Convalidation Question

[TheWarriorMonk]

Related to the questioning of whether convalidating couples normally have to do a pre-marriage class, I have no personal expertise on this since I am not even Catholic yet, but I do know that our priest is having us do a traditional Pre-Cana class before our convalidation, and my (civil) husband and I have been married for 10 years. Not to rat myself out, but the circumstances of the individuals may have something to do with that, as when the priest asked me “what bothered me most about my husband” I said, “communication”. I think perhaps he rightly believed we might need what marriage prep has to offer.

It is my understanding the pre-Cana is always required prior to marriage (which includes convalidation), but the pastor can decide that it is not needed for a particular couple. In your case, since you noted there is a communication issues, the pastor is wise to make you take marriage prep class.

In my case, the pastor didn’t make us take marriage prep. That was because the priest knew our situation, we already had our annulments in place, had been already civilly married for years, not using any contraception, had (adopted) children that we were raising in the Church, we attending Mass, and had already lasted though major marital issues years earlier. Basically, there was no point in taking it because there was nothing to address. We should have been teaching the class at that point.

 

[Pemberley6703]

Yes, the situation that TheWarriorMonk points out for he and his wife couldn’t be more opposite from ours related to knowledge of the ins and outs of Catholic marriage, too, beyond just communication issues (which are really nothing compared to my need for basic day to day advice on living a Catholic marriage/family). Despite the fact that we’ve been married for 10 years, we have two young children who keep us very aware of just how much we have to grow into a sacramental marriage, and related to our responsibilities to nurture these two young souls. My (civil) husband (I wish there was a good word to call someone when you realize that you are not properly married to them!) has been a Catholic his whole life but we weren’t married in the Church because he was not at all active in his faith at the time of our marriage and I was extremely active in mine. Fast forward 10 years and my feelings toward Catholicism have changed profoundly but we realized just how little our practice reflected what we now both believed. The first time we met with the priest he actually said, “you do realize that our starting point with folks is that they are actually practicing the faith” (because I had been taking the kids to mass without my husband). So, that’s just a long explanation of just how glad I am that we are getting all the instruction about marriage we can get. Our priest has been wonderful and a real blessing, too. I just wish my timing was better and I could have made these moves last year and had some RCIA classes under my belt by now (they don’t start in our parish until the fall).