Christian Blumenthal, Cornelia Dockter, Judith Hahn, and Klaus von Stosch, “Roman Catholic Marriage: A Case Study in the Theory of Ambiguity,” Marriage, Families & Spirituality 30 (2024), 202–225.
Abstract: Our article endeavours to explain how ambiguity has shaped Catholic doctrine on marriage. It does so by looking at the biblical, dogmatic and legal development of the church’s view of marriage from its beginnings to the present day. First, we shed light on the ambiguous biblical view of marriage as an indissoluble and yet solvable union. We then track the development of ecclesiastical doctrine on marriage through the history of the church, alluding by way of example to key points in the history of the formation of marriage doctrine where disambiguation served to sharpen Catholic identity. The article then considers the development of a contrasting dynamic, which has seen the church, particularly through canon law, creating exceptions in marriage law which reduce doctrinal clarity for the purpose of integrating diverse groups into the Catholic community by granting solutions of marriages. In consequence, we perceive the history of Catholic marriage as a process in which dogma and law have worked hand in hand to strengthen the Catholic identity while allowing for many—legally controlled and constrained—exceptions to the idea of indissoluble marriage. We conclude by taking a closer look at Pope Francis’s 2016 document Amoris Laetitia and interpret the current discussion about Catholic marriage as an exemplary indicator of the crucial identity test which the Roman Catholic Church is currently undergoing. The fierce debate about what is Catholic and who can be considered Catholic, which is playing out, among other things, in the field of marriage, shows that Catholicism has entered another phase in the process of discovering the ambiguity of Catholic identities.
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Authors: The authors are a group of scholars currently working at the Faculties of Catholic Theology in Bonn and Paderborn. Section 1 of the article is written by Christian Blumenthal, section 2 by Cornelia Dockter. Christian Blumenthal (Dr. theol.) is Professor of New Testament Studies. Cornelia Dockter (Dr. theol.) is Junior Professor of Ecumenical Theology at the Theological Faculty in Paderborn. Section 3 was written by Judith Hahn and section 4 by Klaus von Stosch. Judith Hahn (Dr. theol., JCL) is Professor of Canon Law in Bonn. Klaus von Stosch (Dr. theol.) holds the Schlegel Chair of Systematic Theology at the University of Bonn. All the authors are currently working together to better understand the role of ambiguity in the formation of religious identities.