…Has anyone ever heard of a protestant church denying two people marriage because they were previously married to another?..
Yes, my old Independant Baptist Church refused to marry anyone who had been previously married - no matter the circumstances - no exceptions!
Remarried people, including those of long marriages with children where one of the spouses may have had even a briefest first marriage, in youth before they were a Christian, were allowed to be members, but, were asked to kind of keep it quiet about the success of it, so as not to lead others astray ?!].
The first time we visited the church, the homily was on how divorce was always wrong in all cases. The pastor was so strong on it, and it bothered me. I began to think of exceptions. Of course, I would never, ever divorce, myself! But what about those other poor people who had no choice? There had to be people out there who made mistakes.
So, in my first conversation with this pastor, was the issue of divorce. After that, it was an unimportant topic to me, which never came up in conversation with the pastor again, until fifteen years later, briefly, in my last conversation with him. Never say never - I learned that one alone, even with all the prayer and faith one could muster, cannot hold a marriage together, and divorce was the fate of my own long marriage.
That Baptist pastor, his assistant pastor at the time, and most of the church’s elders were all ex-Catholics! I believe that their stance - like the women mentioned in another post here in this thread, who, though remarried herself, is contesting her previous husband’s bid for nullity - is not about spite at all (I think you have to be careful about judging someones motives that way) but about a root essence of true
Protestantism - that is - *protesting the Catholic Church! *
When I was a member of this Baptist Church, I had already been “Born-again” for some time, and was anxious to grow in holiness, and learn what was true and right. Year after year, Sunday after Sunday, I sat through very long sermons about the need to accept Christ as your Savior (though I assume nearly everyone had, and certainly everyone heard this before!). And I wondered about issues of faith, and tried to find answers for things like, “How do you grow in holiness?” (other than study your Bible, which I had been doing all along).
All too often the reply was, “Who can know?” and, “we see through a glass darkly now - in heaven we will know.” And what an astounding disovery, when God drew me into exploration of the Catholic faith, to see that these questions actually did have answers!
Although so many doctrinal questions were unanswerable in my old church (the only *clear *doctrines were “Bible-alone” and “Faith-alone”, which is why stumbling upon and reading the Hahns’ book rocked my world), the one thing we
could be quite clear on was that the
Catholics were wrong!
When you love Christ and want to do things his way, you hang onto what doctirnes of His that you have. And when you believe that the Catholic Church is offending God himself, its only natural to kick against vehemently against it.
So we have to be patient with our Protestant brothers and sisters, who don’t have the fullness of faith that we are blessed with. Like a babe on milk alone, we have to give their demands and fits some leeway and understanding. While we patiently present the truth, of course.
