Jimmy Akin

A reader writes:

Would it be a sin for me to marry (in a Catholic church) my zealous Calvinist boyfriend, who thinks the Catholc church is anti-Christ?

(I was a Calvinist myself, so I’m immuned to their arguments and attempts to convert me.  Plus, he will love me like Christ loves the Church and teach the kids about Christ better than most Catholic men, who are usually lukewarm about their religion.)

The Catholic Church allows marriages to non-Catholics in special circumstances, and if those circumstances apply then contracting such a marriage would not be sinful. The conditions specifically named in the Code of Canon Law are:

Can.  1125 The local ordinary can grant a
permission of this kind [i.e., for marriages between a Catholic and a non-Catholic Christian] if there is a just and reasonable cause. He is not to
grant it unless the following conditions have been fulfilled:

1/ the Catholic party is to declare that he or she
is prepared to remove dangers of defecting from the faith and is to make a
sincere promise to do all in his or her power so that all offspring are
baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church;

2/ the other party is to be informed at an
appropriate time about the promises which the Catholic party is to make, in
such a way that it is certain that he or she is truly aware of the promise and
obligation of the Catholic party;

3/ both parties are to be instructed about the
purposes and essential properties of marriage which neither of the contracting
parties is to exclude.

The conditions named in sections 1-3 of this canon are excluding conditions (i.e., the bishop is not to grant permission for such a wedding unless they are fulfilled), but one should not ignore the implicit requirement of "a just and reasonable cause" that is found in the opening section of the canon.

What counts as a just and reasonable cause is not defined and is left up to the discretion of the local ordinary, but it seems to me that a likely construction of this condition would be "The Catholic party does not have reasonable prospects of finding a Catholic marriage partner of comparable quality to the non-Catholic partner, taking into account the negatives that the non-Catholic brings to the prospective union."

In practice, I think it somewhat unlikely that local ordinaries will think through the condition in precisely that way because they usually do not have enough information about the private life of the Catholic parties appealing to them for permission to make a determination of that nature, but it strikes me that Catholic parties contemplating such unions should be asking themselves if they have this kind of cause.

In other words: Do they lack realistic prospects of being able to marry a Catholic of comparable quality to the non-Catholic they are contemplating, taking into account the negatives that the non-Catholic would bring to the relationship. If it is true that they really lack such prospects then the Church would not presume it to be a sin to marry such an individual, the other conditions named above being observed (i.e., the ones named in sections 1-3).

If the Catholic party does not have the kind of cause just named (i.e., the Catholic party does have reasonable prospects of marrying a Catholic of comparable quality, even if it means waiting a little longer to find one) then it seems to me that marrying the non-Catholic party would, at a minimum, be imprudent and, possibly, sinful.

Things get worse if the excluding conditions are not met or are undermined by the non-Catholic spouse. For example, if it is foreseen that the non-Catholic spouse would seek to undermine the faith of the Catholic or would insisting on contracepting in the marriage then it seems to me that it would be sinful to marry the person.

I also could not personally expose my children to having a parent who was a zealous non-Catholic. It would be one thing if a proposed non-Catholic spouse said "I’m not Catholic, but I have no problem at all with your raising the children as Catholics; I want them to have a religious upbringing, and I respect the Catholic Church" but it would be ENTIRELY another thing if the proposed spouse said, "I think the Catholic Church is anti-Christ, I don’t think Catholics are Christians, and I intend to see that my children are raised to believe in Christ as I understand him."

Even if my own faith was secure (and one should not too quickly dimiss the corrosive effect of decades of subtle efforts at undermining one’s faith–particularly at moments when the Church is asking you to do something hard), I could never expose children of mine to such an environment.

I personally cannot recommend marrying non-Catholic individuals in anything but quite unusual circumstances. I have experience in such a union (only I was the zealous Calvinist at the time), and from my experience mixed marriages always involve pain unless neither party is really serious about their religion.

• If both care about their religion then they will both be pained by the fact that the other party does not share it.
• If one cares about his religion then he will be pained by the fact the other does not share it–and the other may be reciprocally annoyed, dismayed, or otherwise negatively affected by the pain the first spouse has.
• Only if neither is really serious about religion is pain avoided, which no doubt explains why in many mixed marriages both parties give up the serious practice of religion–it’s a way of avoiding the pain that comes with taking religion seriously and realizing that the person with whom you are most intimate in this life does not have the true religion. Many thus slide into dissent, indifferentism, or stop going altogether.

After the experience of my own marriage–which was very successful but still involved pain because my wife was Catholic and I was not–I resolved that I would simply not marry anyone who was not Catholic. I want marriage to be what it is meant to be in God’s design, which includes both spouses sharing the true faith. I will not settle for marrying anyone other than a Catholic woman who is solid in her faith. (Of course, I also have to find one willing to put up with me, but that’s another question.)

I suggest that you consider adopting a similar attitude. There are good Catholic guys out there in your age group (whatever that may be), and the Internet is making it easier all the time to find them if it’s hard turning them up in your area.

You might try AveMariaSingles.Com or similar services.

Hope this helps!

20

A reader writes:

I was listening to a radio show this morning.  During one segment (I didn’t catch the whole thing) the host was disagreeing with a priest who called in and said that committing a sin in your mind is the same as physically committing that same sin.  I know that Jesus said this but is it as simple as the written words or are there distinctions to be made?

Okay, first the standard disclaimer: I didn’t hear this show. I don’t know what show it was and, in fact, I don’t even know if it was a Catholic show. As a result of not hearing it, I can’t comment directly on what was said on the show, only on what I’m told. There is always a risk of something being lost in transmission. In fact, it’s not even clear to me who (the host or the priest) was saying that commiting a sin inwardly is "the same" as committing it outwardly. So for anyone who may have heard the show (whatever it may have been), my comments should not be taken as commenting on the show but on the issue as presented here.

To address the issue, what Jesus said was:

You have heard that it was said, `You  shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every  one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery  with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27-28].

Translated a bit more literally, he singled out those who look at a woman "to lust after her." (I.e., purposefully looking at her in order to incite lustful fantasies, not just looking at her and feeling attraction.)

Now, Jesus does not say that doing this is "the same as" physically committing the sin. He clearly establishes an equivalence between them, but not an equivalence that admits of no distinctions. Viewed contextually (i.e., in context of Matthew 5 as a whole), it is clear that he is warning that one can commit mortal sin in one’s mind without an external physical action, but this does not mean that one is not more grave than another or that they are fully equivalent to each other.

We’ll see below what some of the relevant differences are.

The reader continues:

There were two examples given on the show that I wouldn’t mind getting your take on.  The first example is adultery.  If X entertains impure thoughts about Y’s wife, is it equivalent (i.e. just as bad) to committing adultery?  Does it make a difference if X knows he would never do it for real even if the opportunity came up even with no repercussions?

Yes, it does make a difference. How badly one has sinned in a particular case is determined by the degree to which one is willing to offend against God and, by extension, his creatures. If one is willing to go all the way and commit adultery outwardly, with all the implications that has for harming the woman, her husband, whatever family she may have, your own spouse (if you are married), your own family (if you have one), the abuse of the conjugal faculty that God designed into your own nature, etc., then that is clearly worse than if you just deliberately fantasize about it.

In the former case, you are willing to cause all kinds of objective damage that is not there if you aren’t willing to commit adultery outwardly. It’s bad enough if you only are being unfaithful in your heart–you’re still doing damage–but it ain’t anywhere near as bad as if you are willing to go all the way and do the act externally.

In the one case your will is configured such that it is willing to offend against God and his creatures in a vastly more destructive way than in the former, and as a result committing an act of adultery outwardly is much, much worse than simply willfully fantasizing about an act of adultery. In the latter case you’re willing to offend God up to a point, but you’re not willing to offend him to the much greater degree involved in outwardly committing the act.

The second example is more extreme.  The host said that he often finds himself having thoughts of shooting drivers who drive slowly in the passing lane.  Now, I doubt he would ever do that even if he could completely get away with it so in that case would the sin be equivalent to murder?  Or would it just be a sin of anger?

First, the emotion of anger is not a sin. One can have this emotion without sinning. It is what one does with one’s will based on the anger (e.g., deliberately nursing the anger by fantasizing about killing someone) that is a sin.

As to the particular case at hand, this is where it gets harder to comment because I don’t know precisely what the host meant. It might be clearer if I’d heard him for myself. I can see the host meaning any number of things, among them the following:

1. When he gets frustrated, the host has intrusive, obsessive thoughts he doesn’t want that involve shooting such motorists.
2. The host gets frustrated and in a non-serious, semi-joking manner imagines shooting such motorists (sort of the way kids play cowboys and indians, without imagining that anyone suffers major harm).
3. The host gets so frustrated that he imagines shooting such motorists in earnest and actually killing them dead, with all the consequences that entails.

The moral character of the thoughts he is having depend greatly on which (if any) of these he may have in mind:

• If it is the first then the host likely has a condition such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and he is not sinning by these thoughts as his will is opposed to them.
• If it is the second then the host may well be sinning in some degree as it sounds as if there is an engagement of the will whereby in his frustration he willfully fantasizes about causing these individuals some harm, even if though it is not grave harm. This would be venial sin.
• If the third individual is definitely sinning if he wilfilly engages in such homicidal fantasies. To deliberately fantasize about killing people in earnest is gravely sinful, and if done with adequate knowledge and consent will be a mortal sin.

Not having heard the show, I have no idea which if any of these may have been meant, though I’d assume that it likely wasn’t the last option.

I should also note that even though the host did not understand what the priest was saying, the priest said that having the temptation alone to commit sin is not enough.  You need to engage or entertain the thought for it to be a sin.  So I guess my bottom line question is…  does entertaining the thought make it as bad a sin as physically doing it, or does there also have to be a sincere desire to physically do it?

It’s not the desire to physically do it that increases the gravity of the sin, it’s the will to physically do it. Merely have a desire to do something evil is just temptation. But fostering the temptation by deliberately entertaining fantasies of it engages the will and thus is sinful. Being willing to go even further and commit the act outwardly engages the will even more in sinful behavior and so is more gravely sinful.

Hope this helps!