Husband gets offended over mortal sin

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Sorry, I didn’t know how else to title this question. I’m also not sure if I’m posting in the right place, but I figured that talking to my husband who is going into RCIA this fall is a kind of evangelization. So feel free to move this post, or tell me to copy and paste into a different forum. Anywho!
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Me and my husband were walking home from church this morning. ( We live very close. ) He asked me why I didn't receive communion. ( I usually do, but he just goes up for the blessing. ) I told him that I learned that even though we are civilly married, we are committing a mortal sin by living together until we are married in the church. And since I had not gone to confession this weekend, I could not in good conscience receive communion. 

( Also, yesterday I spent a good 2 hours listening to the exorcism tapes of Anneliese  Michel. That girl sounded like she had a bunch of dragons trapped inside of her! Scary! And thought provoking! So I wanted to be on my best behavior, of course. 
[youtube.com/watch?v=y0Ak-3wS7cQ&feature=related](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Ak-3wS7cQ&feature=related) )

Anyways, he got terribly offended. He told me that our marriage was just as good as anyone else's, and probably even better. ( I agree, we get along wonderfully, and he treats me like a queen. ) I told him that that's not what I meant. That it's like a puzzle with a piece missing. It's not offensive, ( except to God ) or any better or worse than the other puzzles, we just need to find the missing piece. I tried to be as nice as I could, but I just couldn't find the words to explain to him what I meant by our marriage not yet being "valid", and that we are living in mortal sin. I am not at all offended by this teaching, and I understand that we need him to go through RCIA and then have our marriage ceremony within the Church. We have already started preparations for these things.

I just don't know how to explain to him that we are doing something wrong by living together and sleeping together, even though we are married civilly, in the eyes of the Church. How do I explain it to him in a way he'll understand, if he finds it offensive? He's the touchy-feely type, and very empathetic. He's converting from Christianity - I don't know what denomination. His family never really went to church.

Any ideas, analogies, stories, or answers for him would be greatly appreciated.

 Thank You in advance!
 
My dear ICUP; you are in a difficult predicament and I hope this will help to explain this too your beloved.

I am afraid that a Civil marraige is not one that is in the unity of God. In the same way as many homosexual marraiges are not “real” marraige; a Civil marraige is not until it has been recognised and performed in the church.

Tell him this – many things are performed by states that are incorrect. In some contries and areas it is allowable to marry animals; and has occurred in the past. Such marraiges; whilst “valid” in a civil sense are meaningless with regards to morality and the church; and intercorse between the “husband” and “wife” is nothing more than fornication.

A “civil” marraige is not the same as one within the Church. After all, is not your relationship so **strong **you can be chaste until you are bound in unity with the Lord in the Sacrament of marraige?
 
I would just say that while you are civilly married, you are only married in the eyes of human law. Since your marriage is not yet valid by the Church, you are not married according to God’s law (which beats civil law any day :rolleyes:), and thus any marital relations you may have are mortally sinful since, in the eyes of God, they are considered fornication. This goes to cohabitation as well. Even if you were to abstain from relations, you would still be in mortal sin (I don’t know exactly why, sorry :(), but either way you’re definitely in the near occasion of sin, which in itself is not good.

Hope this helps! 🙂
 
I’m just wondering, was there a particular reason why you married civilly and not in church?

I’m no expert but it seems to me that, assuming there is no other impediment (previous marriage for either party), there is no reason why your marriage cannot be convalidated now. I don’t think you have to wait until your husband finishes RCIA. But as I said, I’m no expert here - why not take your situation to a competent priest?
 
ICUP said:
( Also, yesterday I spent a good 2 hours listening to the exorcism tapes of Anneliese Michel. That girl sounded like she had a bunch of dragons trapped inside of her! Scary! And thought provoking! So I wanted to be on my best behavior, of course.
youtube.com/watch?v=y0Ak-3wS7cQ&feature=related )
I meant by our marriage not yet being “valid”, and that we are living in mortal sin. I am not at all offended by this teaching, and I understand that we need him to go through RCIA and then have our marriage ceremony within the Church. We have already started preparations for these things.

Any ideas, analogies, stories, or answers for him would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You in advance!
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I think you can get married in the Church before he starts RCIA. You just need a special dispensation from the bishop or priest
 
I think you both need to go together to visit the priest, lay out the specifics of your personal situation, and follow his advice as to the timing of marriage convalidation, RCIA for your husband, his reception of the sacraments, and your own restoration to the sacraments. I can tell you the RCIA director has to establish his needs regarding marriage issues before he begins RCIA which is done with the advice of the pastor. This way your husband will get a fuller explanation from someone who has all the right words and can state the reasons in a more complete way than you perhaps feel able to do.
 
Yellow_Belle said:
I’m just wondering, was there a particular reason why you married civilly and not in church?

I’m no expert but it seems to me that, assuming there is no other impediment (previous marriage for either party), there is no reason why your marriage cannot be convalidated now. I don’t think you have to wait until your husband finishes RCIA. But as I said, I’m no expert here - why not take your situation to a competent priest?
Click to expand...
We have an appointment with the priest sometime next week. I just wanted to be able to try and explain this to him beforehand. I want him to get used to the idea before possibly being offended by a priest. LOL That would be so awkward!

I grew up in a very abusive household, and basically “escaped” to him at the age of 19. ( We met in the third grade. ) We were engaged for a year, and I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable living with him for more than a year if we weren’t married. We had a small civil ceremony, since it was all that we could afford, and it immediately soothed my unease. ( I guess you could say now that it gave me a very “false” sense of security. Haha. )

However, thinking about the future, and what I want to teach my imaginary future children, I would like them to be able to make more moral desicions than I did, since they obviously will not be living in the same circumstances.

I was pretty much raised by television, and as I delve deeper into my Catholic faith with my husband, I am constantly learning more and more.

The RCIA program director for our parish has told us that we can have a small ceremony immediately after he receives all of his sacraments, at the completion of RCIA. Again, we will talk to the priest about this.

I guess I’m really just trying to “butter him up”, so to speak. LOL This is the only problem that he has had with Church teachings so far, as everything else he finds to be very logical - as in it makes sense to him in a way that no other faith has before.

He is a very logical person, so I think he’s having trouble wrapping his head around the spiritual aspect of it. 🤓 Hmm…

Also, I do believe that our relationship is strong enough to abstain until we are married in the Church. However, we are both students and together we are barely scraping by, so living separately isn’t possible for us. We also live in a very small studio apartment, so… I mean… I could move into the bathroom, but it gets mighty cold in there! :o

Who am I kidding? I want to have my cake and eat it too. After all of that sadness, and wanting to escape and be happy, I like being with my “husband”. I am certainly preparing myself for a very looooooooong confession just before we are married in the Church, that’s for sure.

Geez, I type too much. But I hope that helps with the summary of things. 🙂

Oh wow! Lots of suggestions! I will be sure to look into all of them, I can assure you! 👍
 
ICUP said:
WeThe RCIA program director for our parish has told us that we can have a small ceremony immediately after he receives all of his sacraments, at the completion of RCIA. Again, we will talk to the priest about this.

Ie!
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you really need to work out this timing with the RCIA director AND the pastor. I don’t want to tell you because it is different for every person, and depends on a lot of factors which you need to share with them during the interview: baptismal status of each of you, your marriage situation, previous marriages if any, and so forth. Usually the marriage must be convalidated just before the non-Catholic receives sacraments, but not always, there are exceptions. If the wedding vows are exchanged immediately after reception, that also is possible, but the key factor is that you both have to be in the state of sanctifying grace. It sounds as if both your husband and you would benefit from the priest’s explanation of what this means. Let us know how the interview goes. We will be praying for both of you.
 
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