catholic faith would not need to go through a convalidation service in order to make their marriage valid - just as the immigrant couple entering France does not need to jump through any bureaucratic hoops.
What is ipso facto invalid is specifically the situation where a baptised Catholic chooses to enter a civil marriage. AIUI (and with the caveat that I'm not RCC), this is because Catholics are expected to marry in a Catholic church, so if a Catholic chooses not to do so, this is treated as prima facie evidence that they are trying to shirk some aspect or other of the Catholic obligations in marriage, and therefore their intentions are defective. In order for their marriage to be considered valid, they would need a service of convalidation - which corresponds to the French couple marrying in Luxembourg potentially to avoid French regulatory paperwork, and thus needing to jump through the bureaucratic hoops at the embassy for their marriage to be counted as valid.
This is, incidentally, why I am leery of the idea of creating an extra word to distinguish between civil and religious concepts of marriage. ISTM that: a.) the concepts being described here are specific to Roman Catholic theology, and most other Christians wouldn't subscribe them either; and b.) Roman Catholic theology already has a well-established vocabulary to describe different types of marriage (as they see it): natural, sacramental, putative, valid, invalid, illicit, and probably some others that I haven't thought of.
No, it's about what constitutes legal marriage in France. France recognizes as legal marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Married couples don't become unmarried when they go to France. (I'm imagining someone claiming that it doesn't count as cheating because they were in France so technically they were single at the time. I'm guessing that neither an aggrieved spouse nor a court in an at-fault jurisdiction is likely to be very convinced.)
First off, there is no "system in the USA". Like a lot of family law, marriage is regulated at a state level, meaning that there are more than fifty different systems (plus the District of Columbia and various non-state territories) in the USA. These systems are all similar but have slight differences and must conform with the overall limits of the federal Constitution. (The most relevant bits of the federal Constitution are the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Full Faith and Credit clause in Article IV of the Constitution.)
@Leorning Cniht covered most of the basics. All states require a couple to obtain a marriage license from the local bureaucracy, usually a registrars office at the courthouse. They have to provide IDs and affirm that they're both able to marry, meaning they're of marriageable age under the laws of the state and not currently married to anyone else. If a previous marriage existed proof of divorce or death of the previous spouse is usually required. After that the license has to be signed by the couple and a qualified officiant (and possibly by witnesses, depending on jurisdiction). Often there's a waiting period (usually a couple days) between the issuing of the license and when signing it is considered valid.
Who counts as a qualified officiant varies from state to state, but every state has some form of non-religious officiant that's recognized as valid (judge, county clerk, justice of the peace, etc.). The state of Pennsylvania allows couples to marry without an officiant, requiring only the signature of the couple and witnesses on the marriage license. This is a nod to the prevalence of Quakerism in Pennsylvania, though you don't have to be a Quaker to take advantage of this law and can have an officiant if you wish. Which religious figures count as a qualified officiant varies from state to state. A lot of them simply specify that anyone recognized as clergy by a registered religious non-profit can officiate, others have a process by which someone who wished to be a wedding officiant can register with the state.
Some states still recognize common law marriages as legal.
Religious organizations are considered legally akin to private clubs rather than public accommodations so they're free to discriminate in all kinds of ways that wouldn't be permitted to the government. They can refuse to perform inter-racial weddings, same-sex weddings, wedding of non-believers, etc. The one exception that I'm aware of is a court ruling dealing with a wedding chapel, which claimed the same level of exemption from anti-discrimination law. The court ruled that since the wedding chapel had no congregation, no overall religious affiliation, and performed no other function other than marrying people that it was more akin to a business than a religion and thus qualified as a public accommodation and was subject to the same anti-discrimination laws as anyone else.
Having your marital status change when you cross a border can be problematic, which is why most jurisdictions (even France!) are willing to accept as valid marriages contracted in other jurisdictions unless there's some kind of gross deficiency under their system. Before Obergefell [PDF] was handed down, advice columnist Dan Savage used to refer to his spouse as "my husband in Canada/boyfriend in America".
The Orthodox Church will only marry a couple if at least one of the couple is an Orthodox Christian in good standing with a parish in a canonical jurisdiction. (I.e. if your bishop is in communion with the officiant's bishop.) It's possible that some of the more legalistic jurisdictions don't allow non-O's to marry O's but my favorite ROCOR priest is unavailable at the moment.
What Forthview said.
If you asked anyone here where the local Catholic church was, you'd be told that you go along there and take the 3rd street to the right. 60 years ago, it would have been practice to have added the Roman but that has long gone. It is retained in some pieces of legislation but they date back decades and decades.
On the other hand one might assume that THE Scottish Episcopal Church is in fact the Roman Catholic Church, which is older and three times stronger than the denomination which came into being after the 'Glorious Revolution.
Yet again I am happy when other Christians do see themselves as a part of the Catholic Church.
I'm not clear if there is anything specific which a non-religious celebrant,be it court official, judge etc. ,has to say. Does the officiant merely have to sign a paper stating that the couple wish to marry according to the laws of the state ?
It seems, if I have understood correctly, that religious groups, being treated like private clubs, can freely determine for whom they will provide a marriage ceremony and for whom they will not. Their definitions of what constitutes a marriage are their own and concern only their adherents. (By chance this is the view of the Catholic Church also).
Again if I have understood correctly, a religious marriage ceremony on its own would not constitute a legally recognised marriage.
It would seem also that an Orthodox wedding on its own would not be counted as a legally recognised marriage. Also that a civil divorce would not entitle an Orthodox Christian to marry again in the Orthodox Church until an Orthodox ecclesial divorce was granted by a bishop in communion with the parish where the civilly legally divorced marriage candidate lives.
As I understand is the case in the Orthodox church ,the impossibility of a baptised Catholic to remarry after a civil divorce only concerns the possible wish of that baptised Catholic to marry within the Catholic Church. Many baptised Catholic do marry outside of the Church and they cannot normally be legally prevented from doing so.
According to my understanding of what mousethief says an Orthodox who marries in a civil ceremony would be excommunicated. Roughly the same thing happens in the Catholic Church though the term 'excommunicate' would not normally be used, rather we would say that the person would be suspended from reception of the Sacraments until things, one way or another, were brought into good 'Catholic' order.
Thanks again to everyone for their help.