Marriage w/o six months' notice

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In my novel, a Catholic couple conceives before wedlock and want to get married before she shows signs of pregnancy. I just heard for a Catholic wedding you need to give a priest six months’ notice. Is the aforementioned marriage somehow possible?
 
In a novel, anything is possible.

In the Church, it is possible, but not probable. It would be entirely up to the priest.
 
Six months is proper protocol but is HAS happened in less and certainly does from time to time depending on the situation, family and priest.

Go for it.
 
This reminds me of a screenplay that I wrote in high school, where my young Catholic protagonist worked the graveyard shift at a 24-hour chicken joint across the street from his church. One Sunday morning as he got off work, he grabbed a handful of French fries to munch on while he walked to 7:30am mass. The plot was to center around his subsequent feelings of guilt over pilfering the impromptu and overly salty breakfast from his employer almost immediately before receiving the Eucharist, and his journey towards repentance and eventual reconciliation with God. It was only after I was halfway finished writing that I learned about the requirement of a one hour fast before receiving, and this threw my writing process into total chaos. I was completely stuck over which sin I should focus on, and I didn’t want to make the character so deviant as to be unbelievable by dwelling on both sins. Should I have the priest give an excessively long homily to account for the necessary hour? Should I simply have him eat the fries at an earlier time, perhaps on a break?

I was stumped, and I eventually abandoned the project.
 
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Any idea what a “legitimate excuse” might be/has been?
 
What if I make the husband non-Catholic and it’s a mixed marriage? Can those be done on short notice? How long in advance must it be arranged?
 
CeaselessMedik said:
In my novel, a Catholic couple conceives before wedlock and want to get married before she shows signs of pregnancy. I just heard for a Catholic wedding you need to give a priest six months’ notice. Is the aforementioned marriage somehow possible?
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I am not sure why you want to write a Catholic couple in a novel when you appear to not know anything about Catholicism.

Out of wedlock pregnancy isn’t really the hallmark of a Catholic couple. It’s insulting that you are coming here asking these types of questions to write characters that are going against the tenets of the faith in the first place.

As to your question-- yes, a couple typically needs six months in advance to do marital preparation. When a pregnancy is involved, it is unlikely the couple will be able to marry as you envision.

Freedom to marry is in doubt in the “shotgun” wedding situation. Unless the couple was already in the marital preparation process with a date set and approaching when they became pregnant, it is unlikely a pastor would agree to a rush marriage or any marriage at all without extensive counseling. The reality is the couple would likely marry after the child is born.
 
This will take closer to 6 months because the priest would likely prefer the couple to go to marriage classes or even CCD.
CeaselessMedik said:
Any idea what a “legitimate excuse” might be/has been?
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Historically in most cases it’s a good family relationship with your priest.
 
I’ve seen parishes ask for 9 or 12 months notice, too.

The 6 months notice requirement is not something that is specified in Canon Law. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s not the rule to go by in most places. Dioceses and parishes can make rules in this regard, and most do in order to allow for the adequate formation of the couple (not to mention the logistics of calendar planning).

Can these rules be set aside in certain circumstance? I have seen it happen. Mostly, it’s for couples whom the pastor already knows has a firm grasp of what marriage actually is.

If the case you have outlined, I cannot think of a priest in real life who would make an exception for such a couple. Generally, if a couple conceived a child when they weren’t married, the priest would take that as a sign that they definitely need as much marriage preparation and formation as they can get (since it would be an indication that they don’t fully understand and appreciate the Catholic teaching that sex is reserved for marriage).

In fact, many priests would even counsel the couple to wait until after the baby is born before even beginning marriage preparation simply because of the risk that rushing into marriage due to a pregnancy could potentially impede the couple’s ability to freely consent (as the baby might make them think they “have to” get married).

I have still seen “shotgun weddings”, though, even more recently. The one I recall, though, was for a couple who really were committed Catholics, already planned to get married, but simply let things go too far. The difference for them was they both recognized that what they did was wrong. So the priest did not make them wait to get married until after the baby was born. Now, if the couple had been living together and/or did not understand or agree that it was wrong to have sex outside of marriage, then I imagine it would have been handled differently.

Of course, it’s your story, so you can play fast and loose with the details. But you probably wouldn’t be here asking questions if that’s what you wanted to do.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I’ve seen parishes ask for 9 or 12 months notice, too.
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of the parishes where i actually know how long in advance they want you to begin preparations, from either being a member or from fiends marrying there, they are all 12 months.
 
I was Catholic for 16 years (if you count infancy), so I resent that. A) It’s been a while, and B) I’m not an expert on doctrine. But thanks for the info.

Edit: sorry, I was talking to 1ke. I got an email notification and thought his was the last reply. Thank to you others, too.
 
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Most priests advise against marriage when pregnant because it can be seen as impacting consent.
 
CeaselessMedik said:
I just heard for a Catholic wedding you need to give a priest six months’ notice
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you didn’t say what time period or what country your novel is set. It does vary. In the West it is currently a requirement of at least 6 months notice before the marriage date. The church has taken this route due to the high rate of divorce. Quickie weddings without proper marital instruction often leads to divorce. In today’s society there is very little social shame for out of wedlock pregnancy which would have been the reason to rush a marriage ceremony. Now the only reason to rush it is so the bride can fit into a wedding dress. But even a lot of the mainstream protestant churches are clamping down on quick weddings.
 
What 1ke said.

Come back to the Church.
That will give you plenty of ideas for exciting and inspiring novels. 😉
 
Ridculous but… the case of stranger rape where the child isn’t the husbands but being a good Catholic couple after such an ordeal they (of course) would not consider abortion but will marry and give the child a home… I did say ridiculous.
Possibly if the couple were well known to the priest and had a long family history/relationship with he may marry them sooner to save them further distress… but yes that’s a guess.
It’s a novel, so you are the author, you can do what you like, but if you are making them Catholic, and you are making her pregnant out of wedlock you are going for a tough sale. Good luck anyway
 
Joe_5859 said:
I’ve seen parishes ask for 9 or 12 months notice, too.
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Yep. The default for my diocese is 12 months. Six months or less is doable, but the couple would have to be well known to the priest and have exceptional circumstances for it to be considered. If a couple came in and said they wanted to get married in 4 months because of pregnancy my pastor would likely say that the could start precana, have the child, and then get married 9 months or so down the road. If they needed to marry right away for “legal reasons” he would likely advise a civil ceremony with abstinence followed by a convalidate on.

It was always odd to me that people flipped out at waiting 6 months to a year, but think nothing of 2 years of CCD for First Eucharist or confirmation. Heck it’s 5-8 years for Holy Orders which is the other sacrament of vocation.
 
People want a wedding lots of times, not necessarily into the marriage prep.
The people that come to us have already booked the venue, the food, the florist, bought plane tickets for family, so they are aghast at the prep time. 😯
 
Different parishes require different things. My own parish asks for 6 months but that’s not written in stone.

Does the couple have all the documents that will be necessary, i.e. certificates of Baptism and perhaps separate ones of Confirmation in certain situations, when they approach the Pastor?
Are they regular church goers known to him?
Is there an opportunity for marriage preparation courses in short delay? Some priests do that with individual couples, some want you to do a set program. In the parish down the road they run one marriage prep course in March. Decide at the end of March that you want to get married and you don’t get to do that for at least a year because they won’t run another marriage prep for a year.

Granted it was a long time ago but I approached my pastor in mid-July and was married at the end of October. It was at the parish I’d been born into and lived in all my life.

I would say the pregnancy would give the priest pause. The same pastor who celebrated my marriage within 3 months, refused to celebrate the wedding of my best friend until after their baby had been born. He’d seen too many rush to the altar due to a pregnancy only to split up within a few years.
 
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