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Veronica97
Guest
First, let me say I am trying to make an appointment to speak with my priest about this issue. 15 years ago my husband’s first marriage was anulled, and we had our marriage convalidated in the Catholic Church. He was a baptized confirmed Catholic, and I had not yet been baptized. We had been married civilly 10 years before that and had a child, so the priest didn’t require us to go through marriage prep. While we were in his office filling out paperwork for the convalidation, it occurred to me that maybe I should tell the priest my husband had had a vasectomy three years’ previously, but I was afraid to speak up. Now I am concerned that either his consent or my consent may have been defective. When the priest asked the question during the ceremony, “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?”, I remember thinking specifically, “Yes, I would accept a ‘surprise’ baby.” My husband said when he aswered the question, he was thinking about raising our child together and his children from a previous marriage in the Catholic Church. He said he wasn’t really thinking about the vasectomy during the time before our convalidation–that he was instead thinking how he wanted to do the “right” thing and be married in the Church. He has told me that if I had gotten pregnant anyway, he would have been upset at first but would have accepted and loved the child. My concern is that everything I’m reading says that this should be confessed before the ceremony, and the priest didn’t say anything to my husband about confession period, even though he had been away from the Sacraments for a decade. I can’t shake the feeling that a Tribunal could declare my marriage invalid b/c there are probably several people who could say they knew he had had a vasectomy and that we didn’t want any more children. This doubt has been in my mind for over a year now. Should I refrain from the Sacraments and from marital relations until I can speak to my priest?
