My hero

I was doing some websurfing today in response to a query from one of my friends. She wanted to know, if marriages need to be consummated in order to be sacramentally valid in the eyes of the Church, and if Mary and Joseph's marriage was never consummated (because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and Mary was perpetually virgin), then was Mary and Joseph's marriage sacramentally valid?

I found this citation from the Code of Canon Law:
"Can. 1061 §1. A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum if it has not been consummated; it is called ratum et consummatum if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh."

A marriage is considered indisoluable if it's been ratified and consummated (ratum et consummatum). But a marriage doesn't have to be consummated in order to be considered valid (ratum tantum). So the short answer is that Mary and Joseph's marriage was ratum tantum.

But the longer and more eloquent explanation has been supplied in the following discourse by Bishop Fulton Sheen made available on the web courtesy the Catholic Information Network. I hope you take the time to read this discourse. It represents some of Bishop Sheen's finest writing. And it got me thinking that I should probably take a moment to recognize the man I consider one of my heroes.

Bishop Fulton Sheen was America's first televangelist. He had a wide following from his radio program by the time he went on television, and he was as influential in his time (perhaps moreso) as Mother Angelica and EWTN are today. Fulton Sheen has been credited with the conversion of a great many atheists because of the strength of his reasoning and the accessibility of his prose. He was such a monumental public figure in American Catholicism through this past century that his hometown diocese has opened the cause for his canonization. I have always found him to be a pleasant read, even at his most theological- much like C.S.Lewis in terms of style and articulation.

Perhaps one day I'll be able to invoke his spiritual blessing on my little blog here :) In the meantime, I want you to understand that he is a major inspiration for CatholicLand. If I can do with the technology of the Third Millennium what he did with the technology at his disposal, I will be honoring his memory in the best way possible.