J
JimCBrooklyn
Guest
Hi all,
I converted to Catholicism when I was 18, having not been raised in any faith. I was married in the Catholic Church at 22, to a Russian Orthodox woman (I was a Slavic Studies major). At 25, I became Eastern Orthodox, not because of a disdain for Rome, but because my wife and I wanted to unite our family (we had 3 small children), and when we lived in Russia, I was moved to it and she would not consider Rome. I consider most of my religious interpretations and expressions at that time to have been very spiritually superficial, albeit intellectually deep. 3 years later, we were divorced. It was a messy period. I can say that when I was Catholic, it was not something on the table, but when we became Orthodox, it stopped holding the same weight, right or wrong.
At any rate, I left all churches not long after the separation, and avoided the topic until last summer, when i was in Rome. I went to St. Peter’s, and the other great churches, and immediately felt an old pull, but a new one as well: something less controllable, something more natural. I couldn’t explain it. I started going to a Mass here and there, I visited Savannah with my current wife (who has never been religious but suddenly wanted to go to Mass every week), and start re-reading Flannery O’Connor frantically. Finally, I spent a day in solitude in the woods where we live, praying, and had the first true experience of non-constructed faith of my life, what I believe to have been the Holy Spirit, some articulation thereof that reached my more mature self. I’ve joined the local parish, and am beginning to consider myself Catholic again.
So of course, I am brought to the issue of my former and current marriage. I spoke with my priest, who referred me to the petition form, and we are set to discuss it more at length thereafter. There are some more traditional potential annulment grounds, but the most confusing bit to me is around my conversion to Orthodoxy. I got divorced because I belonged to a church that allowed it, but now I want to return to the one I came from, which doesn’t. Is there anyone aware of a precedent for this?
Thank you, blessings,
Jim
I converted to Catholicism when I was 18, having not been raised in any faith. I was married in the Catholic Church at 22, to a Russian Orthodox woman (I was a Slavic Studies major). At 25, I became Eastern Orthodox, not because of a disdain for Rome, but because my wife and I wanted to unite our family (we had 3 small children), and when we lived in Russia, I was moved to it and she would not consider Rome. I consider most of my religious interpretations and expressions at that time to have been very spiritually superficial, albeit intellectually deep. 3 years later, we were divorced. It was a messy period. I can say that when I was Catholic, it was not something on the table, but when we became Orthodox, it stopped holding the same weight, right or wrong.
At any rate, I left all churches not long after the separation, and avoided the topic until last summer, when i was in Rome. I went to St. Peter’s, and the other great churches, and immediately felt an old pull, but a new one as well: something less controllable, something more natural. I couldn’t explain it. I started going to a Mass here and there, I visited Savannah with my current wife (who has never been religious but suddenly wanted to go to Mass every week), and start re-reading Flannery O’Connor frantically. Finally, I spent a day in solitude in the woods where we live, praying, and had the first true experience of non-constructed faith of my life, what I believe to have been the Holy Spirit, some articulation thereof that reached my more mature self. I’ve joined the local parish, and am beginning to consider myself Catholic again.
So of course, I am brought to the issue of my former and current marriage. I spoke with my priest, who referred me to the petition form, and we are set to discuss it more at length thereafter. There are some more traditional potential annulment grounds, but the most confusing bit to me is around my conversion to Orthodoxy. I got divorced because I belonged to a church that allowed it, but now I want to return to the one I came from, which doesn’t. Is there anyone aware of a precedent for this?
Thank you, blessings,
Jim