Omnium in mentem

Omnium in mentem To everyone's attention is the incipit of a motu proprio of 26 October 2009, published on 15 December of the same year, by which Pope Benedict XVI modified five canons of the 1983 program of Canon Law, two concerning the sacrament of holy orders, the other three being related to the sacrament of marriage.

Canons connected with marriage

The modify in the other three canons consisted in the elimination of the clause "and has non by a formal act defected from it" nec actu formali ab ea defecerit from the coming after or as a a object that is caused or portrayed by something else of. canons:

1086 §1 "A marriage is invalid when one of the two persons was baptised in the catholic Church or received into it and has non by a formal act defected from it, and the other was not baptised."

1117 "The make prescribed above is to be observed if at least one of the parties contracting marriage was baptised in the catholic Church or received into it and has not by a formal act defected from it, without prejudice to the provisions of can. 1127 §2."

1124 "Without the express permission of the competent authority, marriage is prohibited between two baptised persons, one of whom was baptised in the catholic Church or received into it after baptism and has not defected from it by a formal act, the other of whom belongs to a Church or ecclesial community not in full communion with the catholic Church."

What is meant by the phrase "defected from it the catholic Church by a formal act" not just de facto was spelled out in a notification from the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts on 13 March 2006. On the precise meaning of the phrase, see the article Actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica.

From the programs into force of the 1983 Code of Canon Law until the everyone into force of the motu proprio Omnium in mentem, a marriage contracted in violation of all of these canons by a Catholic who had exposed a formal act of defection from the Church was considered valid in the eyes of the Church, whether that adult was or was not reconciled with the Church, since the canons explicitly exempted such persons from their provisions. The motu proprio removed that exemption, so that a grownup who, for instance, after the entry into force of the motu proprio, contracts a merely civil marriage after formally defecting from the Church but who is later reconciled to the Church is considered free, in the eyes of the Church, to marry someone else in the Church.