Divorce, Remarriage, & Confession

A reader writes:

Can my wife or myself go to confession?

Our story is this, both are cradle Catholics. I left the Church when I was seventeen-eighteen for Evangelical Protestantism and return to the Catholic church about one year ago, thanks be to God.  Married for the first time in my twenties, then divorced ten years later. I have two children from that marriage. I was married in a Protestant church. My wife was also married ten years then divorced but my wife was married in a Catholic church, no children from that marriage. This is our second marriage. We were married in a Lutheran church four years ago. We both have yet to start the paper work towards an annulment.

First, let me assure of you of God’s love for you and your wife. No matter what has led to your current situation, it remains true that God loves the both of you and sent his Son to die for all of us–y’all included–so that we could go to heaven.

Also, no matter what has led up to the present situation, it can be rectified. What needs to be done to rectify it is something that depends on the facts of the situation, but God always make possible a way for us to get right with him. This is as true of the two of you as it is everyone else.

With that in mind, let’s look at the situation at hand, and I’ll offer what help I can.

First, regarding your prior marriage, it is difficult to tell what the Church would judge its status to be. There is a signficant likelihood that the Church would presume (until the contrary is proven) that your first marriage is valid. Whether the Church would presume this depends on a number of factors that would be rather complex to go into here (e.g., whether in becoming an Evangelical you defected from the Catholic Church by a formal act, what year your first marriage occurred in). Assume for the moment, though, that the Church would presume your first marriage valid.

Before looking at your wife’s first marriage, I should also say a couple of things about the children that came from your first marriage:

First, the fact that children came from this marriage does not affect its validity. Marriages are either valid at the time they are contracted or they are not. If children arrive later this does not reach back in time and cause a marriage to become valid.

Second, even if your first marriage was invalid, this does not make your children illegitimate. Legitimacy is a category of human law used for determining things like inheritance rights, and under Church law the children of any putatively valid marriage are considered legitimate. For practical purposes, this means that if either your or your spouse entered the marriage in good faith–even if it was invalid–then the children are legitimate. You should not worry yourself on this point. (Also, even if they weren’t legitimate, that would only tell us something about their status under human law. It says nothing about how God views them. God loves them just as much as he does you or your wife or the pope.)

Regarding your current wife’s first marriage, it sounds as if the Church will regard it as valid until the contrary is proven.

It thus looks as if the Church may presume that your first marriage was valid and that it probably would presume that your current wife’s first marriage was valid. This means that the Church must assume that the two of you were not free to marry each other when you attempted to contract marriage four years ago.

If, however, the two of you were not free to marry each other because one or both of you were bound to previous spouses then your case falls into the situation Jesus warned about:

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].

The adultery in this case refers to the sexual relations that are assumed to be occurring between two persons living as husband and wife.

If two people are having adulterous relations then they are not able to go to confession for that reason until the situation is repaired.

This can occur a number of ways.

One way is to apply for annulments and, if necessary, having your current marriage convalidated ("blessed"). At that point you would be regarded as married to each other and thus the relations you have would not be adulterous, meaning that you could go to confession and participate in the normal sacramental life of the Church.

Another way to repair the situation is to cease having the relations that put one in danger of violating Jesus’ command. In other words, to live as brother and sister until such time as one’s marital situation has been properly addressed. In that case there would be no barrier to one going to confession and participating in the sacramental life of the Church.

The reader continues:

I understand the importance of marriage and family but would like an explanation why divorce is treated as almost an unforgivable sin. Seems that murderers who repent can ask for forgiveness but not the divorced.

I am sorry for a failed marriage and divorce. But what is the status of our soul if we cannot go to confession?

First, regarding divorce as an "unforgivable sin." I understand why it may seem this way at the moment, but this is not the best way to look at the situation. The problem really is not the divorces. The Church recognizes that there are legitimate reasons why one may need to seek a civil divorce. In those cases a person does not sin in divorce. Even apart from those circumstances–which is to say, even when a divorce was sinful–divorce is as forgivable as any other sin in confession.

The thing that prevents one from going to confession is thus not the divorce, it having ongoing sexual relations that fall afoul of Jesus’ prohibition on remarriage following divorce. Adulterous relations are themselves as forgivable as any other sin in confession, but one must repent of them as one must repent of any other mortal sin that one wishes to be forgiven of. As long as they are ongoing, one has not repented of them, and so one could not be absolved of them in confession.

It is not the divorces in the past that pose a problem for going to confession, it is the sexual relations being had in the present between parties who were not free to marry each other.

Regarding the state of your souls in the present situation, this is something that ultimately only God can say. He alone has knowledge needed. No human being does, and so the Church does not presume to pass judgment on the state of your souls.

What it can do, and must do, as part of its pastoral responsibility, though, is to be frank with you about how your situation appears to square–or fail to square–with God’s law and to warn you of the need to rectify matters if there appears to be one. This is what the Church is doing by pointing to Christ’s teachings on marriage and the seriousness of engaging in what, at least from the facts at hand, appear to be adulterous relations.

The Church wants to do everything possible to help the two of you address the situation, which is why it makes available the annulment process to examine your first marriages to see if they were valid or not. It is why, assuming the two of you are free to marry, it makes available the possibility of having your present union convalidated ("blessed"). And it is why, even before such eventualities, the Church offers sacramental absolution in confession if you choose to live as brother and sister until your marital situation can be rectified.

The Church is thus doing its best to both hold out the message of God’s grace while also holding fast to his teachings regarding marriage.

More can be said about all this, but let me add two points that I hope will help.

First, I strongly recommend that you get a copy of Ed Peters’ book

ANNULMENTS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: STRAIGHT ANSWERS TO TOUGH QUESTIONS.

It’s the best book on the subject, bar none, and I’m sure it could help you get a better handle on the situation.

Second, because folks always wonder about what would happen if their lives were suddenly in jeopardy. In this situation there would be three things to do: (1) Resolve to do whatever is necessary to rectify your situation and live as God wants should you survive (i.e., repent), (2) implore God’s mercy and make an act of perfect contrition (i.e., turn from one’s sins based on love of God–a consideration of God’s infinite goodness being sufficient), and (3) go to confession if there is time for this before the end.

If one repents of one’s sins and makes an act of perfect contrition, one is reconciled with God even before one is able to go to confession. If there is time for a priest to be summoned and one can go to confession, the sacrament completes the work already done in one’s heart through repentance and perfect contrition.

Having said all that, let me once again reassure you of God’s love and the Church’s love. It is wonderful that you have already responded to God’s grace to the extent that you have and have resumed life as a Catholic. God will help bring you the rest of the way that needs to be gone.  I’ve tried to be straight with you about the situation, and I hope the answers help. Please do not hesitate to write back if I can be of service.