A Christian girl « married » by force in Pakistan: an abduction, not a marriage

In Pakistan, a thirteen-year-old Christian girl was abducted and then « married » by force to a man of thirty. An earlier court decision had returned her to the custody of her abductor. The country's highest constitutional court is now to examine her petition.

The Church has always taught that marriage is made by the free consent of the spouses: it is consent, and consent alone, that binds the tie. Where that consent is lacking — and it is absolutely lacking when a child is seized by violence — there is no marriage, but an abduction cloaked in a sacred name. And the law of God commands that the oppressed be rescued: « Rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner. » The first duty of authority is to protect the innocent, not to hand him over to the one who has done him violence.

Measured against this rule, to call such bondage a « marriage » is a lie added to a crime. We state the act: to seize and violate a child is among the gravest injustices, and to return her to her tormentor overturns the very end of justice. The constant doctrine does not change: consent alone makes marriage; a child cannot give it; force annuls it. Our prayer is for this little one's deliverance, and that the judges remember they bear the sword to protect the weak, not to enchain them.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the sacrament of Matrimony, §I, on the consent that makes the marriage; Psalm LXXXI, 4, according to the Vulgate.