Pohle-Pruess: The Couple are the ministers of the Sacrament of Matrimony

According to Pohle-Pruess

“The Council of Trent recognized the validity of clandestine marriages contracted in places where the "Tametsi" had not been promulgated. By a clandestine marriage we understand one contracted secretly without the cooperation of the pastor and the required witnesses. The Council says that all such marriages, when freely contracted where the "Tametsi" is not published, are "rata etvera" unless formally nullified by the Church. Note that, according to Tridentine as well as present-day usage, a legitimate marriage among Christians is always a Sacrament, whether blessed by a priest or not.

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The contracting parties to a marriage administer the Sacrament to each other. The priest is merely the minister of the (accidental) celebration and the representative and chief official witness of the Church. This explains why his presence is prescribed by ecclesiastical law.

a) That the contracting parties administer the Sacrament to each other is evident from the fact that contract and Sacrament coincide and that both the matter and the form of Matrimony are contained in the contract.

Contract and Sacrament being identical, he who makes the contract eo ipso administers the Sacrament. Again, as matter and form of the Sacrament are contained in the contract, whoever furnishes the matter and form, effects the Sacrament. It is the express teaching of the Church that the Sacrament of Matrimony is effected solely 3 by the mutual consent of the contracting parties. Consequently the contracting parties are the sole ministers of the Sacrament. It is on this assumption that the Tridentine Council declared clandestine marriages (i.e. marriages performed without a priest and the required witnesses) to be vera et sacra, provided the Church does not enjoin a special form of celebration as a condition of validity.

Berlage's opinion that the priest is the ordinary, whilst the contracting parties are the extraordinary ministers of the Sacrament, is untenable, (1) because the form of a Sacrament can not be arbitrarily changed, and (2) because Nicholas I and Innocent III have expressly declared that the only thing required for the validity of marriage, and hence of the Sacrament, is the consent of the contracting parties. Very properly, therefore, is Matrimony called "the lay Sacrament."

b) If, as we have seen, the sacramental form of marriage does not consist in the benediction given by the priest, the priest cannot be the minister of the Sacrament.

How, then, are we to regard the part which he takes in the celebration of marriage?

(1) The priest is the official representative of the Church, to whose external forum Christian marriage belongs on account of its juridical effects ;

(2) He is the official chief witness (testis autorizabilis), upon whose presence, since the Council of Trent, both the licitness and the validity of marriage ordinarily depend;

(3) He is the (sole) minister of the solemn ceremonies with which the Church surrounds marriage, not only the ecclesiastical recognition (solemnizatiomatrimonii), which he expresses in saying, "I join you together in Matrimony but also the nuptial blessing, which is one of the Church's most beautiful and significant sacramentals.