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Veronica97
Guest
I just recently started worrying that my marriage may be invalid. I do suffer from scrupulosity, so sometimes I am unsure if my fears are valid concerns or not. Here is my background. I married my husband when I was 19 in the Presbyterian Church. I had never been baptized and did not attend church regularly growing up. My husband was older and Catholic and had been divorced (with two children). I did not realize at the time the gravity of the situation. I went through RICA approximately five years later, but learned at the time that I could not receive the sacraments (including baptism) until my husband’s marriage was annulled. Our son was born a couple of years later, and we continued to attend Mass but did not receive the sacraments and did not pursue an annulment for my husband until our son was 3. Having been raised Protestant, I felt at the time (in my mind) that we were legally married and were not committing sin…just that I could not be baptized (I realize now that I was wrong of course). My husband’s annulment came through and we took our papers to the priest so that he could do the paperwork to marry us. We had a convalidation ceremony, I was baptized a few months later, and I thought everything was fine, until now. This was 14 years ago. Just recently I started to think…the priest did not tell us at the time that my husband needed to go to confession (him being the baptized Catholic) before our convalidation and no one told us to abstain from relations either. I am unsure if my husband realized that he had been living in sin or not. To complicate matters, he had a vasectomy when our son was one year old. He knew at the time that it was against church teaching (and I did too but being unbaptized and having been raised Protestant I didn’t realize the gravity of the situation) and I’m not sure he did either. So now I am worried that our convalidation was not valid b/c my husband had not been to Confession first and b/c he had a vasectomy which meant we could not have been open to children when we consummated our convalidated marriage. There is so much I realize NOW about the teaching of the Church and I am trying to follow them as best I can, making full use of the Sacraments. But is my marriage valid or am I still living in sin?