1. It's scary that someone can in US google the marriage and/or divorce information of someone you're not related at all.
2. Is it possible for stepsiblings to stop being stepsiblings (eg the parents divorce, the adoption being 'cancelled' and making them not siblings legally anymore) to have possibility of being married? I know that in Japan it's possible for one of the stepsiblings to be excluded from family registry and allowing them to legally marry.
3. Surprised that in laws not able to marry each other considering how Jewish law require someone's brother to marry their sister in law to have a 'child of their brother'
I'm not sure if they have a process to "de-adopt" a child (especially an adult one) in the US. We don't have 戸籍. But the non-bio parent adopting the bio-parent's kids is less common than you'd think because in most states you can't have three legal parents, and divorce doesn't automatically strip one parent of his/ her parental rights. So I think stepsiblings are often not legally connected by adoption, because unless one bio-parent was willing to give up his/ her parental rights, adoption just wouldn't be possible.
On the other hand, some bio-parents are willing to do it because it means they aren't responsible for child support payments anymore. (In most states, anyway, I think.)
I wanted to adopt my step kids but it wasn't possible because their bio-mom was still their legal parent, even though she'd had visitation rights revoked.
Oh and in response to #1, marriages and divorces are considered public record in the US and would be relatively easily available if you knew where to look. Someone famous like Bezos would be particularly easy to find. What surprised me was how easily JD was able to find info on MacKenzie Scott's parents' religious affiliation. I suppose it helps that her dad was on the parish finance council, so his name may have appeared on the parish website.
JD, I would love an episode dedicated to explaining how you did the research!
3. Double check which law that was. There were actually 3 covenants made via Moses, each superseding the last (at least in the things where they contradicted). If I remember right, the Deuteronomy Law forbids marrying a brother's wife. I believe it's a matter of changing circumstances. Adam's children would have had to marry siblings. Abraham married his half-sister. As more people came into the world, degrees of consanguinity and relationship spread out further.
Leviticus 18 and 20 forbid marrying a brother's wife (if they were divorced, presumably) but Deuteronomy 25:5-10 apparently permits marriage to a brother's *widow* in the case the brother had died without children - there is an "opt-in" ceremony and and "opt-out" ceremony, with the "opt-out" ceremony being far more common today (and required by law in the state of Israel according to Wikipedia)
JD, I appreciate the spirit of charity with which you exhorted us to pray for them and for their intended nuptials. While I am happy to pray for our oligarch overlords, doesn’t it seem inappropriate to pray specifically for the intended nuptials if there is a possibility that Sanchez is validly married to Whitesell? If that’s the case, the better prayer seems to me to be for the reconciliation of their family.
I was surprised at how much I appreciated this episode.
In regard to Ms. Sanchez’s first marriage, the Wikipedia article on her links to a news piece on said ceremony. From reading that it seems likely that it was not done to canonical form.
Might just be my naivite showing, but it had a passing mention of one of the celebrities singing some sort of secular thing that one would *hope* wouldn’t be done in a church wedding. I get this was 2005, but whatever it was seemed to my eyes to go too far.
So, as one of the subscribers who encouraged The Pillar to look into this, I am grateful for this episode.
I am writing on Saturday afternoon, and I just read in the New York Times that the wedding took place on Friday. I was concerned about earlier reports that the wedding would take place inside the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore itself, which would have been confusing if not scandalous (but likely scandalous).
Anyway, it looks like it took place outdoors, not in a "cloister" but more of a municipal park, perhaps. Further (per the NY Times) : "It remained unclear whether the couple were legally married in Venice or had previously signed the papers elsewhere. The authorities in Venice said they had not officiated any civil ceremony in the city for the couple."
I am guessing it was a "theatrical wedding" not really a wedding under either canon law or church law.
Aug 20, 2005: "Award-winning American news anchor Lauren Sanchez (35) weds prominent talent agent Patrick Whitesell at The Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara, California"
"Please, Kardashians, convert to Catholicism and begin the process of sanctification" = welcoming.
"Please, Kardashians, come into our church buildings (and do whatever various profane/blasphemous/sacrilegious things you please while there)" = doormatting.
"Please, Kardashians, come into our church buildings pre-conversion and behave yourselves like x, y, and z (or you will be removed)" = happy medium?
Every time I run into the word "Kardashians" I am pretty sure people are talking about some Star Trek aliens and then I get a little confused (could not follow the proliferation of series after the second one, don't recall what their specific racial characteristic is: logic, honor, belligerence, greed, are off the list because I recall which aliens were those but that leaves a wide field still.)
I know more about the Cardassians than the Kardashians, so I'm more sure about Cardassians needing proper church behavior spelled out for them. Most of my perceptions were formed by Garek though, so I can't tell whether they're all somewhat sly and slippery and distrusting, or just the ones that become spies.
St. Meinrad also builds caskets which you can pre-purchase and will be provided without transportation costs for anywhere in Indiana or ony neighboring state.
Actually, there is one small mistake in this excellent discussion. The Patriarch of Venice Francesco Moraglia is not a bishop of accompaniament. In fact, he may be one of the most conservative Italian bishops, a protege of the archconservative Cardinals Bagnasco and Piacenza. Nominated Patriarch of Venice by Pope Benedict XVI less than a year before his resignation, Moraglia is the first Venetian metropolitan in over 150 years to not be named a cardinal because he was way too orthodox and theologically traditional for Pope Francis' tastes.
Somehow I absorbed the fact that in at least one case she flew all the way to Jerusalem for baptism of the child in the Armenian church there. I guess even the Armenians are susceptible to celebrity culture.
I hope this does not call for an overly graphic answer, but how would someone who practiced chastity before marriage know whether or not he was antecedently impotent?
He might not. He might, if he had a medical diagnosis, was crushed by the oar of a gondolier, or if advanced age had made clear to him that he no longer had the faculty for the act.
but he or she might discover such a thing only subsequently, and then it might be a cause for a declaration of nullity.
OK. So if there is an issue on the first day of the marriage, it is assumed to have been antecedent before that. That seems like common sense, but for the letter of the law I was not quite sure.
Thanks, Ed and JD, for packing as much theological, canonical and sacramental chaos into one podcast as anyone could reasonably wish for. As I have been following the surreal New Gnostic/New Puritan debate elsewhere, some relatively light relief was much appreciated. I have apparently become New Puritan without changing religion.
I saw one indignant writer looking at the scale of this "wedding". She calculated that if you had 10,000 USD put into your bank account every hour since the birth of Christ, you would still not have as much money as Mr Bezos.
Yes, her arithmetic is sound, though she does not include compound interest on your savings and the non existence of modern bank accounts. And I am not sure if she was including the value of those special Amazon shares which the first Mrs Bezos owns.
I could not help noticing that part of Ed and JD's canonical analysis of the validity of Jeff Bezos's second marriage, included determining whether or not Bezos, his former wife and his current wife (I speak legally, not canonically) were ever baptized Catholic.
One of the unfortunate effects of the requirement of "canonical form" for marriage, along with its binding force on even baptized but non-practicing Catholics who worship elsewhere (or not at all), is to give them a Catholic "Get out of Marriage Free" card to freely pursue second marriages that would otherwise be invalid. That cannot be desirable.
For that matter, I know several relatives whose parents had them baptized Catholic, then left the Church. All of them were married in Protestant churches, of course with no "dispensation of form". That means, not only are their marriages not valid, they are deprived of sacramental grace they might otherwise receive in their marriages, all by no fault of their own. How is that a good thing?
One further note regarding the possibility of a valid marriage being celebrated in the cloister at Venice: If one party was indeed (Latin) Catholic and the other party not baptized, and if they were both free to marry and received the proper dispensation from disparity of cult, then canon 1118 § 3 should apply:
"§3. A marriage between a Catholic party and a non-baptized party can be celebrated in a church or in another suitable place."
Thus, such a marriage could be celebrated validly and licitly according to canonical form. (For that matter, if the groom was also baptized, §2 notes that the local ordinary can permit such a wedding to occur in a "suitable place"; no dispensation from form is required.)
Of course, as you both rightly noted, there are other significant details surrounding the freedom to marry that would first need to be established.
Anyway, thanks for the deep dive into the canonical aspects! This was a most excellent episode. :)
I don't speak up about much but I do when I feel very strongly about something. And the Kardashians are Armenian Orthodox to some degree due to their father's side of the family being Armenian descent and they wear outward symbols of their faith (crosses, crucifixes, one wore a wedding veil with the image of the blessed Virgin) and pray publicly on their television show. God knows there are issues with some things they say and do, and a cynical person could say this is all for show but they aren't the hedonistic monsters Ed seems to think. They respectfully cut filming when something shouldn't be filmed, and they are a loving family that embraces procreation of children. Thank you JD for defending celebrities. I understand the assumptions people make but there are much worse celebrities out there. God grant that Ed someday gives them the benefit of the doubt that he gives so freely to Gwen Stefani. ;-)
Also Kim works pretty consistently on exoneration of death row inmates and second chance initiatives in prisons. We all have our good and bad attributes.
The Kardashians have also led many men to commit the sin of lust by the way they dress. I personally cannot look at any of their shows or photos and most men cannot either if they are heterosexual, because they have no modesty. Like a good priest explained it to my wife once: "for you it is not a sin to look at, but for your husband it is."
Thanks for this Thomas. I did not say they were perfect but simply meant that they are not the worst of us and not deserving of such disdain. They've respectfully attended many church weddings without causing scandal.
I also want to add, I LOVE when you guys do these. Still waiting with bated breath to find out if Ivana Trump's first marriage was valid thereby (through a series of steps) freeing Melania 😆
1. It's scary that someone can in US google the marriage and/or divorce information of someone you're not related at all.
2. Is it possible for stepsiblings to stop being stepsiblings (eg the parents divorce, the adoption being 'cancelled' and making them not siblings legally anymore) to have possibility of being married? I know that in Japan it's possible for one of the stepsiblings to be excluded from family registry and allowing them to legally marry.
3. Surprised that in laws not able to marry each other considering how Jewish law require someone's brother to marry their sister in law to have a 'child of their brother'
I'm not sure if they have a process to "de-adopt" a child (especially an adult one) in the US. We don't have 戸籍. But the non-bio parent adopting the bio-parent's kids is less common than you'd think because in most states you can't have three legal parents, and divorce doesn't automatically strip one parent of his/ her parental rights. So I think stepsiblings are often not legally connected by adoption, because unless one bio-parent was willing to give up his/ her parental rights, adoption just wouldn't be possible.
On the other hand, some bio-parents are willing to do it because it means they aren't responsible for child support payments anymore. (In most states, anyway, I think.)
I wanted to adopt my step kids but it wasn't possible because their bio-mom was still their legal parent, even though she'd had visitation rights revoked.
Oh and in response to #1, marriages and divorces are considered public record in the US and would be relatively easily available if you knew where to look. Someone famous like Bezos would be particularly easy to find. What surprised me was how easily JD was able to find info on MacKenzie Scott's parents' religious affiliation. I suppose it helps that her dad was on the parish finance council, so his name may have appeared on the parish website.
JD, I would love an episode dedicated to explaining how you did the research!
3. Double check which law that was. There were actually 3 covenants made via Moses, each superseding the last (at least in the things where they contradicted). If I remember right, the Deuteronomy Law forbids marrying a brother's wife. I believe it's a matter of changing circumstances. Adam's children would have had to marry siblings. Abraham married his half-sister. As more people came into the world, degrees of consanguinity and relationship spread out further.
Leviticus 18 and 20 forbid marrying a brother's wife (if they were divorced, presumably) but Deuteronomy 25:5-10 apparently permits marriage to a brother's *widow* in the case the brother had died without children - there is an "opt-in" ceremony and and "opt-out" ceremony, with the "opt-out" ceremony being far more common today (and required by law in the state of Israel according to Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levirate_marriage#Judaism
This was the law the Sadducees were making reference to in, e.g., Mt 22:23ff.
Interesting, I had the timeline backwards. Also interesting that Israel forbids marrying the widow.
JD, I appreciate the spirit of charity with which you exhorted us to pray for them and for their intended nuptials. While I am happy to pray for our oligarch overlords, doesn’t it seem inappropriate to pray specifically for the intended nuptials if there is a possibility that Sanchez is validly married to Whitesell? If that’s the case, the better prayer seems to me to be for the reconciliation of their family.
I was surprised at how much I appreciated this episode.
There was one of these (the first?) on the Bidens too I thought making this #4
I remember the Biden one but not the Charles one!
Me too - I'll have to search it up. I love these episodes :)
Trump: https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/ep-78-the-bachelor-c13
Biden: https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/ep-169-the-bachelor-pt-2
In regard to Ms. Sanchez’s first marriage, the Wikipedia article on her links to a news piece on said ceremony. From reading that it seems likely that it was not done to canonical form.
I read that that one -- the people magazine article -- but it didn't seem to say anything about the ceremony? Unless you saw something I didn't?
Might just be my naivite showing, but it had a passing mention of one of the celebrities singing some sort of secular thing that one would *hope* wouldn’t be done in a church wedding. I get this was 2005, but whatever it was seemed to my eyes to go too far.
So, as one of the subscribers who encouraged The Pillar to look into this, I am grateful for this episode.
I am writing on Saturday afternoon, and I just read in the New York Times that the wedding took place on Friday. I was concerned about earlier reports that the wedding would take place inside the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore itself, which would have been confusing if not scandalous (but likely scandalous).
Anyway, it looks like it took place outdoors, not in a "cloister" but more of a municipal park, perhaps. Further (per the NY Times) : "It remained unclear whether the couple were legally married in Venice or had previously signed the papers elsewhere. The authorities in Venice said they had not officiated any civil ceremony in the city for the couple."
I am guessing it was a "theatrical wedding" not really a wedding under either canon law or church law.
Aug 20, 2005: "Award-winning American news anchor Lauren Sanchez (35) weds prominent talent agent Patrick Whitesell at The Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara, California"
https://www.onthisday.com/weddings/date/2005
Confirmed by this NBC article too: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna26840148
GOOD JOB!!!
Can I get an "amateur Pillar journalist" sticker, please? ;-)
I hope you folks sang the Viking birthday dirge to Ed...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H8e-2TLgpA
"Please, Kardashians, convert to Catholicism and begin the process of sanctification" = welcoming.
"Please, Kardashians, come into our church buildings (and do whatever various profane/blasphemous/sacrilegious things you please while there)" = doormatting.
"Please, Kardashians, come into our church buildings pre-conversion and behave yourselves like x, y, and z (or you will be removed)" = happy medium?
Every time I run into the word "Kardashians" I am pretty sure people are talking about some Star Trek aliens and then I get a little confused (could not follow the proliferation of series after the second one, don't recall what their specific racial characteristic is: logic, honor, belligerence, greed, are off the list because I recall which aliens were those but that leaves a wide field still.)
I know more about the Cardassians than the Kardashians, so I'm more sure about Cardassians needing proper church behavior spelled out for them. Most of my perceptions were formed by Garek though, so I can't tell whether they're all somewhat sly and slippery and distrusting, or just the ones that become spies.
St. Meinrad also builds caskets which you can pre-purchase and will be provided without transportation costs for anywhere in Indiana or ony neighboring state.
Actually, there is one small mistake in this excellent discussion. The Patriarch of Venice Francesco Moraglia is not a bishop of accompaniament. In fact, he may be one of the most conservative Italian bishops, a protege of the archconservative Cardinals Bagnasco and Piacenza. Nominated Patriarch of Venice by Pope Benedict XVI less than a year before his resignation, Moraglia is the first Venetian metropolitan in over 150 years to not be named a cardinal because he was way too orthodox and theologically traditional for Pope Francis' tastes.
To be fair to Kim Kardashian, she belongs to the Armenian Apostolic Church and had her children baptized into the same.
Somehow I absorbed the fact that in at least one case she flew all the way to Jerusalem for baptism of the child in the Armenian church there. I guess even the Armenians are susceptible to celebrity culture.
I also unfortunately absorbed this fact. 🤪
Gee, guys, I tend to think that Catholic validity is not high on the priority list for this couple.
I hope this does not call for an overly graphic answer, but how would someone who practiced chastity before marriage know whether or not he was antecedently impotent?
He might not. He might, if he had a medical diagnosis, was crushed by the oar of a gondolier, or if advanced age had made clear to him that he no longer had the faculty for the act.
but he or she might discover such a thing only subsequently, and then it might be a cause for a declaration of nullity.
OK. So if there is an issue on the first day of the marriage, it is assumed to have been antecedent before that. That seems like common sense, but for the letter of the law I was not quite sure.
yes, unless some cause can be found between exchange of consent and attempted consummation.
Thanks. The canon law terminology is not always clear to the uninitiated.
Thanks, Ed and JD, for packing as much theological, canonical and sacramental chaos into one podcast as anyone could reasonably wish for. As I have been following the surreal New Gnostic/New Puritan debate elsewhere, some relatively light relief was much appreciated. I have apparently become New Puritan without changing religion.
I saw one indignant writer looking at the scale of this "wedding". She calculated that if you had 10,000 USD put into your bank account every hour since the birth of Christ, you would still not have as much money as Mr Bezos.
Yes, her arithmetic is sound, though she does not include compound interest on your savings and the non existence of modern bank accounts. And I am not sure if she was including the value of those special Amazon shares which the first Mrs Bezos owns.
I could not help noticing that part of Ed and JD's canonical analysis of the validity of Jeff Bezos's second marriage, included determining whether or not Bezos, his former wife and his current wife (I speak legally, not canonically) were ever baptized Catholic.
One of the unfortunate effects of the requirement of "canonical form" for marriage, along with its binding force on even baptized but non-practicing Catholics who worship elsewhere (or not at all), is to give them a Catholic "Get out of Marriage Free" card to freely pursue second marriages that would otherwise be invalid. That cannot be desirable.
For that matter, I know several relatives whose parents had them baptized Catholic, then left the Church. All of them were married in Protestant churches, of course with no "dispensation of form". That means, not only are their marriages not valid, they are deprived of sacramental grace they might otherwise receive in their marriages, all by no fault of their own. How is that a good thing?
This was not the show for it, but I have expressed in the past misgivings about the requirement of form for validity.
One further note regarding the possibility of a valid marriage being celebrated in the cloister at Venice: If one party was indeed (Latin) Catholic and the other party not baptized, and if they were both free to marry and received the proper dispensation from disparity of cult, then canon 1118 § 3 should apply:
"§3. A marriage between a Catholic party and a non-baptized party can be celebrated in a church or in another suitable place."
Thus, such a marriage could be celebrated validly and licitly according to canonical form. (For that matter, if the groom was also baptized, §2 notes that the local ordinary can permit such a wedding to occur in a "suitable place"; no dispensation from form is required.)
Of course, as you both rightly noted, there are other significant details surrounding the freedom to marry that would first need to be established.
Anyway, thanks for the deep dive into the canonical aspects! This was a most excellent episode. :)
yeah, we didn't go down that road since it seemed so unlikely, but you are correc! ;-)
I don't speak up about much but I do when I feel very strongly about something. And the Kardashians are Armenian Orthodox to some degree due to their father's side of the family being Armenian descent and they wear outward symbols of their faith (crosses, crucifixes, one wore a wedding veil with the image of the blessed Virgin) and pray publicly on their television show. God knows there are issues with some things they say and do, and a cynical person could say this is all for show but they aren't the hedonistic monsters Ed seems to think. They respectfully cut filming when something shouldn't be filmed, and they are a loving family that embraces procreation of children. Thank you JD for defending celebrities. I understand the assumptions people make but there are much worse celebrities out there. God grant that Ed someday gives them the benefit of the doubt that he gives so freely to Gwen Stefani. ;-)
Also Kim works pretty consistently on exoneration of death row inmates and second chance initiatives in prisons. We all have our good and bad attributes.
The Kardashians have also led many men to commit the sin of lust by the way they dress. I personally cannot look at any of their shows or photos and most men cannot either if they are heterosexual, because they have no modesty. Like a good priest explained it to my wife once: "for you it is not a sin to look at, but for your husband it is."
Thanks for this Thomas. I did not say they were perfect but simply meant that they are not the worst of us and not deserving of such disdain. They've respectfully attended many church weddings without causing scandal.
I agree. I don't think they would make a scene at a church wedding.
I also want to add, I LOVE when you guys do these. Still waiting with bated breath to find out if Ivana Trump's first marriage was valid thereby (through a series of steps) freeing Melania 😆