Catholic Blessing of Marriage

Re: Catholic Blessing of Marriage

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  banana468 member

  

  April 2022

  If you are married outside of the Catholic church you'd cease to be a Catholic in God standing and would not be allowed to receive Communion or serve as a God parent or sponsor for Confirmation or RCIA.
  
  You really should talk to a priest.  I don't think what you propose is possible.  The only time I've seen this work was when a Catholic married an Orthodox and they had a Convalidation during mass the day after their Orthodox ceremony.  

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  flantastic member

  

  April 2022

  Okay, I do have a lot of experience with this.
  
  First of all, getting married in the Church does not require your husband to be Catholic. Not at all. The fiance/ee of a Catholic doesn't even have to be baptized, although that's slightly more complicated. No priest or deacon should tell your FI he has to become Catholic in order to marry by the form of the Church. I know MANY people who are Catholic, got married in a Catholic Church, and their spouse is some other denomination and was at the time of their marriage.
  
  Secondly - since you are baptized Catholic, you are bound by the form of marriage that the Church prescribes, unless you receive a dispensation from that form from your bishop because you have a really good reason not to be married in the Church. (That dispensation is possible, but not super likely to get. The instance where I have seen it done was when the wife was devoutly Catholic and the husband was vehemently anti-Catholic. And hey, their marriage did work somwhow.)
  
  If you don't get married by that form (i.e., in the Catholic Church), then your marriage is automatically not considered valid, by reason of "defect of form." Your future children and their "status" is not really the main concern in terms of sin or sinfulness - living together as if you are married while not being validly married is the concern. The marriage itself is the main issue. That is why any priest or deacon will push you to either apply for a dispensation, if this is truly that important to you, or to be married in the Church. It may even be possible for the Lutheran pastor to be somehow involved in the ceremony.
  
  A "blessing," is probably referring to a convalidation. This is when you have a Catholic marriage rite done later, to validly enter into a marriage that was previously done invalidly. However, in the US, they don't let you just plan for this in order to plan a civil wedding. It involves a conversion - "I know I didn't do it the way I was supposed to the first time, but now I would truly like my marriage to be a valid Catholic marriage."
  
  The "watching the ceremony and deciding if it is valid" bit is probably what happens when both persons are Christian, but not Catholic, at the time of the marriage. Non-Catholic Christians are not bound by the form of the Church and therefore can enter into a valid marriage in the eyes of the Church if a few conditions for true consent are met. But like I said, since you are already Catholic, this doesn't apply to you.

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  flantastic member

  

  April 2022

  My experience in the canon law regarding marriage comes from my job - I work to prepare people who desire to become Catholic. There are a lot of situations we have to untangle when people are married, were married, etc.

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  ILoveBeachMusic member

  

  April 2022

  @flantastic, I thought that the children were not considered illegitimate even though the marriage isn't valid in the eyes of the church. Doesn't the church recognized the marriage as "legal" by state law but not by church law. I seem to remember reading something along those lines when DD was married. She had already converted to catholicism and I was trying to understand the view of the Catholic church on weddings.

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  flantastic member

  

  April 2022

  ILoveBeachMusic said:

  @flantastic, I thought that the children were not considered illegitimate even though the marriage isn't valid in the eyes of the church. Doesn't the church recognized the marriage as "legal" by state law but not by church law. I seem to remember reading something along those lines when DD was married. She had already converted to catholicism and I was trying to understand the view of the Catholic church on weddings.

  I don't know what the official canonical (church law) status of the kids is - generally, most people just say it doesn't matter. The kids are just kids, with no control over whether their parents validly married, and it helps no one, especially not them, to declare them legitimate or illegitimate - unlike back when inheritance law may have been based upon it.
  
  And yeah, the Church recognizes that a marriage's legal validity per the state is, in most if not all places, a separate thing. For example - you can be legally married and divorced a number of times, in a Catholic church or out if it, but if you never intended to be faithful to your spouse any of the times you made a legal marital commitment, the Church is going to consider all of those marriages invalid because of the defect in your consent to what they believe a real marriage to be. But it is a gigantic hassle because your intentions at the time of every single marriage "attempt" have to be investigated.
  

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  jrbelanger member

  

  April 2022

  100% agree with Flantastic.
  
  As someone who is in the process of an annulment and seeking convalidation by the Catholic church, and therefore is not able to receive Holy Communion, I would HIGHLY recommend getting married in the Catholic Church. No pressure to have your husband convert as that is not required. My husband is not Catholic, although he is now in RCIA, praise be to God. 
  
  My advice is to not try to find loopholes or other ways to get around what the Church has deemed appropriate and what is best. I promise it will be worth it!  

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