How should I sponsor a divorced and engaged RCIA candidate?

[nodito]

I’ve been asked to sponsor a woman who will be entering the Catholic Church in a short while. She was divorced from her husband ten years ago and is now engaged to a Catholic man and going through the annulment process. She’s trying to be patient with the system and living chastely, though I think she’s still sort of frustrated that she has to “relive” the divorce. I understand that because she hasn’t received an annulment that the Church presumes her first marriage to be valid but she certainly doesn’t see it that way. My question is, what should I say when she starts discussing engagement parties or wedding plans? I want to be gentle – hopeful, even – but I don’t want to water down Church teaching. What would be an appropriate response?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

If this woman does not yet have an annulment from the Church for her first marriage and plans to be received into the Church, with you as her sponsor, then I can only recommend telling her as gently and respectfully as possible that she cannot be planning another marriage at this time. She should not be “engaged,” or planning a wedding. If she wishes to be a faithful Catholic – not to mention allowing her Catholic “fiance” to remain a faithful Catholic – then she will have to break off any romantic relationship with this man until such time as she receives that annulment. While it is possible to be sympathetic to her inability to understand why this is necessary, I cannot recommend sympathizing with her frustrations at having to regularize her marital status. Doing so will only confirm her in her idea that she is justified in being frustrated at having to deal with the fact of her previous marriage.

If she refuses to do what is necessary to live chastely as a married woman (which would necessarily entail ending another romantic relationship), then you will have to decide whether or not you can be her sponsor under such conditions. Since, objectively speaking, her continued romantic relationship with another man outside her marriage constitutes ongoing adultery, I can only recommend declining to be her sponsor if she cannot or will not appropriately reorder her relationship with this man.

Recommended reading:

Why should I want to be associated with the Catholic Church?