ful superiors, and must be
obeyed in all that is not sin. What we have said with regard to the
marriage laws is true for all the rest. Thus the civil court might, on
account of some technicality, free you legally from the payment of a
debt; but that would not free you in conscience from paying what you
justly owe. Again, the court might legally decide in your favor in an
unjust suit; but that would not give you the right in conscience to keep
what you have thus fraudulently or unjustly obtained.

*404 Q. What is the meaning of the command not to marry privately?
A. The command not to marry privately means that none should marry
without the blessing of God's priests or without witnesses.

If persons wishing to be married suspect that there is any impediment
existing between them, they should express their doubts and the reasons
for them to the priest.

Here it is well for you to know that if any Catholic goes to be married
before a Protestant minister, he is, by the laws of the Church in the
United States, excommunicated. [In 1966 the penalty of excommunication
for this offense was lifted by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith. Yet it remains a mortal sin for a Catholic to attempt to
marry outside the Catholic Church, and such a "marriage" will be
invalid.] You must know excommunication means cut off from the communion
of the Church and the body of the faithful; cut off from the Sacraments
and from a share in all the holy Masses and public prayers offered by
the Church throughout the world. It is a punishment the Church inflicts
upon its disobedient children who will not repent but persist in
wrongdoing. If they die willfully excommunicated, they die in mortal
sin, and no Mass or funeral prayers can be publicly offered for them;
nor can they be buried in consecrated ground. Besides the
excommunicated, there are others who cannot be buried in consecrated
ground: namely, infants or others who have not been baptized; those who
deliberately committed suicide; those who have publicly lived sinful
lives and evidently died in that public sin; and all persons who are not
Catholics. If a Catholic who is not publicly a sinner dies suddenly, we
cannot judge that he is in mortal sin; and hence such a one may be
buried in consecrated ground.

It is the desire of the Church that all its faithful children should be
buried in the ground which it has blessed for their remains; and
wherever it is possible Catholics m