Sometimes, it takes a while for something to sink into my head.
What constitutes an invalid marriage?
Baptised Methodist woman
marries a Jewish man. Woman divorces said man for her safety, physical and financial. Woman now wants to convert to Catholicism and is having a VERY difficult time of it, BTW. Woman can convert and receive the eucharist. But to remarry one day, if she’s silly enough to do it,** she will need an anullment to remarry in the Church.**
Some are telling me an anullment is necessary, some are saying no because being married to Jewish man makes the marriage invalid. Really?
from the CCC:
1625 The parties to a marriage covenant are
a baptized man and woman, free to contract marriage, who freely express their consent; “to be free” means:
- not being under constraint;
- not impeded by any natural or ecclesiastical law.
1626 The Church holds the exchange of consent between the spouses to be the indispensable element that "makes the marriage."125 If consent is lacking there is no marriage.
1627 The consent consists in a “human act by which the partners mutually give themselves to each other”: “I take you to be my wife” - "I take you to be my husband."126 This consent that binds the spouses to each other finds its fulfillment in the two “becoming one flesh.”
1628 The consent must be an act of the will of each of the contracting parties, free of coercion or grave external fear.128 No human power can substitute for this consent.129 If this freedom is lacking the marriage is invalid.
1629 For this reason (or for other reasons that render the marriage null and void) the Church, after an examination of the situation by the competent ecclesiastical tribunal, can declare the nullity of a marriage, i.e., that the marriage never existed. In this case the contracting parties are free to marry, provided the natural obligations of a previous union are discharged.
2386 It can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce decreed by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage.
These are the lines from the CC which at once makes sense, then, not so much as it may or may not pertain to me.
Even asked a priest, who said “No; as a divorced woman, who then converts, you do not need an annulment to receive. You will need an anullment to remarry in the Church”.
That’s assuming, I am assuming,
that he was referring to my
valid marriage.
SO!! What might constitute an invaild marriage??
And I’ll be more than happy to give more specifics, but of course, not too specific…
