Can my friend enter the Catholic Church this year?

[JeanneW]

I have agreed to sponsor a friend into the Catholic Church. She has been attending RCIA since the autumn of 2005.

Last Sunday, the deacon called her into an office after Mass and told her she could not enter the Church because she needed an annulment. She has been married three times. The first ended in a divorce. The second ended in a divorce. The third ended when her husband died. The second husband has since died.

My friend was baptized in a Christian church. None of her husbands were baptized. Can my friend enter the Catholic Church this April?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I must say that this is the kind of thing that should have been discussed with your friend before she entered RCIA, not after she has invested over three months of her time and effort into investigating the Church. For the benefit of readers who may know potential converts with marriage issues, those readers should advise their friends to bring up the issues of marriage to the parish office right away rather than get bad news right before the Easter Vigil.

That said, if I understand your report of your friend’s situation correctly, the deacon may well be mistaken about your friend’s ability to be received into the Church. You have stated that your friend has been married three times and that Husbands 2 and 3 are deceased, so I assume this means that she is currently unmarried in the legal sense. If that is the case, then the Church would presume her situation to be that of a civilly-divorced person living as a single woman.

So long as she does not attempt to civilly remarry without an annulment, she is not barred from entering the Church or from receiving the sacraments. She does not even have to seek an annulment unless she wants to remarry or enter religious life while her first husband lives. If her first husband predeceases her, she will then be free to marry or enter religious life without having to seek an annulment.

I recommend that your friend contact her local diocese for help in clearing up this situation. If necessary, she can also contact the St. Joseph Foundation for assistance with the canonical issues involved.