B. How a Believer Could Contract a Marriage with an Unbeliever

26. About the second article [n.13].

It is one thing for a matrimony to exist between certain persons, or for a contract to be made simply and absolutely, and another thing for it to exist licitly and honestly.

27. In the first way it is necessary to say that between a believer and an unbeliever there can be a matrimony, and also in the second way.

28. Both are proved from the saying of the Apostle [I Corinthians 7.12] that a believing man may not dismiss an unbelieving wife who agrees to live with him. For if there were not a matrimony, the Apostle would be persuading to fornication; likewise, if this were not done licitly and honestly, the Apostles would not counsel it.

29. In this way, then, is it plain how there can be a matrimony between a believer and an unbeliever. And the five reasons brought forward for the first article [nn.14-16, 2223] can be brought forward against it; but their solution is plain above [nn.17-19, 24-25].

30. Can it really be contracted then [sc. a matrimony between believer and unbeliever]?

31. I reply that it can, as far as is of divine right, because from that right is no more found that the contract be null than that an obligation from a prior contract be null, because (without supposing a new impediment) he who can belong to another can give himself to another.

31. But by the positive law of the Church simply it cannot, because the Church delegitimizes a believer, not simply, but in respect of an unbeliever, as is plain in the authority brought forward for the opposite in Gratian, Decretum, p.2 cause 28 [n.10]. And the Church has ordained this rationally, because this cannot be done honorably or fittingly.

And for this are some of the reasons brought valid that were forward for the first article. For it is not honorable that a believer contract with someone where the complete good of the offspring, which is education to the true cult of God, is lacking [n.18]; nor is it honorable that a believer contract with a matrimonial contract to which the sacrament of the Christian faith is not annexed [n.17]; nor is it honorable that a believer contract matrimony where there not be the good of the sacrament, that is, indissolubility, because the marriage of Christians is of a nature to have this good [n.19].

32. Nor yet does the Church delegitimize such an unbelieving person because he is not in the bosom of the Church, but the fault is the cause of delegitimization, not the person in whom is the fault. But in the first person, who is in the bosom of the Church, there is a delegitimization from contracting with an unbeliever. Hence every believer is delegitimate with respect to any unbeliever.

33. But if you ask why then does the Apostle [n.7] urge that a matrimony contracted between unbelievers is to be observed after the conversion of one of them (for if it be honorably kept because of some good end previously contracted, then it could honestly be contracted for the same end)? - I reply: the cause of the Apostle is plain there; “the unbelieving man,” he says, “will be saved by the believing woman.” Therefore, to keep a matrimony previously contracted is an occasion for bringing an unbelieving spouse to a believing one. Hence evidently, when that cause ceases, they ought not even to remain together, as that if he does not consent to live with her who has been converted, or not without injury to the Creator, namely by blaspheming or inciting the converted one to unbelief; for so singular a familiarity with someone of a contrary sect is to be avoided, save for a greater good.

34. To the issue at hand: to contract anew with an unbeliever is not a probable occasion for expecting so great a good, namely the unbeliever’s conversion, because someone who loves marriage much would do many and great things to reach it which, once the object desired is attained, he would not be going to do; and therefore, if this person does not want at the beginning to be converted so as to be able to have a marriage with a Christian woman, it is not probable that she would afterwards gain him, but rather the reverse, that he would seem to draw her away. And therefore does the reason for so much familiarity with an unbeliever cease, and the reason for fleeing that familiarity remain. And therefore did the same Apostle, who advised the converted man to remain with a non-converted woman, dissuade a believer from contracting with an unbeliever (as was argued for the opposite [n.9]).