When Is Marriage Null?: Guide to the Grounds of Matrimonial Nullity for Pastors, Counselors, and Lay Faithful

by Paolo Bianchi

Many marriages are "ended" by separation or divorce, but for the baptized Christian they remain valid marriages forever.

There are, however, cases in which a Christian marriage can be recognized as null, i.e. it never existed.

This book, written by a specialist with a gift for clarity on a complicated, sensitive issue, is a guide for a first approach to the problems related to the conditions for eventually declaring the nullity of a canonical Christian marriage.

This work is an indispensable aid for the pastors of souls, for Catholic counselors, and can be very useful also for anyone who has serious questions about the validity of his own marriage.

The primary purpose of this work is to provide clear, well-founded information in sufficient quantity to parish priests and to all who will act as counselors in these matters, either in formally organized parochial counseling services, or in other possible forms of collaboration with the parish priest, or else in the ecclesiastical tribunals themselves as a step previous to the possible introduction of the case.

Among the areas he covers are: Violation of the freedom of consent; Error about a person; Exclusion of offspring; Exclusion of fidelity; Incapacity to consent; Incapacity to assume the essential obligations of marriage; Conditional consent.

314 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2015

Reviews

[Maximilian Nightingale]

Almost certainly the most useful book on matrimonial canon law out there. Each chapter begins by explaining the substantive law for each ground of matrimonial nullity, and then there are sections on questions to ask and (most useful of all) concrete examples where all the different factors come into play. I have seen many introductory books that are superficial and many scholarly books that are impenetrable, but this book strikes the balance by presenting only the most necessary information, but not at the cost of accuracy and detail. There is a reason I heard professors refer to this book as “the Bible” of matrimonial canon law.