N
Netty1
Guest
Friends, I’m hoping you can help me with some general advice and feedback.
I’ve been going through the RCIA and my journey has been watched by an older cousin, who started to come to church with me. She had been enjoying it and seemed to be gaining a lot of peace and hope from both the Mass and the general feeling of strength that comes from it. Everything was going fine, and I thought she might eventually look at the RCIA herself, but something someone said in passing about divorce and coverting to Catholicism has put her off, and she has made excuses not to come to church for the past three weeks.
When I asked her about it, basically she said that she thinks because of her past, that she will never be accepted fully into the church (for sacraments etc) and so there is no point in her attending. I hate to see her so disappointed, and I think things are not so cut and dried as she thinks they are. This is something I’ve not had to think about because I have never been married, and so I’m hoping the deep well of knowledge here might offer some hope for her. I’ve offered to speak to my priest but she refused to allow me to do that because now, after the comments she heard, she feels rather ashamed for some reason, as though she’s not worthy to even want to be part of the chuch. I cannot even begin to describe to you the disappointment I sense in her.
Apologies here, but a brief background is necessary. Now in her mid-50s, she was married for 20 years to a man who was an alcoholic. She left the marriage to save her sanity and keep a roof over her head as the home was about to be repossessed thanks to her ex drinking all the money away, not enough income, etc. There were no children and this seemed to be a fertility problem rather than deliberate choice, because I remember when I was much younger she said she would rather have liked to have had a child “but it was not to be” as she put it.
This was her only marriage and she has rarely dated since divorcing 15 years ago, basically her bad experiences kinda put her off the idea of men, dating, marriage, the whole 9 yards, etc. Neither she nor her ex were baptised into any faith, (she and I come from a family that is rather anti-religion, and her ex came from a family of athiests). They were married in a registry office and the marriage dissolved the usual way in a court. She has not heard from her ex-husband since the divorce, and has no idea even if he is still alive because she moved right away from him to start afresh in a safer life.
I’ve looked at various threads here and my general impression is that this is not as dark a situation as she believes it is. I’ve read about some quite complicated examples here, of marriage tangles which seem to come right in the end, even if it takes some time to resolve via the necessary canon law.
I know it’s hard to give a hard-and-fast answer, but in general, am I right in thinking this marriage issue could be resolved so that she could go through RCIA and be accepted fully and completely into the church, complete with sacraments, etc?
I’ve been going through the RCIA and my journey has been watched by an older cousin, who started to come to church with me. She had been enjoying it and seemed to be gaining a lot of peace and hope from both the Mass and the general feeling of strength that comes from it. Everything was going fine, and I thought she might eventually look at the RCIA herself, but something someone said in passing about divorce and coverting to Catholicism has put her off, and she has made excuses not to come to church for the past three weeks.
When I asked her about it, basically she said that she thinks because of her past, that she will never be accepted fully into the church (for sacraments etc) and so there is no point in her attending. I hate to see her so disappointed, and I think things are not so cut and dried as she thinks they are. This is something I’ve not had to think about because I have never been married, and so I’m hoping the deep well of knowledge here might offer some hope for her. I’ve offered to speak to my priest but she refused to allow me to do that because now, after the comments she heard, she feels rather ashamed for some reason, as though she’s not worthy to even want to be part of the chuch. I cannot even begin to describe to you the disappointment I sense in her.
Apologies here, but a brief background is necessary. Now in her mid-50s, she was married for 20 years to a man who was an alcoholic. She left the marriage to save her sanity and keep a roof over her head as the home was about to be repossessed thanks to her ex drinking all the money away, not enough income, etc. There were no children and this seemed to be a fertility problem rather than deliberate choice, because I remember when I was much younger she said she would rather have liked to have had a child “but it was not to be” as she put it.
This was her only marriage and she has rarely dated since divorcing 15 years ago, basically her bad experiences kinda put her off the idea of men, dating, marriage, the whole 9 yards, etc. Neither she nor her ex were baptised into any faith, (she and I come from a family that is rather anti-religion, and her ex came from a family of athiests). They were married in a registry office and the marriage dissolved the usual way in a court. She has not heard from her ex-husband since the divorce, and has no idea even if he is still alive because she moved right away from him to start afresh in a safer life.
I’ve looked at various threads here and my general impression is that this is not as dark a situation as she believes it is. I’ve read about some quite complicated examples here, of marriage tangles which seem to come right in the end, even if it takes some time to resolve via the necessary canon law.
I know it’s hard to give a hard-and-fast answer, but in general, am I right in thinking this marriage issue could be resolved so that she could go through RCIA and be accepted fully and completely into the church, complete with sacraments, etc?
