Is an annulment needed here?

[bekahlou]

My boyfriend and I are both Catholic. He is divorced. He was actually the third husband to his ex-wife. She was not Catholic when they got married. They also were not married in the Church. It was a Christian wedding, but just not a Catholic one. A couple years later she went through RCIA. Even though she had previously been twice divorced she never got those marriages annulled. Is her Catholic conversion valid? Since she was never annulled from her previous marriages and her marriage with my BF was never blessed by the Church, does he need to have their marriage annulled? If she was still “married” in the Church’s eyes when she married the third time, would my BF and her marriage even be recognized anyway?

 

[Fr.Vincent_Serpa]

Hi,

If a Catholic marries outside of the Catholic Church, the Church does not consider it to be a valid marriage. So it is not Catholic nor Christian. You boyfriend’s priest will have to submit his former marriage to the diocese’s marriage tribunal for it to objectively ascertain that he is a baptized Catholic and was married outside the Catholic Church.

As for her; none of her marriages outside of the Catholic Church, since she is a Catholic, should be valid. But again, the marriage tribunal should objectively examine the situation. Perhaps the RCIA people have done this. If not, they were remiss.

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.