Month: January 2007

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.

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A reader writes:

I went out to lunch with my
Protestant friend the other day.  He is getting married in a month to
another Protestant, who is divorced.  I told him the Catholic Church (and
God, for that matter) would consider his marriage invalid, and I told him
I would not be able to attend his wedding.  This started a firestorm of
questions I did not know the answer to.

I’ll be happy to take a crack at the questions, but first I have a note regarding the initial conversation. It’s always a difficult prudential question to figure out how to discuss these matters with folks coming from a Protestant perspective because they do not generally share the Catholic understanding of the indissolubility of marriage. Often they hold the view they do in good conscience, because it is the one that they have been taught all their lives and because there are verses that–unless you examine them closely–can make variants of their view seem plausible.

That being said, it would be a mistake to tell someone in the situation you describe (apparently, a never-been-married Protestant marrying a civilly divorced Protestant) that the marriage will definitely be invalid. It may or may not be invalid. Here’s why:

The never-been-married Protestant is free to marry if he chooses. The civilly divorced Protestant may or may not be free to marry. If her former husband is still alive AND her original marriage was valid then she is still bound to her first husband and is not capable of marrying another person, per the teaching of Jesus and Paul. In that case her union with the never-been-married Protestant would be invalid because the two parties were not free to marry each other due to her prior bond.

However, this is not the only possibility. If her former husband is dead OR if he is still alive BUT her first marriage was invalid then she was not genuinely married to him and so she is still free to marry and can validly wed the never-been-married Protestant if she wishes. In that case, both parties of the new union would be free to marry each other and the union would be valid.

Since we don’t know for sure whether her first marriage was valid or invalid, we don’t know for sure whether she is free to marry the never-been-married man, and so we don’t know for sure whether their contemplated union would be valid or not.

So I wouldn’t present matters to him as definitely as that.

What should one do instead?

The starting point, as the Code of Canon Law puts it, is that marriage "enjoys the favor of the law." That means that, in legal terms that the Catholic Church presumes a marriage is valid until the contrary is proved. If we as individual Catholics take our cues from canon law in this way then we also would presume that the divorced woman’s marriage is valid and thus that her contemplated union will not be valid.

This is not an indefeasible presumption, though.

It could be overturned if, for example, the woman were to apply for an annulment in the Catholic Church and it were granted. That’s not likely to happen, given the fact that she’s not marrying a Catholic and thus understandably has no reason from her perspective to do so. But other things might defeat it as well.

For example, if I knew her and knew that her first marriage was one she contracted at age sixteen and was never consummated and her husband was an active and violent alcoholic at the time and that the marriage broke up in two weeks then, even in the absence of an annulment, I as a practical matter would feel comfortable concluding that her original marriage had so much wrong with it that there was almost certainly invalid and that she is currently free to marry.

Apart from such a strikingly clear case, though, we need to fall back on the presumption that canon law makes regarding her first marriage, which is that it was valid.

If her first marriage is presumed valid then I would recommend not attending or celebrating the union because it must be presumed to be adulterous–i.e., she will be objectively committing adultery against her first husband in marrying the second, which is what Jesus meant when he said, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery" (Mark 10:11-12) and what Paul meant when he wrote, "a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives. . . .  Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with  another man while her husband is alive (Romans 7:2-3).

I can’t recommend attending or otherwise celebrating an objectively adulterous union. To do so would confirm the parties in an objectively sinful state and thus constitute a form of false witness.

Because the parties are presumably acting in good conscience, though, this situation should be handled as gently, humbly, and lovingly as possible.

If, as indicated, you’ve told your friend that his marriage will not be valid and, if you didn’t further nuance this in the conversation, I would go back to him and explain–as gently, humbly, and lovingly as possible–that his marriage may not be valid and that you have to presume that this is the case and thus, with sincere sorrow and regret, you won’t be able to attend the wedding, but this does not mean that you don’t love and respect your friend.

Now for the questions:

1. Although I should not attend his wedding, is it permissible for me, a
devout Catholic, to attend his bachelor party (assuming they do not
partake in immoral acts)?

As a batchelor party is a celebration of an upcoming wedding, I could not recommend attending for the reasons cited above. I would explain this as gently and lovingly as possible.

2. If he converts to Catholicism in 5 years, should he leave his "wife"
since he is making her an adulterer?

If her first marriage is valid then his leaving her would not make her an adulterer. To the contrary, it would cause an objectively adulterous situation to cease.

That is not to say that he should leave her, because we do not know if her first marriage was valid or not. To determine that, an annulment could be pursued. If the annulment is granted then their marriage could be convalidated ("blessed") and they would be genuinely married. Also, in the ensuing five years they may have had children and–as some couples have–they might determine, even in the absence of an annulment and convalidation, to stay together for the sake of the children, living as brother and sister.

3. If his "wife" converts to Catholicism and he does not, should she leave
him and try to reconcile with her ex-husband?

If her first marriage was valid then, as long as the former husband is alive, she would have the option of reconciling with him, staying single, or living as brother and sister with her current husband, or pursuing an annulment and convalidation with her current husband. Which of these options would be the best would depend on a variety of factors. However, assuming that her situation with her current husband is good, the last of these options would likely be the first one she would want to pursue.

4. 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?

Yes.

5. If an Egyptian man is married to 3 wives, and he converts to
Catholicism, what does he do with his three wives?  Is he only married to
one of them?  Or none of them?

This situation is expressly dealt with in the Code of Canon Law, which provides:

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. The same is valid for a non-baptized woman who has several non-baptized husbands at the same time.

§2. In the cases mentioned in §1, marriage must be contracted in legitimate form after baptism has been received, and the prescripts about mixed marriages, if necessary, and other matters required by the law are to be observed.

§3. Keeping in mind the moral, social, and economic conditions of places and of persons, the local ordinary is to take care that the needs of the first wife and the others dismissed are sufficiently provided for according to the norms of justice, Christian charity, and natural equity.

I hope this helps, and I ask readers to keep you and your friend and his fiancee in their prayers.

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A reader writes:

I have a question I hope you will consider answering for me, as it has been bothering me.  If you post this on your blog, please keep this anonymous.

Don’t worry. I always do. I also edit e-mails to remove personally identifying information.

Anyway, my wife and I have been married for more many years, and thanks be to God have grown more and more faithful to the truths of the Catholic Faith.  We have been lifelong Catholics, and in the last several years have fully adhered to the Church’s teaching on contraception.

However, at the time we married, although we had not engaged in sexual relations prior, we used contraception of one kind or another for a few years after marriage.  We realized eventually just how horrible the practice is and we have confessed and lived out the Church’s teaching since.

My wife says she did not know that contraception was wrong at the time she began using it.  I knew the Church taught it was wrong, but rationalized it away, and even was so brazen as to conclude that it was only a venial sin, as if that was ok.  After all, what is the 2000 year constant teaching of Christ’s Church compared to my mighty intellect?

The rub is this:  is our marriage valid?  When we took our vows, we believed we were "open to children" and would "accept children lovingly from God".  I assure you, we both desired to have children in our marriage, and were not intending to use contraception to be childless.  We just thought timing was the thing.  Also, we both would have gladly accepted any child that came about in spite of the contraceptive effort.

God is merciful, and today we have several beautiful children.  Our past actions are a source of deep shame and regret.  But I know that regardless of how peachy things may have turned out, the validity of a marriage depends on the form, matter and intent at the time of contraction.  So, assuming all else of form, matter and intent was there, do you think our immoral practice caused our marriage to be invalid?

I’m glad to be able to give you good news: The Church does NOT hold that the use of contraception–even at the time marriage is contracted–is of itself invalidating. (Put more formally, the Church does not hold that the intent at the time of marriage  to use contraception is of itself invalidating.) Therefore, the situation as you describe it does not present any grounds on which to doubt the validity of your marriage. Based on what you’ve said, the Church would presume your marriage valid, and you should (and must) too. So you can stop worrying.

If you had excluded by an act of the will completely excluded the orientation of your marriage toward the procreation of children then there potentially would be grounds for nullity, but the fact that you were open to having children shows that you were not excluding this orientation toward procreation, even though for a time you used morally illegitimate means to delay having children.

The orientation of marriage toward procreation is an essential property of matrimony, and to exclude it completely by an act of the will can mean that matrimonial consent (the consent to be married) is not present, however, one does not have to plan on having children now in order for sufficient openness to procreation to be present.

Indeed, the amount of openness that one has to have for matrimonial consent to be present seems rather modest. You do not have to intend to have children. In fact, the Church recognizes the validity of the marriages of couples in various situations who intend not to have children. For example, elderly people who are past the age of childbearing or people who have a serious medical or other condition that warrants perpetual use of Natural Family Planning to avoid conception. Such people can still be open to the reception of children if (miraculously in the first case or accidentally in the second case) they conceive a child.

Choosing to delay the bearing of children by morally illegitimate means is sinful and needs to be repented of, but while the use of these means renders individual sexual acts closed to children, it does not render the marriage as a whole closed to children.

The Church has been confronted for a long time (the whole of its existence, actually, since contraception has been around since pre-Christian times) with the situation of couples using contraception at the beginning of their marriage but still intending to have children eventually, and it simply does not recognize this as invalidating the union. It’s sinful, but not invalidating since the couple is still allowing their marriage to retain a fundamental orientation to procreation, even if they are thwarting that openness in the case of individual acts.

So do not worry about the validity of your marriage and rejoice in the conversion that God has granted you and your wife!

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