Defender of the bond
official in Catholic matrimonial and ordination trials
A defender of the bond (Latin: defensor vinculi or defensor matrimonii) is a Catholic Church official whose duty is to defend the marriage bond in the procedure prescribed for the hearing of matrimonial causes which involve the validity or nullity of a marriage already contracted. In current Canon Law the role is provided for in Book VII, Title 1, which deals with marriage processes.
History
Benedict XIV, by his bull Dei miseratione of 3 November 1741, introduced this official into the marriage procedure to guard against abuses occurring from the ordinary procedure. An annulment of a marriage might result from the appearance of only the spouse who desired freedom to enter upon a new marriage, while the other was apathetic and conniving at the annulment, or at times unable or indisposed to incur expense to uphold the marriage, especially if it required an appeal to a higher court. Scandal arose from the frequency of dissolution of marriages with the freedom to enter new contracts.
Qualifications and obligations
The bull requires that in each diocese, the ordinary appoint a defender of marriage, upright in character, and learned in the law, an ecclesiastic if possible, a layman if necessary. The bishop may suspend him or remove him for cause, and, if he is prevented from taking part in the procedure, substitute another with the requisite qualifications.
Proceedings in first instance
He must be summoned to any trial in which there is question, before a competent judge, of the validity or nullity of a marriage, and any proceeding will be null if he is not duly cited. He must have the opportunity to examine the witnesses, and, orally or in writing, to bring forward whatever arguments may favour the validity of the marriage. He must be cited even though the party interested in the defence of the marriage be present, and all the acts of the court are always to be accessible to him, and at any time he has a right to bring forward new documents or witnesses favourable to the marriage.
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This entry incorporates text from “Defender of the bond” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.