Can a Catholic marry a witch?

[deborah1313]

My friend just joined the Church last year and has been real gung-ho, but then she met a man with whom she became really good friends. They’ve now become engaged. She told me she talked to our priest today to tell him she was going to marry her fiance and the priest said “Not in the Catholic Church.” She says she can’t be a part of a church that won’t accept the man she loves. Her fiance is a Wiccan. Personally, I don’t want her to marry him. She believes there is such a thing as white witchcraft, and that her fiance is a white witch.

Her fiance has never been baptized, though he has been married before. Isn’t there something called natural marriage that they can have since he’s never been baptized? Please help. This friend who is considering leaving the Church is sort of like a daughter to me and my heart is breaking.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

In your friend’s case, I suspect that she was told that she could not marry the gentleman in the Catholic Church because he is divorced and may not yet have an annulment, not because he is a Wiccan. With the proper permission from the diocesan bishop, a Catholic can marry a non-Christian, even a Wiccan. The Church wants to look at anything that appears that a previous marriage took place in order to be certain that the parties are free to marry. The book listed below may be helpful for your friend in understanding the Church’s teaching on annulments.

Recommended reading:

Annulments and the Catholic Church by Edward Peters

That said, your friend’s decision to marry a Wiccan is alarming. Wicca is an modern pagan nature religion that involves the practitioner in the occult. The Church strongly condemns occult practices because of the spiritual dangers they pose:

All forms of divinationare to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone (CCC 2116).

All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health – are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritismoften implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity (CCC 2117).

If your friend was cautioned by her priest against marrying this man, it wasn’t because the Church rejects him. It is because she is getting involved with someone who poses a positive danger to the faith and spiritual safety of her and of any children they might have together.

Your friend needs to realize that romantic feelings are not the sole arbiter of whether or not she should marry someone. Marriage is the creation of a family and its purpose is to sanctify the spouses and enable them to raise children for the heavenly kingdom. When choosing someone to marry, the number one question to ask oneself is not “Does he make me feel good?” but “Will he help me to become good?” In other words, the question in determining a suitable spouse is not to ask whether someone should be one’s Boyfriend For Life but whether he can be someone whom you can trust to help you and your children become saints.

Recommended reading:

What is Wicca?