A reader writes:
I am a convert to the Catholic faith. I was married for many years, but our marriage hit its 5th or 6th really rough spot and I bailed. It had been her before that, but we always got back together, because we thought of the vows and somewhere we did love each other.
I had been reading the early Church Fathers while with her and watching Marcus Grodi. I knew that God wanted me in the Catholic Church. I had found my high school sweetheart by that time. I proceeded to get an Annulment and started RCIA. I received the Annulment and our marriage was blessed in the Catholic Church the same Sunday I was received into the Church.
My current wife says she does not love me and I am not what she wanted in a husband.
My ex-wife really does not want me back due to the annulment. She never understood it and the fact that I have been married is a turn off to her.
I have been listening to apologists on Catholic Radio concerning annulment. I am convinced that there should really be any such animal, especially after a long period of time. I heard one say the other day on a Catholic radio show, that you never get the other one out of your heart if it was a sacramental marriage.
Well there are the facts. Question. Am I living in adultery, and could the Marriage Tribunal been wrong in granting the annulment? I am not willing to give up on the current marriage, but if I was not free to marry and I did, I know it will never work. What does the Church say?
First, let me say that I am very sorry to hear about your situation, and I encourage readers to pray for you and your wife.
I also did not hear what was said on the radio, so I cannot comment directly on it, but if that is what was said then it was a really dumb thing to say. The Church does not teach that valid marriages lead to inseparable emotional bonds. However romantic that idea might be, saying it in public is bound to induce scrupulosity in precisely the kind of people who are in your situation.
The fact is that there can be valid marriages which then break up and one or both of the partners severs all emotional ties with the person to whom they are validly married. Imagine, for example, the case of a person who suffers a bout of mental illness that leaves them severely psychotic and unable to have normal human emotions for anybody, including the spouse.
People also form enduring emotional bonds with all kinds of people, including those they were never married to in the first place. (E.g., two long-term lovers.) The mere fact that there is a continuing emotional bond on some level does not mean that a prior marriage was valid. Emotional bonds do not a marriage make, and it is really dumb to suggest that in public because it is just going to lead people to scruple, as it has in this case.
Conversely, it also is not true that people who were validly married before cannot invalidly remarry and have the new, invalid marriage "work." People who aren’t even married to each other (e.g., two long-term lovers) can have their relationship "work" without marriage even entering into it. Two people who are unwittingly in an invalid union certainly can.
Our culture has a very romanticized view of marriage compared to many cultures, especially historically. In most cultures in world history, romance was something that grew between the spouses after they were married, not something that precededs it and is regarded as its basis. While it’s wonderful for people to fall in love before they are married, there is a danger here of thinking of romance as the basis of a marriage, and when the romance goes away for a while, it can cause the spouses to call their marriage into question needlessly.
The fact that you have an emotional bond on some level to your prior wife does not mean that your marriage to her was valid, and the fact that you are currently having a constrained emotional relationship with your new wife does not mean that you are not validly married to her.
Emotions are simply not determinative of marriage bonds, and thinking that they are leads to needless worries and anxieties.
Nor does the length of time between a marriage and an annulment have anything to do with whether the marriage was valid. Whether the marriage was valid is determined at the moment the parties attempt to contract marriage. How long or short a time they wait before seeking an annulment is not determinative of whether the marriage was valid at the time it was contracted.
The fact of your situation is this: The Catholic Church–the Bride of Christ–looked into your first marriage and, despite giving it the presumption of validity and despite all the safeguards it has in place to prevent declarations of nullity in the case of valid marriages, it found that there were compelling reasons that it was invalid.
While it is true that tribunals are not infallible, it is also true that those who are non-experts in an area have a duty to yield to those who are experts. You are not as expert in these matters as the Church is, and so you are obliged to yield to its judgment in such matters and regard yourself as free to have contracted marriage to your current spouse.
The Church then put its seal of approval on your new marriage–and until such time as you might (God forbid) divorce and receive a new annulment–you are obligated in conscience to regard yourself as a married man and to act accordingly.
You therefore have a duty to put aside your worries (which themselves are a hindrance to fixing your current marital situation), and fulfill your duties as a loving husband to the best of your ability, knowing that God will honor your efforts to do so.
This means that if you need marriage counselling to help your marriage, you go get it. Go to Retrouvaille or talk to a local marriage counselor–whatever it takes. Do all that a husband would be expect to do to save his marriage–and only if it breaks up anyway do you proceed to the question of nullity.
That is not a question that is on the table at this point.
Your obligation is to your very best to keep it from getting onto the table.
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