Marriage and Church Rules

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My son is getting married to a non-Catholic. The bride to be does not want to convert to Catholicism. Can they still get married in the Catholic Church without his wife to be converting or without having to attend special classes?
 
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Yes, it is possible to get married without converting. No, there are pre-Cana/marriage prep classes required before the wedding. Check with your local parish church or priest.
 
So, as a young adult less than a decade removed from my own wedding, I have to start with the disclaimer:

Do not offer any advice unless asked.

That said

Yes, he can marry a Non-Catholic so long as she is baptized.

Yes and No. She does not have to do RCIA but they will both have to do the normal pre-cana. They are not “Special” in that regard. The will likely have an extra meeting or two with the priest and will need to fill out one or two extra sections when they take the FOCCUS test…but I think that’s a total of 20-40 questions. The "Regular’ test is already like 150—so its really not requiring that much more. They may also need to find a marriage retreat that caters to mixed-faith couples rather than the “normal” one. But it’s a replacement, not an extra.
 
Your son can marry a non-Catholic, baptized or not, with the proper permission. And should there be an issue of her not wanting to marry in a Catholic church, it’s possible to get a dispensation for that as well. They need to talk with your son’s pastor to get things started.
 
She doesn’t have to convert.

The best thing to do is for them to talk to the Pastor where they want to get married, to find out what to do in their particular situation.

For our/my own particular situation, we had our marriage convalidated, and had to get a dispensation.

We talked to the Pastor of the local parish at the time, and he told us that we didn’t even have to have the ceremony there if we didn’t want to due to my husband’s non-Catholic/non-Christian faith, but my husband wanted to do it and was fine with it.

He told us that because my husband is Jewish, we could go to a Rabbi instead, and have a Rabbi perform the ceremony for us.

We did attend Pre-Cana classes though, with the Pastor.
 
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She doesn’t have to be baptized.

My husband isn’t baptized, and isn’t Catholic.

It depends on the other person’s faith, on what needs to be done.

You can have a marriage that is natural and valid, without being Sacramental.

You just need to make sure that everything is done properly, and that it goes through the proper channels.

In our case, we had to get a dispensation.
 
oldgraymare2 said:
She doesn’t have to be baptized.

My husband isn’t baptized, and isn’t Catholic.

It depends on the other person’s faith, on what needs to be done.

You can have a marriage that is natural and valid, without being Sacramental.

You just need to make sure that everything is done properly, and that it goes through the proper channels.

In our case, we had to get a dispensation.
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I guess I was thinking of a sacramental marriage. “Just valid” didn’t really occur to me since the OP wanted to know if they could get married in the church, not simply have the church’s ok.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
I guess I was thinking of a sacramental marriage. “Just valid” didn’t really occur to me since the OP wanted to know if they could get married in the church, not simply have the church’s ok.
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A Catholic can marry an unbaptized person in the Church. What makes you think otherwise?
 
i’ll just add this: my daughter 16 years catholic school married a baptist divinity student

my grandson was baptized catholic; thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit; so keep praying
 
1ke said:
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Xanthippe_Voorhees:
I guess I was thinking of a sacramental marriage. “Just valid” didn’t really occur to me since the OP wanted to know if they could get married in the church, not simply have the church’s ok.
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A Catholic can marry an unbaptized person in the Church. What makes you think otherwise?
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I’m sorry that I didn’t mention that the Pastor told us that we could use the church for our ceremony if we wanted to, but we decided to use the Rectory office instead, since we were having a small gathering of people with us that day. 🙂
 
You would still need pre cana. This probably varies but when me and my husband did marriage prep most of the couples were mixed.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
She does not have to do RCIA but they will both have to do the normal pre-cana. They are not “Special” in that regard. The will likely have an extra meeting or two with the priest and will need to fill out one or two extra sections when they take the FOCCUS test…but I think that’s a total of 20-40 questions. The "Regular’ test is already like 150—so its really not requiring that much more. They may also need to find a marriage retreat that caters to mixed-faith couples rather than the “normal” one. But it’s a replacement, not an extra
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Premarital preparation varies greatly from diocese to diocese. The FOCCUS test and weekend retreats are elements that may or may not be present in the couple’s program. Neither are elements in my current diocese.
 
1ke said:
Premarital preparation varies greatly from diocese to diocese. The FOCCUS test and weekend retreats are elements that may or may not be present in the couple’s program. Neither are elements in my current diocese.
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Exactly. When I first arrived in this parish there was a regularly scheduled (quarterly, IIRC) group-led marriage preparation.

When the Pastor changed that fell by the wayside, the new Pastor brought in the FOCCUS test and he did preparation himself.

When he left, the one who took over handed couples a workbook, sent them home to work on it and call him after each chapter to review it. I knew couples who finished that a few days before the wedding.

In the next parish they do Marriage Prep once a year. You’re out of luck if you decide in April that you’d like to get married next January - you’ve missed the marriage preparation, no wedding for you!

We are a small town with many Christian denominations besides Catholic. The ministerial association has given some consideration to running non-denominational marriage preparation with one session focusing on religion done by individual parishes for their own parishioners but so far that has not gone anywhere.
 
As someone who only had a 9 month engagement that would have been problematic
 
ConfusedLucy said:
As someone who only had a 9 month engagement that would have been problematic
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You’re telling me! We’d been engaged but living in different areas of the country for two years but decided in early July to marry in October. Luckily my Pastor had no problem with this. Hubby, Protestant marrying a Catholic, did marriage prep of some kind with his Catholic military chaplain. I did nothing.
 
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