Attending Weddings

A reader writes:

Suppose that I have a very very close relative who is baptized in a mainstream protestant denomination, and who is living with his Catholic girlfriend.  This relative and his girlfriend get engaged to be married and live together right up through the wedding.  I try to charitably convince them that this behavior is sinful and harmful to them. May/should I attend the wedding under the following circumstances:

Before we get to the situations, let me say that the question of whether to attend any marriage is a question of prudence. You are never under a legal obligation to go (unless you are one of the parties getting married or have agreed to officiate at the wedding in some capacity required by canon law). As a result, I prefer not to give advice on whether you should attend. That’s a question of prudence, though in general it is prudent to attend the weddings of close relatives unless there is a reason not to do so (distance to travel, the marriage will be presumed invalid, etc.). So lemme answer in terms of whether I see a problem with you attending.

That said, on to the circumstances:

(1) The couple finds a priest who will marry them in a Catholic church. 

No problem (the marriage is presumed valid).

(2) They get married in the groom’s protestant church, but with a Catholic dispensation.

No problem (the marriage is presumed valid).

(3) They can’t find a Catholic priest to marry them or give them a dispensation, so they get married in a protestant church without obtaining a dispensation.

Problem (the marriage is invalid).

(4) They can’t find a priest to marry them, so the bride renounces her Catholicism and they get married in a protestant church.

Problem (the marriage is presumed valid, but the Catholic party has just committed a horrible sin against the faith for the sake of the marriage).

Finally, (5) suppose they see the light and stop living together, but they get married outside the Catholic church without a dispensation.

Problem (the marriage is invalid).

I can’t recommend that you attend a marriage that is known to be or presumed to be invalid. This covers situations (3) and (5).

Situation (4) is a special case. While the marriage will be presumed valid if the Catholic party has defected from the Church by a formal act, she has done something else that creates a problem: She has objectively and very gravely sinned against against the Catholic faith by defecting from the Church. Further, her doing this is directly linked to the marriage itself: This is the occasion that has caused her to defect.

For the sake of witnessing to the truth of the faith, I could not attend a wedding where one of the parties has just done this. The marriage may be presumed to be valid (assuming nothing else is known to block its validity), but I cannot by my attendance and thus my public witness endorse the overall complex of actions, which includes her defection from the Church for the sake of the marriage.

(Note: I put this in a different category than the sexual sin being committed before the marriage because that sin was not engaged in for the sake of the marriage but for its own sake, and a valid marriage will result in the behavior no longer being sinful. Defecting from the faith under these circumstances is for the sake of the marriage and will not stop being sinful after the marriage.)

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin