Best Man at an Invalid Wedding

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Willing_Spirit

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My cousin and best friend is getting married. He was my best man at my wedding and I am supposed to be his best man. He was baptized Catholic, but was not raised in the faith afterwards and doesn’t practice. He is currently agnostic with a negative opinion of “organized religion”.

I told him that since he is a baptized Catholic, he is bound by canon law to get married in the Catholic Church unless he receives a dispensation from the Bishop. I mustered up the courage to tell him that because I care for his soul, even though he doesn’t believe, I wouldn’t be able to support an invalid marriage outside of the church. That’s when he told me his girlfriend was also a non-practicing Catholic and that they were getting married in her church, and I was relieved.

Now months later, as he shares some of his marriage prep with me, some minor details were odd that made me suspect something was off, but I decided to give the benefit of the doubt that their diocese just does things differently, until he sent a picture today of a worksheet that said “terranovachurch.org”. It seems to be a protestant church that regards all Christian denominations as “The Catholic Church”.

I don’t know what to say at this point. My cousin does not have a good understanding of Catholicism . The marriage prep he is going through has him reading the bible, and actually thinking about Christianity more than he ever has. He’s doing a lot to please his fiance’s family and their church. The last thing I want to do is say “that’s not good enough, you need to reach out to the Bishop of a different church you have no familiarity with and work on getting a dispensation, and if he doesn’t give you one you can’t get married or I can’t be there.”
 
Why don’t you just start by telling him that’s it not a Catholic Church and then go from there. There’s no need to come to any conclusion such as “I can’t be your best man” when you haven’t even let him know your concerns about this “catholic” church yet.
 
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I would simply tell him that you’ve found out the church is actually not Catholic in that it’s not under the Catholic bishop, and you are sorry but can’t be his best man as it’s not permitted by your faith.
If he wants to do anything to “fix” his marriage in the eyes of the Church, that’s up to him.
Your only issue is that you, a Catholic, shouldn’t be part of a wedding of a Catholic getting married outside the Catholic Church.
 
I have now reiterated my concerns to him clearly. As I expected, he does not care about his obligations as a Baptized Catholic because he does not have faith. I told him that I need to talk to my priest, whom I’m still waiting to hear back from, to discern what to do. He told me that whatever I have to do won’t change the way he cares about me, but I can’t help feeling like a jerk if I am not there for what is to him a huge moment in his life, especially when he was there for me. I guess this is just a challenge to my faith…

Edit: Others in my family will probably be much less understanding. It is so hard always being perceived as intolerant because others are able to put their beliefs aside and put friendship first whereas we are called to put our faith first…
 
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It sounds to me like your cousin is Catholic only in the sense that he was baptized into the Catholic Church, presumably in infancy. He was not raised in the Catholic Church and certainly does not practice the faith as an adult.

Personally, I don’t see how anything is to be achieved by boycotting his wedding and describing his marriage as invalid. It is invalid only according to a Church to which he belongs only in a technical sense. If his parents had had him baptized at an Anglican church or an Eastern Orthodox church, or had not had him baptized at all, this would not be an issue for any of you. Presumably, like a lot of people, they just had their baby baptized in whatever was the Church that the family had traditionally belonged to.

Personally, I would just go along with whatever the couples chooses to do. It sounds like they are at least having an opportunity to learn more about the Christian faith at their Protestant church. Perhaps in time they will both come back to the Catholic Church.

I appreciate that this is not the standard advice given by the most conservative Catholics, but it would seem like a sensible and generous approach to me.
 
Go and be the best man at the wedding because you love your cousin/best friend.
 
do_justly_love_mercy said:
Personally, I don’t see how anything is to be achieved by boycotting his wedding and describing his marriage as invalid. It is invalid only according to a Church to which he belongs only in a technical sense.
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The Church which is correct on the matter regardless of what the groom believes.
 
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