Definizione giuridica del matrimonio e preparazione pastorale ad esso

Can. 1063 of Code of Canon Law says that pastors of souls are obliged to take care that their ecclesiastical community offers the Christian faithful the assistance by which the matrimonial state is preserved in a Christian spirit and advances in perfection. This assistance should be offered also to make the Christian faithful instructed about the meaning and the legal defi nition of Christian marriage and about the function of Christian spouses and parents. Especially, the Christian faithful should know that the matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized; and that for this reason, a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament (can. 1055)