Marriage Question

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Four years ago my husband and I were married. Prior to this we went through marriage prep with the pastor of my former parish. My husband is Jewish, when we went through our marriage prep, we applied for dispensations (Disparity of cult and Canonical Form) and we were married by a rabbi, mainly to appease his family. We were verbally told that we were good to go as far as the dispensations.

My husband recently started RCIA and we had to request our paperwork from my old parish, in doing so I discovered that under the permissions section only Disparity of Cult was checked, not it and Canonical Form. I have asked my former pastor and he does not seemed concerned. I have removed myself from communion until I find out for sure, I have a call in to my current priest and will be contacting the diocese on Monday. We just need to make sure that everything is OK for us. We went through everything to try and make sure our marriage was valid, I would hate for it to be invalid because of a clerical error.

I honestly don’t know what to do.
 
Sounds like you need to speak to a canon lawyer. I’ve heard the St Joseph’s Foundation mentioned as a possible source of advice on these sorts of issues. Hope it all works out well for you.
 
You have done the right thing in contacting the former pastor, and the next step of contacting the diocese for their records. Worst case scenario your current pastor gets the dispensation and does radical sanation. Don’t be concerned, you have done nothing wrong.
 
Don’t be worried or anxious about this. Congratulations to your husband on joining RCIA.
 
I can’t claim to know Canon law, but it just doesn’t make sense for me for you to be condemned for someone else’s typo. Do you have any letters, emails, notes or something from when you applied for both? I think that would definitely help your case in showing it was a clerical error, especially with your priests lack of concern.

I am happy to hear your husband found Christ.
 
KonekoHime said:
Four years ago my husband and I were married. Prior to this we went through marriage prep with the pastor of my former parish. My husband is Jewish, when we went through our marriage prep, we applied for dispensations (Disparity of cult and Canonical Form) and we were married by a rabbi, mainly to appease his family. We were verbally told that we were good to go as far as the dispensations.

My husband recently started RCIA and we had to request our paperwork from my old parish, in doing so I discovered that under the permissions section only Disparity of Cult was checked, not it and Canonical Form. I have asked my former pastor and he does not seemed concerned. I have removed myself from communion until I find out for sure, I have a call in to my current priest and will be contacting the diocese on Monday. We just need to make sure that everything is OK for us. We went through everything to try and make sure our marriage was valid, I would hate for it to be invalid because of a clerical error.

I honestly don’t know what to do.
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Not to worry.

Part of me wants to write a lengthy explanation. I’ve decided against that, because it will only cause further confusion.

I am concerned that you say you’ve “removed” yourself from Communion. There is no need to do that. None. Again, none. That’s the reason why I’m responding here.

This is a simple paperwork issue. Nothing is missing. It’s probably not even a mistake. I don’t want to explain that further because it will only cause more confusion.

All I want to do here is to assure you that you have nothing to worry about. There is no cause for concern. Do not worry yourself needlessly.
 
Fr. David;

Primarily, my biggest fear is receiving the eucharist in an unworthy state, thus refraining.
 
KonekoHime said:
Fr. David;

Primarily, my biggest fear is receiving the eucharist in an unworthy state, thus refraining.
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It is a very strong warning that Paul writes so I can understand your concerns. If you aren’t sure your marriage is 100% valid and blessed, I’d probably do the same. Maybe could you have a priest do a renewal ceremony or something? (That might cause more problems, not sure. just a thought).
 
TxGodfollower said:
It is a very strong warning that Paul writes so I can understand your concerns. If you aren’t sure your marriage is 100% valid and blessed, I’d probably do the same. Maybe could you have a priest do a renewal ceremony or something? (That might cause more problems, not sure. just a thought).
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I’m sorry, but given the rise in the number of annulments and the church insisting on a declaration of divorce from the state to investigate one of the sacraments, how does one become sure 100 percent any Catholic marriage is valid?
 
KonekoHime said:
Fr. David;

Primarily, my biggest fear is receiving the eucharist in an unworthy state, thus refraining.
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That’s my point. You would not be receiving in an unworthy state.

There are many different reasons why this is not an issue. It’s not a problem. I wish I could explain that to you, but in a forum like this, it would be misunderstood by people who have no idea how these things work (sacramental records and rescripts of dispensations).

Your own priest is not concerned (you told us that). If there were a problem, he would have told you so.

This is just a paperwork matter, and it’s most likely not even a mistake. When records like this are transferred, there are often certain “shortcuts” that are taken in recording specific details.

If you were indeed in a possibly invalid marriage situation, your priest would have told you so outright.

The very fact that your marriage is recorded in the Catholic register books is itself an indication that whatever dispensations or permissions were needed at the time did in-fact exist at the time.

In some instances (not all): I have seen dispensations recorded as nothing more than a protocol number, for example 1994-01234 which is a reference to a file at the diocesan chancery. In order to see the specific details, one would need to see that file. The marriage register (or baptismal register, or whatever else) simply does not record every specific detail. It merely records the fact that some dispensation/permission was given.

Marriage enjoys the favor of the law. If your marriage is recorded in the Catholic register books, then your marriage enjoys the favor of the law.

If a dispensation or permission was lacking at the time of the marriage, then the priest (at that time) would never have recorded it in the Catholic register (marriage or baptism). He did record it.

Don’t pay attention to people who think they can issue “internet declarations of nullity.”
First of all, they can’t; and secondly, they usually have no idea what they’re writing about.

Since your own priest is not concerned, then neither should you be concerned.
 
KonekoHime said:
Fr. David;

Primarily, my biggest fear is receiving the eucharist in an unworthy state, thus refraining.
Click to expand...
Unless your priest told you to refrain, I would suggest that you are taking upon yourself something not being asked of you out of pure speculation on your part. Talk to your priest, don’t refrain based on your own imaginings.
 
I’ve heard a lot of these kinds of stories. Don’t think you need to be worried. I think what matters most is that you married with right intention (right concent and all…). So even if there was some celerical mistake, it shouldn’t make the marriage null/invalid/void.
 
Ok, my local priest is looking into it and also re-iterated for me to stop being paranoid and not receiving communion. He said it is probably a clerical error and worst case we go in and he does a quick con validation.
 
My sole purpose in adding a comment here as a priest is to affirm the brilliant posts of Father David. He not only correctly assesses the matter from the procedural aspects of this situation, he beautifully answers the pastoral implications with his well written reassurances.

With absolutely no criticism meant to the original poster, this is one of many circumstances in which the old saying “a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous” is true. I am glad to read that your parish priest has also reassured you, as indeed would I.

HoosierDaddy, the answers are quite simple: Marriage enjoys the favour of law and it is always to be assumed that marriages are valid until a tribunal of the Church determines and decrees otherwise.

It is only right that the limited resources of the Church should not be speculatively investigating the validity of a marriage other than when that marriage has been declared ended as to its civil effects by the civil courts. Only when the marriage is civilly closed and a pastoral need demands it does the Church investigate a marriage that it presumes was, in fact, valid.
 
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