Married Catholics living in sin?

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kingb_211

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First I apologize if this is in the wrong section.

I am married. My wife and I are both Catholic. We have two daughters and are raising them in the faith. Sounds normal, but here is the situation.

Neither of us were raised Catholic. She was baptised before we met, I never was. While we were dating, I started RCIA and came into the church Easter 2005. In August of 2005 we got married by a JP, not in the eyes of the church. Later she started RCIA and came into the Church Easter of 2006. Both of us have been recieving communion since our confirmation. My question is this. Have we been in the wrong? We are living as a married couple, have had children, but do not have a sacramental marriage.

Not sure why, but I just thought of this a couple of days ago. Our parish priest knows both of us, and knows we were not married in the Church, but has never said anything about it. It never came up during either one of us going through RCIA. Am I worrying for nothing, or is this something I should bring up to the preist?

Thanks in advance.
 
It’s not clear - was one of you Catholic at the time of the wedding?

(EDIT: I see that you were. Okay.)

If so, then you have a “defect of form” which is easily remedied. Simply mention it to your priest, and it should be relatively simple to get this set straight.

I am assuming neither of you has any previous marriages.
 
I was Catholic at the time (by about four months) she was not. My RCIA was so “informal” nothing about marriage ever came up. At least not that I can remember. Neither of us were married before.
 
kingb_211 said:
I was Catholic at the time (by about four months) she was not. My RCIA was so “informal” nothing about marriage ever came up. At least not that I can remember. Neither of us were married before.
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Okay. This is (relatively) easily remedied - just speak to the priest, tell him everything that you have told us here (spell it out to him as if he had never heard the story before, since it’s possible that he “heard” something different than what you told him, earlier on), and mention that you would like to have your marriage made valid in the Church.

Good luck! 🙂
 
This should be no problem. I think you need to make the marriage sacramental before you continuing receiving communion.

This means either a convalidation or a radical sanation which makes the marriage a valid Catholic marriage.

The convalidation can be done by a priest the sanation I think goes to a marriage tribunal. You case seems cut and dry and should be easily corrected.

Please correct me out there if I am wrong.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. One more question. I will call our parish tommorrow, but If I cannot speak with him prior to Mass, should we keep ourselves from recieving Communion until this is resolved?
 
Armenian_cpa said:
This should be no problem. I think you need to make the marriage sacramental before you continuing receiving communion.

This means either a convalidation or a radical sanation which makes the marriage a valid Catholic marriage.

The convalidation can be done by a priest the sanation I think goes to a marriage tribunal. You case seems cut and dry and should be easily corrected.

Please correct me out there if I am wrong.
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Sanation is for when one party isn’t Catholic, and doesn’t want to attend the ceremony.

Convalidation should be just fine in this case - it’s basically a ten-minute ceremony that can take place anywhere on Church property. You might want to dress it up a bit - put on a suit/dress and have some flowers or something - most people keep these things very simple and low-key so as not to frighten the relatives. 😉
 
thistle said:
Not correct. Its legally valid but not sacramentally valid.
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The civil marriage of a Catholic without dispensation from form is not considered valid by the Church. Canon Law doesn’t define it as ‘sacramentally valid’ only valid or invalid. Validity ≠ Sacramentality.
 
My wife and I went through this as she was Catholic and I was not and got married outside the church. When I went through RCIA we had our Priest Validate our Marriage. It was suprising how good a thing this was. It felt as though God was then with us in our Marriage and Lord knows all marriages need this. It may be good for your children to be with you for this so they can see the importance of a valid christian catholic marriage.
 
Your RCIA program surely was deficient. You weren’t guilty of wrongdoing since you didn’t know differently. You should renew your vows before a priest and 2 witnesses. This could be done very privately or even be done at a Sunday mass. Probably the priest thinks you were married before either of you became Catholic.
 
kingb_211 said:
Neither of us were raised Catholic. She was baptised before we met, I never was. While we were dating, I started RCIA and came into the church Easter 2005.
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How did you come into the church without ever having been baptized?
 
If you were never baptized then your other sacraments are not valid…that means you were validly married then…I guess. That’s a strange one. Better talk to the priest. Let us know what happens. I’ve never heard this one. But I can see how it could fall through the cracks. It’s not like it’s homeland security you know. But it might ought to be.
 
eucharisteo said:
If you were never baptized then your other sacraments are not valid…that means you were validly married then…I guess. That’s a strange one. Better talk to the priest. Let us know what happens. I’ve never heard this one. But I can see how it could fall through the cracks. It’s not like it’s homeland security you know. But it might ought to be.
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He said he wasn’t baptized when he met his wife but I took him to mean that he was then baptized at Easter 2005.
 
Phemie said:
He said he wasn’t baptized when he met his wife but I took him to mean that he was then baptized at Easter 2005.
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Of course. He would have received the sacraments of initiation at that time.
 
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