Yesterday’s post on marriage questions produced a bunch of important follow-up questions, so here are my replies. Let’s start with a couple sent by e-mail:
Regarding the reader’s question, "If he converts to Catholicism in 5 years, should he leave his "wife" since he is making her an adulterer?", you answer, in part, "If the annulment is granted then their marriage could be convalidated ("blessed") and they would be genuinely married."
I’m wondering, since this case involves two people who were non-Catholics at the time of their wedding, why would their marriage need to be convalidated once her annulment is granted, since, as you explained earlier, it is possible that their marriage is already valid?
Similarly, the reader asks, "If both he and his wife convert to Catholicism, would his wife have to get an annulment for the first marriage and then he and her get remarried in the Catholic Church?" and you answer, "Yes".
Assuming she gets an annulment, why would the couple need to get remarried in the Catholic Church? After her annulment, wouldn’t their marriage be automatically presumed valid?
The reader is quite correct. In answering these two questions I fuzzed out on the fact that if the wife’s annulment is granted then the marriage would NOT need to be convalidated.
The reason is that she would have been free to marry her current husband at the time of the wedding, and so her current marriage would be presumed valid. Thus no convalidation would be necessary.
My apologies for the mental lapse. (I’ve also contacted to the original reader to make sure he knows about this correction.)
In the combox, a reader writes:
What should be the position of a grandmother whose Catholic grandson is
going to marry a Protestant girl in a Protestant ceremony? He says he
doesn’t care about the Catholic thing and has been attending her church
for years.
Based on matters as you present them, the marriage will not be valid, and I could not recommend attending it. The situation could be fixed if one of three things happens: (1) the couple changes its plans and gets married in a Catholic ceremony, (2) the grandson gets a dispensation from his bishop to have a non-Catholic ceremony, or (3) the grandson contacts the bishop and formally defects from the Church, relieving him of the obligation to observe the Catholic form of marriage. These options are in their order of preferability.
Another reader writes:
A friend of mine is getting married. She was baptized Catholic but not raised as such, and has never attended church or received instruction or other sacraments. The groom-to-be is also in this same situation. They are planning a civil ceremony. Is it alright to attend this wedding, praying that when this couple starts a family they might see the need to raise the children in the faith?
The same answer as was given to the case of the grandmother and her grandson applies here, only with both of the parties needing to take the actions indicated.
Also, rumor has it they are getting a special permit from the governor for a special "one day" justice of the peace. The person they are asking to perform the civil ceremony is a practicing Catholic. Is this a problem?
Since the marriage is presumably invalid, I could not recommend that a Catholic officiate at the service. If the situation were changed so that the marriage would be valid (by dispensation or formal defection) then a Catholic could serve as the officiant in good conscience.
Another reader writes:
This is giving me a big "uh-oh" moment, so can someone help me? Situation: While still a Protestant, I married a divorced woman, also a Protestant. I am now in RCIA and was hoping to be confirmed this Easter. My wife is remaining Protestant but supports me in my conversion.
The RCIA questionnaire the pastor gave us asked simply "Are you re-married?" I said no. It did NOT ask if my wife is re-married so I have not told him that fact. The article above makes me think that I am now in an adulterous relationship. Is this correct?
Not necessarily. If your wife’s original marriage was invalid then she was free to marry you and your current marriage is presumed valid and thus non-adulterous.
Will it prevent me from being confirmed?
Not necessarily. Until it is able to examine your wife’s first marriage, the Church has to assume that it was valid and, if you are leading a conjugal life with her, the Church would have to assume that you are in a state that would prevent confirmation. However, if you were living as brother and sister then this would not apply and you could be confirmed.
If it matters, my wife’s first husband was abusive and abandoned her and their child. She believes he is mentally ill. I am now his child’s father, for all practical purposes – he does not pay child support and has not tried to see his son for years. So I would think there are strong grounds for annulment, but she has not requested one.
If the conditions you mention were present at the time she married him, or manifested shortly thereafter, they may signal that the marriage was not valid, meaning that your marriage to her is valid, conjugal relations you have are not adulterous, and an annulment would be possible to obtain.
You have my sympathies for discovering this unexpectedly. I was in a similar situation when my wife was alive and we discovered that the Church did not regard us as married since we had not had a Catholic service (I was not yet Catholic at the time). It sounds to me that you have reason for optimism in your situation, and I would encourage you to trust God to lead you and your wife as you explore what needs to be done.
If you’ll e-mail me your physical address, I’d like to send you a copy of my booklet on annulments to answer some basic questions that you may be having at present.
God bless you!
Another reader writes:
Isn’t INTENT necessary for a marriage to be considered valid? For
example, during a play that has a marriage ceremony no real marriage
takes place because there was no intent to marry.In order for a sacrament to actually be a sacrament, the INTENT must
be at least "to do what the Church says it does" even if one’s own
knowledge of what the Church says the sacrament is about is limited.
For example, a Catholic can take part in the sacrament of Penance
without really knowing how he is absolved of his sins so long as he
intends for his sins be be absolved. Conversely, if a Catholic during
Penance intends to be forgiven for all sins, save for "that one", the
sacrament is not valid.Now many, if not most, Protestants do not intend to do what the
Church does when they marry. Many will actually take classes that will
teach them that marriage can be dissolved in X Y Z circumstances, and
most Protestant groups will actively teach that marriage is not a
sacrament. Therefore, at the time of marriage, many Protestants have
not INTENT or WILL or KNOWLEDGE to enter into the sacrament of marriage.Is it therefore not the case that, while Protestant marriages are
given the favor of the law, most of them are not valid sacramental
marriages anyway?
Intent is necessary for the performance of a sacrament, but the intent that is required is general, not specific. Individuals do not have to intend all of the effects of the sacrament. They don’t even have to have a clear idea of what a sacrament is. As long as they are intending to do what the Church does in a general way then the sacrament will be valid. Thus Protestants can have valid baptisms and marriages without understanding either the effects of the sacraments or that these are sacraments.
They’re still intending to do what Christ wills Christians to do. They may not understand the nature of these realities or their effects, but they understood that Christ wills them, and by willing what Christ wills, they implicitly will the content of his will, even if they have an erroneous understanding of that will. As long as the intent to do what Christ wants is governing their choice then they virtually will the contents of Christ’s will.
If I am a Protestant and I want to be baptized because it is Christ’s will for me then even if I don’t understand what baptism is (a sacrament) or does (regenerate and remit sins) then I will be validly baptized because the controlling factor in my decision is the intent to do what Christ wants. If I am a Baptist who has been taught that baptism is not a sacrament and that it does not regenerate or remit sins, that is mental clutter that is of secondary importance to my intent to do what Christ wants. Such secondary clutter does not invalidate.
The same thing applies to matrimony, mutatis mutandis. If I want to marry a woman who is Christian because this is what Jesus wants me to do (rather than simply setting up house with her) the the fundamental factor involved in my choice is the intent to do what Jesus wants, and thus I implicitly will what Jesus wills. I do not have to have an articulated understanding of what Christian marriage is (a sacrament) or does (impart grace to the spouses to let them live their married lives). I may even have mental clutter to the contrary, but as long as my misconceptions about marriage aren’t more decisive to me than my intent to do what Christ wants, the marriage will be valid.
Another reader writes:
Can. 1148 §1. When he receives baptism in the Catholic Church, a
non-baptized man who has several non-baptized wives at the same time
can retain one of them after the others have been dismissed, if it is
hard for him to remain with the first one.2 questions regarding this one:
1. Does this mean he can keep his favorite one, even if she is not
necessarily the first one? I’m confused about the meaning of “if it is
hard for him to remain with the first one”.
It’s a little stronger than that. The canon appears to presume that he will chose the first one unless their is a special difficulty with choosing her. This does not preclude one from saying, "Well, my preference for Wife #2 is so strong that I would find it hard to live with Wife #1," but to merely pick one’s favorite wife with no further thought seems foreign to the way the canon is written.
2. Could this apply to those Mormon groups who still practice
polygamy, since the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize the Mormon
baptism as being valid?
Same thing applies. The Mormon groups that practice polygamy (so far as I know) are in the same condition as the LDS church with respect to the invalidity of their baptisms. Thus canon 1148 would apply to men in their number directly.
Another reader writes:
I attended the wedding of my sister-in-law, practicing Catholic, and
her husband, a divorced Protestant. They were wed outside of church by
a Lutheran minister because husband had not sought an annulment. I knew
at the time that their wedding was improper, but I never thought twice
about attending. Is this a sin for which I must confess?
If you never thought twice about attending it then you did not display the degree of deliberation (indeed, you did not deliberate) needed to commit a mortal sin and thus do not need to confess it.
20
For those of you who may have missed it, or who are fairly new to Jimmy’s combox, the “20” at the bottom of the post indicates that Jimmy’s Rule 20 applies (See DA RULZ in the lefthand column for the complete list).
RULE 20:
“When Jimmy is answering a pastoral question (i.e., for a person asking about an actual situation that they or someone they know is involved in, as opposed to a hypothetical situation) that can be phrased in the form “Is it morally licit to do X?”, do not contradict Jimmy in the comments box…”
In other words, if you have some additional information that might be helpful, or just want to discuss generally or offer support, please feel free.
If you disagree with Jimmy’s perspective and advice, please feel free to get your own blog.
People who send him questions about their personal life are looking for HIS advice, not ours.
Sorry to sound like the Hall Monitor, but this bugs me.
Jimmy-
In the first case–any marriage needs to be convalidated after an annulment for a previous marriage is granted because any subsequent attempt at marriage is impeded by the legally existing prior bond, regardless of whether a moral, or spiritual, or sacramental, bond existed or not. Marital nullity proceedings consider the spiritual or actual circumstance to determine the legal circumstance, and so one’s marriage will need to be convalidated because of the legal circumstance at the time of the 2nd wedding.
Jimmy,
This whole thing of intent in marriage is interesting. I recently attended a catholic ceremony and because some of my family was in the wedding party I attended the rehearsal.
During the rehearsal the couple ran through all of the elements of the ceremony but the priest stopped them at the vows claiming that if they actually uttered thier vows they would then atually be married at the rehearsal and not at the ceremony the day after.
Now, if the intent of both the priest and the couple in ALL THE PLANNING was to get married on a certain day and not at the rehearsal, then it seems to me that they would not be married even if they actually uttered thier vows in a rehearsal.
If the intent doesn’t matter here then it also doesn’t matter in other sacraments – like a priest saying this is my body while holding a piece of bread but not intending to consecrate. If this were the case then every time a bishop touched you you would be confirmed or ordained.
That rehearsal spooked me out a bit…
any marriage needs to be convalidated after an annulment for a previous marriage is granted because any subsequent attempt at marriage is impeded by the legally existing prior bond, regardless of whether a moral, or spiritual, or sacramental, bond existed or not
Canon 1085 §2 is phrased such that an invalidly married person attempting marriage would contract a new union illicitly but not invalidly. Ligamen invalidates if the prior marriage was valid (1085 §1). It makes illicit if the prior marriage is null but hasn’t been declared so (1085 §2).
Even if there were an impediment established on this point, it would not apply to the marriages of those who have not been baptized or received into the Catholic Church,. Since the impediment would be of merely ecclesiastical law, it would not apply to those who have never been Catholics, per canon 11.
During the rehearsal the couple ran through all of the elements of the ceremony but the priest stopped them at the vows claiming that if they actually uttered thier vows they would then atually be married at the rehearsal and not at the ceremony the day after.
That’s dumb.
One thing that bothers me about all of this, and how the Church has chosen to handle it recently, pertains to a situation such as if someone was baptized Catholic, was never given instruction by his family or anyone else, at some point began going to a Protestant church for one reason or another, and then married there. Now this person would be in an invalid marriage, commiting fornication, because he didn’t follow rules that he never knew existed in the first place. I understand that his culpability for the sin may be negated by his lack of knowledge, but all the same he is still in an invalid marriage. He will not receive the grace of the sacrament, may have a troubled marriage, and even if not he will still not achieve the true unity with his spouse that they are seeking, and are possibly seeking through God as very devoted people desiring only to live in a holy marriage before Him. This really bothers me.. any comments are welcome, and I would certainly like Jimmy’s thoughts on this if he would be willing to offer them; I’ve wanted to know them ever since the statement on what a formal defection is.
Jimmy-
you’re right, if the marriage involves two non-Catholics. I didn’t think out the whole proposition carefully- dangerous thing to do with canon law. In fact, at first I thought about the proposition from a different angle, came to the right conclusion, and then, when thinking about it again, convinced myself I was wrong.
i’ve got to be more careful.
Ditto Jimmy, that’s dumb. If it were true, actors in a play or movie playing a bride and groom in a wedding scene would (assuming they were both available for marriage) wind up married to one another.
Intent to act out a wedding scene in a dramatic presentation is not the same as intent to actually marry someone. By the same token, intent to rehearse one’s wedding vows the same as intent to actually marry someone.
For that matter, if merely reciting the words of the marriage vow makes one married, then an unmarried Protestant minister or justice of the peace who leads a couple in saying their vows (“Repeat after me…”) could conceivably wind up married to the bride himself, since he would have said the words of the vow before the groom could do so!
FWIW, Suz and I rehearsed our vows several times before the wedding or the rehearsal. We wanted to say them ourselves, rather than having the pastor either “feed” them to us or else putting the vows to us in the form of a question and eliciting the answer “I do.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those options.)
you’re right, if the marriage involves two non-Catholics. I didn’t think out the whole proposition carefully- dangerous thing to do with canon law.
Indeed. I did the same thing when I first wrote the answer.
Incidentally, the answer applies even if it’s two Catholics. 1085 sec. 2 would only make their new marriage ceremony illicit, not invalid. If Catholic A married Person B invalidly and has not received an annulment then Catholic A marries Catholic C illicitly but validly.
If none of the parties are or have been Catholic then the second wedding isn’t even illicit since merely ecclesiastical law doesn’t apply.
Crikey, this gets complicated. From here on out I’m advising everyone to remain single.
FWIW, I’m seconding Shane’s questions. This has bothered me as well since I first heard of the requirements to formally defect.
I third Shane’s question and second Monica’s. I am pretty sure I just found out my marriage is invalid in the Church’s eyes. My situation is *exactly* that which Shane describes, with the added baggage that my wife and I are both now Catholic. Everyone assumed during RCIA that I was not Catholic, seen as any and all raising in the faith ceased at my baptism. What’s the deal???? Holy crap!
John, if I’m not mistaken (and I could very well be), unless you did all this before the ruling from the Church came out (which was this past April), then your marriage is valid. See http://www.jimmyakin.org/2006/04/formal_defectio.html
Shane,
Instead of “before”, do you mean “after”?
Yeah, I meant after. Actually, I think I meant to say ‘if’ as opposed to ‘unless.’ oops.
I have a question on the multiple wives, where the husband can only keep one. What happens to the other wives? What if they later want to be baptized and then marry again? Can they do so?
I’m the one who wrote about INTENT.
Jimmy, correct me if I am wrong, but I think you might be a missing part of my point. You wrote
“””as long as my misconceptions about marriage aren’t more decisive to me than my intent to do what Christ wants”””
What I am trying to suggest is that many if not most Protestants are taught in such and such a way that their “mental clutter” is almost always a decisive factor in what they are intending to to do when they get married. They do not have the INTENT to marry sacramentally or often permentaly by the very nature of their being instructed in the Protestant form of marriage.
Especially if we look at marriage as a covenant between the spouses and God.
In general the situation is this for an evangelical type Protestant.
I INTEND to form a covenant with my spouse and God, but this covenant IS NOT a sacrament as Catholics think. I INTEND for this covenant to last as per Biblical Passages A B C, but I also INTEND to be able to divorce as per Biblical Passages X Y Z, unlike Catholics.
Even if the words of marriage are essentially the same between this Protestant group and Catholicism, there is a very different knowledge and intent functioning.
With those clarifications, how can this still be a sacramental marriage.
Additionally, consider Mormon baptism. The words and the forms are at least as close to Catholic baptism as Protestant marriage is close to Catholic marriage forms. Mormons intend to do what Christ/the Church wills, and yet because their understanding of “what Christ wills” and even “who Christ is” is so different, the baptism is not valid.
What I am trying to look at is the intent and understanding, especially of well “schooled” Protestants. To me, it appears sufficiently different to prevent validity of a sacramental form of marriage for at least the “well schooled”.
Why is it not sufficiently different?
Thank you very much for your time.
Jimmy-
yes, you are correct, but the marriage would still be sanated.
God bless Jimmy, but I have such a hard time with a layman who is a)not a canon lawyer and b) not in pastoral ministry in a parish or doesn’t work in a tribunal – giving advice on these questions. I really don’t care how many books he has read. Folks, if you have questions, call your diocesan tribunal. Please.
comments off. I hope.
Ellen-
I am almost a canonist (one semester left) I do work in a tribunal, and I can tell you that Jimmy is as good as many canonists or “pastoral minister” at dispensing basic canonical advice. Reading the code carefully, having some experience, and thinking reasonably are the keys to good canonical thinking. I, who do this professionally, failed in this very comment post to think clearly about a question and got it wrong, while Jimmy, who does not it practice canon law professionally, got the question correct. So, maybe you are off.
Aloha Jimmy, many thanks for answering my question. Appreciate the help as I want to do the right thing.
PHT to ya! (Paniolo Hat Tip – we have a long tradition of paniolos (cowboys) here in Hawai`i)
If the husband is abusive then it may signal that the marriage was invalid?
Is that really how it works? You have to have perfect psychological health to get married?
I wonder if this isn’t wishful thinking. People are a wretched bunch and if you start saying that because a party to a marriage is lacking in some way the marriage isn’t valid, just imagine the number of marriages this calls into question all around the world and throughout history!
My fear is that whatever the Church says about “presuming validity”, Catholics who take these issues seriously are going to naturally start wondering about their own marriages and those of others they know: “I wonder if it’s really a marriage?”
And any time a husband or wife is seriously falling short in some way, they are going to say: “Get a divorce; it probably isn’t valid anyway,” rather than, “Be patient; God wants you to find a way to work it out.”
Marriage will in practice–psychologically–become something that exists on a kind of sliding scale of validity.
Yes. Their natural (non-indissoluble) marriage to their first husband has been dissolved, so they are under no impediments.
I’ve always been curious about how the intent of the couple during the actual marriage ceremony is different from the intent evident during the marriage proposal. My boyfriend got down on his knees in our church and asked me if I would marry him, and I consented with my whole being. How is that consent different from the consent we gave 6 months later on our wedding day?
The wedding vows are not just consent but act. To understand this distinction better, it may be helpful to consider that many wedding ceremonies actually have a “declaration of consent” that precedes the actual vows.
To the casual listener, it sounds as if the couple is taking their vows twice: First the pastor asks something like “Will you have this man/woman to be your husband/wife…?” and the bride and groom answer “I will.” Later, the pastor asks, “Do you, N, take N to be your husband/wife…?” and the bride and groom answer “I do.”
Note that critical distinction: “I will” versus “I do.” “I do” is present tense, performative language: In uttering those words and fully intended them, you do what you say.
Performative language is a function of language not well understood today. Other examples include “I give you permission,” “I apologize,” “I thank you,” “I warn you,” “I promise you,” “I absolve you of your sins,” “I baptize you,” etc.
With such expressions as these, to say (and mean) is to do. In saying (and meaning) “I take you,” you actually do take the other person in the very act of saying so; that is when you are married.
By contrast, in the declaration of consent, when you say “I will,” you are merely announcing your intent to do something in the future, not actually doing the thing itself.
Also, as noted above, even if you rehearse your vows prior to the wedding, and actually say “I take you, etc.,” assuming your intent is to rehearse the vows and not actually marry the person at that moment, you are not married then, just as unmarried actors can say wedding vows in a play or film and not wind up married.
In addition to all this, there is also another consideration: If you’re Catholic, you weren’t able to marry your boyfriend at the moment of your engagement, because you are bound by Catholic obligations of form to be married with according to the laws of the Church. So that settles that!
I’ve always been curious. In the Gospel of Mathew, marriage is dissoluble if the other party committed “sexual immorality.” Does canon law overrule this scripture?
Pat,
Canon law does not overrule scripture. You might say that it is one way in which the Magisterium guides us and helps us to understand the Word of God.
A good rule of thumb. If you read both Scripture and Canon Law, and make every reasonable attempt to adhere to both, you’re probably going to be all right.
Jesus doesn’t say that marriage is dissoluble if the other party committed sexual immorality. He says, “If a man divorces his wife and marries another, except for porneia, he commits adultery.”
What exactly “except for porneia” means is a question of some debate. There is a significant problem with interpreting it as “Unless the other party commits sexual immorality,” which is that this would be convergent with a well-known view at the time, the view of the conservative Shammei rabbinical school. (By contrast, the more liberal Hillel school permitted
adulterydivorce for a wide variety of reasons.)Had Jesus merely affirmed the Shammei view over the Hillel view, this would not have been a shocking or radically earthshaking idea. But whatever Jesus meant, clearly his disciples viewed it as astonishing and unprecedented, even going so far as to utter the nearly unthinkable: “If this is true, it is better not to marry!”
Because of this, many Catholic exegetes have argued that what Jesus is really saying is “unless the marriage itself is porneia,” i.e., unlawful and immoral, probably by reason of incest. In that case, if you have a marriage that is itself unlawful and immoral, then that marriage can be dissolved. In other words, Jesus is speaking of invalid unions, and declaring that such marriages can be declared null.
For an example of a scholarly defense of this view, see John Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus.
(By contrast, the more liberal Hillel school permitted adultery for a wide variety of reasons.)
I assume this “adultery” is a slip for divorce?
Ha! Even the Hillel school wasn’t THAT liberal! Yes, I meant divorce! :-0
Went back and fixed it. 🙂
For a while there, you had me thinking that the Hillel school was responsible for the “Sinner’s Bible”, the translation in which there was a word left out of some of the Ten Commandments: the word “not”.