A reader writes:
I have a friend who has come back to the Church! He has been going to Mass and Confession now for over a year. He was married in a civil ceremony about eight years ago. She is not Catholic but is Christian. His Mother who is Catholic has said he should not being going to Communion until he is married in the Church. Is this true? He has nothing against getting married in the Church but I think it bothers him about not being able to go to Communion until this happens.
It’s wonderful to hear that your friend has come back to the Church, and I’ll do my best to help provide an answer here. Unfortunately, there are a few missing facts that I’d need to know the answer to in order to give an individually-tailored answer. Specifically:
- Had your friend formally defected from the Catholic Church at the time of his civil ceremony (e.g., had he formally joined another church with the intention of no longer being Catholic).
- If he had not formally defected then did he have a dispensation from the Catholic form of marriage?
- Is he presently having conjugal relations with his spouse?
The easiest way to give the answer in light of the missing facts is in the form of a decision tree:
IF he had formally defected OR had a dispensation from form THEN based on the fact pattern you have laid out his marriage is presumed valid and he can participate in the sacraments of the Church, including confession and Communion. He also does not need to get married in the Church.
IF he did not formally defect OR have a dispensation from form THEN his marriage is presently invalid. (See next two points.)
IF his marriage is presently invalid AND he is having conjugal relations with his spouse THEN he is committing grave sin (having sexual relations with someone he is not validly married to) and cannot participate in the sacraments, including confession and Communion. He needs to get married in the Church in order for his conjugal relations to cease being sinful. At that point he can participate in the sacraments, including confession and Communion.
IF his marriage is presently invalid BUT he is not having conjugal relations with his spouse THEN he is not committing grave sin and so can participate in the sacraments, including confession and Communion. He does, though, need to get married in the Church before he can resume conjugal relations without sinning.
I hope this helps. It’s not phrase in the pastoral manner that I would like, but given the missing facts I thought it best to write as clearly as possible to avoid confusion. Documentation of any of the above answers can be provided from the Code of Canon Law if needed.
One pastoral note: I suggest that you DO NOT ask him about the third missing fact. That’s between him, his spouse, and his confessor.
In the meantime, we should rejoice that your friend has come back to the Church. He should be assured of God’s love for him and his spouse and that it sounds as if his marital situation can easily be regularized (if needed). It generally does not take very long to rectify situations such as this.
Back before I was Catholic, I was in such a situation myself (as the non-Catholic spouse) and so I have a special empathy for the situation.
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I was in the same situation when my wife joined the Church (and I reverted to the Church), and was told different. My wife and I had our marriage convalidated before she was confirmed, but we were told that our marriage was all right (so much so that any divorce would have required an annulment).
My point being that there is probably a lot of confusion on the matter, so thanks to Jimmy for supplying a clear answer.
I’m not sure that there’s a difference here. “Convalidation” is what I am referring to above, colloquially, as needing to get married in the Church.
Yes, but I wasn’t aware that there was grave sin involved before the convalidation took place. I just thought it was a non-sacramental marriage.
The “formally defected from the church” thing came in with the new code of Cannon Law. Before that, it was once a Catholic, always a Catholic, even if you had been a Unitarian for 10 years. This was actually supposed to help people, to say that two Lutherans could have a valid marriage even if one of them had been baptized Catholic. It was supposed to give people the respect of being able to make an adult choice.
But it winds up in a situation like this penalizing someone for NOT having formally defected from the Church! And it adds confusion to the situation….what exactly constitutes a formal defection? You know, I went to Church at St. So&So’s Episcopal for 5 years but never was confirmed or received into the Episcopal church…did I formally defect?
If this person didn’t know all of these intricate rules, just fell away from the church, fell in love and got married, then came back to the Church…he hasn’t had the required degree of understanding to be guilty of grave sin even if the actions are by formal definition grave sins.
And now…I think we should leave it ALL up to his confessor and his Pastor. As long as he has the desire to do what the Church wants him to do, and goes about doing it, I don’t think he is really in grave sin.
You know, a slightly analogous situation is that when I became a Catholic, I still had an IUD (implanted contraceptive device, only removable by a doctor…or at least I had been told so.) The priest told me to make an appointment to have it removed, not to tell the doctor it was an emergency or get all frantic about it, and keep the appointment and have it removed. He did not tell me to stop having sex with my husband until then. And this was in 1972 and the priest was an old fashioned Redemptorist. Even if the device were only a contraceptive device, strict principles would say that every marital act while it was in place was a separate grave sin…yet this totally old fashioned priest didn’t even hint that I should abstain until it was removed.
He may even have said that I didn’t need to. And I think this is the difference there has always been between confessional advice and prescriptive morality.
(However had the priest understood that an IUD is almost purely an abortifacient, by preventing implantation, I think his advice should have and would have been different. Neither of us really understood what that meant at that time.)
Susan Peterson
Certainly an interesting Quesiton.
Susan commented, “…he hasn’t had the required degree of understanding to be guilty of grave sin…”
Your comment assumes that his (potentially) invalid marriage would be the grave sin in question. But it is not. It is the current conjugal relations.
So if he NOW found out that his marriage was invalid, he would now have that knowledge with which to make his decisions from here on out whether or not to have conjugal relations.
I had a friend in that situation, and I think it would have destroyed her marriage if she had stopped conjugal relations. Her husband was really peeved at her reverting and would have been outraged at the suggestion that the marriage was invalid. He was upset enough that she insisted on using NFP. Because there are so many people in delicate situations like this, where even the revert spouse attending Mass causes enormous stress on the relationship, it seems like pastoral counseling is called for on an individual basis.
our marriage was all right (so much so that any divorce would have required an annulment).
That last is not evidence. Any time someone goes through the form of marriage, it has to be annuled, even if the marriage was blatantly and obviously invalid.
Jimmy, in your response, you mentioned that the man involved could get a “dispensation” from Catholic marriage. Could you explain what you meant by this, and how one ordinarily attains one?
In some cases, the pastor may advise to not receive Communion to avoid scandal, as nobody knows whether they’re living as brother and sister or not. However, in such cases, it’s OK to receive Communion at a parish where nobody knows the couple
God bless.