Matrimony and are my confessions valid if I was unaware I was sinning?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Searching1
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Searching1

Guest
Today is August 21, 2019. I was raised Catholic by my mother. My father has always been and is still a self-described atheist.

I received the sacrament of confirmation at age 17. Afterwards, I stopped attending mass and lived for over ten years as an atheist and (informally) as an apostate.

During my long years away from the Church, I developed certain sincere beliefs, such as:
  • there was only matter and energy in the universe and no transcendent or divine realm or powers;
  • I believed man was the master of his own life and history;
  • I believed religious truths were imperfect and irrational and could be improved upon using human reason;
  • I believed religious and spiritual choices were all arbitrary, and people could choose their own beliefs and all systems of belief were equal and valid;
During these years, I lived a secular life and lifestyle and behaved in a way approved of by the world, but which was ensuring my own damnation. Eventually, I met a woman, fell in love, moved in with her, and then got married to her through the state.

Then, around October of 2018, I had a profound spiritual awakening and reverted to Catholicism.

I spent several weeks in late 2018 consulting guides on how to examine one’s conscience and wrote down all the sins I could remember. I knew I needed to confess my sins before receiving the Eucharist again. I ended up with eight pages of sins, returned to confession, read these sins to the priest, and received absolution.

At the time I made this confession — my first in many, many years — I was unaware that, despite having a marriage certificate from my State, I was not married in the eyes of the Church due to the fact that I had not received the sacrament of matrimony.

This fact was only recently revealed to me when I stumbled upon it in confession.

I promise I omitted this particular sin from that initial confession in good conscience, and not to intentionally deceive the priest.

Unfortunately, I have also (unintentionally) omitted this sin from the nearly 50 confessions I have made in the interim (I am currently writing this in August of 2019, ten months after that initial confession). Indeed, the sacrament of reconciliation has become a part of my life in a special way. I examine my conscience daily.

Also, I have been receiving communion since having first returned to confession.

You can imagine how distressing this is for me, learning I am not married in the eyes of the church and am merely cohabitating.

It would take an enormous and, frankly, unreasonable amount of time and effort to recall and then re-confess all those sins.

My questions are these: after going through the appropriate steps required by the Church and receiving the sacrament of matrimony, would it be enough to confess to my priest (who will be familiar with my and my wife’s situation) everything I’ve stated above and receive absolution and finally VALIDATE all those previous confessions? Is a priest permitted to give absolution in this scenario after I receive the sacrament of matrimony, and would it validate all those previous confessions? OR – are those confessions already valid?
 
Last edited:
Three requirements for mortal sin.

From what you say, you met one out of three with your civil marriage.

You did not know, you now know, you are working to regularize your marriage. Do not receive from now until regularization unless you talk to your priest about living as brother and sister.

Don’t sweat the things you did “accidentally”.
 
Original Poster, here – I hear what you’re saying and you’re right.
I suppose my primary interest and concern is “how do I validate all those other confessions?”
Will it be enough merely to read what I just wrote in this posting?

Thank you for the (name removed by moderator)ut!!
 
Searching1 said:
Original Poster, here – I hear what you’re saying and you’re right.
I suppose my primary interest and concern is “how do I validate all those other confessions?”
Will it be enough merely to read what I just wrote in this posting?

Thank you for the (name removed by moderator)ut!!
Click to expand...
You need to talk to your priest about this.

You don’t need to validate other confessions; confessions made in good faith are valid. If you have sins that were omitted in good faith, you can just confess them now. No need to beat yourself up over it if it was an honest mistake.

What you do need to do is talk to your priest about getting your marriage fully regularized.
 
Just set an appointment with the priest to convalidate your civil union.

Then, when you have the wedding date set, the two of you can go to Confession that day before the validation.

Deacon Christopher
 
Those confessions were probably valid because you were not aware that your marriage was not considered a valid marriage and did not deliberately hide or disguise your situation. As long as you 1. confessed all of the mortal sins you were aware of at the time of confession, 2. had at least imperfect contrition 3. a purpose of amendment to avoid mortal sins and the near occasion thereof and 4. the Priest said “I absolve you from your sins in the name of (Trinitarian Formula)”, your confessions were valid and need not be repeated.

As for re-confessing (which I do not believe would be needed in your case), you wouldn’t need to list every sin you committed individually since you made your first confessions back—you just make a general confession. All that is required is kind and number of times that sin was committed (and any circumstances that change the nature of the sin).

For example: I committed 4 armed robberies.
I abused illegal drugs and alcohol almost daily for 6 months.
I watched pornographic movies many, many times over more than 10 years…etc. (With habitual sins like that and long periods of time it is often impossible to have an exact number or even a reasonably accurate estimate. )
 
Last edited:
Searching1 said:
I suppose my primary interest and concern is “how do I validate all those other confessions?”
Click to expand...
You do not validate anything. You confessed all the sins you knew of and you were forgiven of them.

Now you are aware of another sin, you work on rectifying that.
 
Last time I tried to confess something (fairly big) that I had done for years but wasn’t aware it was a sin during that time, after I told the priest, he said, “You didn’t know it was a sin, so you didn’t sin.”

So your only concern here would be if you continued the sinful action after you found out it was a sin, not before you knew.

You don’t need to validate the past confessions.

Follow the advice Little Lady gave you in the second post in the thread.
 
Welcome back!

It’s a daunting step to confess all the sins one can remember which cover an extended period of many years.

At each confession we are expected to confess all mortal sins (kind and number) which we can remember at that time. All sins are placed before God for their forgiveness at the time of our confession.

Until recently, you became aware of the sinfulness of being married outside the Church, therefore if you didn’t know something you’ve done was sinful, then there is no possible way you could have confessed it or even deliberately left it out. You can only deliberately leave out a sin / omit to confess it - provided you know it is a sin you’ve committed!

So your confessions were valid. To make a confession invalid, you have to deliberately and with full knowledge and full consent do so - deliberately omit a serious sin, deliberately confess to a sin you know for certain you did not commit thereby lying to the Holy Spirit, lacking contrition or lacking a firm purpose of amendment.

My personal advice is to make an appt to speak with your priest asap. Secondly now that you are aware that your marital state needs to be rectified etc, I myself would refrain from marital relations until it is validated etc. I also recommend you ask your priest for guidance about receiving Communion in these circumstances.
 
Last edited:
Original poster, here – thank you all for the (name removed by moderator)ut. I think by writing everything out in detail and getting similar feedback from multiple people, I have been able to crystalize my real concern for myself.

I will be making an appointment with my priest and begin the process of convalidation soon.

As a sidenote, though, I guess my concern about the validity of those past confessions is born out of the fact that frequent confession for me is important. Each confession is its own experience of conversion, and being thorough and articulate in the confessional and then receiving absolution is a profound experience each time.

Just the idea that I have been doing this hugely wrong thing this whole time is a little jarring and disorienting. I’m glad I caught it, though.
 
Absolution is absolute.

We go through many conversions in our life, as you say, but God is always there forgiving us. Our inconstancy does not in any way diminish the forgiveness God offers you at every confession of each sin.
 
You need not worry that the full absolution given in those confessions would be taken away by Divine Mercy. He offers His Divine Mercy to all who seek it and through the power given to the priest, you were fully absolved each and every time.

When I returned to the church it was almost comical in hindsight but I won’t bore you with details. Suffice it to say that I sat in the priests office sobbing my eyes out spilling everything I could remember and it dawned on me that I had forgotten more of the sins than I could remember and that honestly, if I had to say them all, we’d still be there. When the priest explained that he had absolved me of all of my sins, I said “even those I forgot?” And he said with a wonderfully warm smile…“Yes, even those.”

God knows your heart better than you do so believe the priest when he tells you that you are absolved. Divine Mercy is incredible.
 
There is a difference between knowing and believing. Everyone who sins believes in the sin at the time of the sin no matter what the Church teaches or knowledge of what the Church teaches. Are you saying that being raised Catholic and then after reversion and over 50 confessions you had no idea what the Church taught about marriage? In this day and age where it is front page news?
 
It isn;t about believing you it is about you reverting and missing a huge part of popular culture theology within the Church. The sacrament of marriage and what the Church teaches is front and center in almost any setting. So I am wondering if you could expand on how your mother raised you Catholic and then you reverted through a knowledgeable process and missed it.
It certainly is possible. We know that the Church does a poor catechisis job in many areas.

Your case is that you did not know you were sinning or you did not know what the Church taught. Ignorance isn’t about what you don’t believe, it is about what you don’t know. Otherwise we could all say well at the time I didn’t believe the Church for any sin. So you would have to think that the Church had no position on your marital state.

Like I said, it certainly is possible you didn’t know. Heck, given what is reported about Catholics believing or not believing about their own faith it might even be probable. But only you can know your true conscience.

What you or any Catholic should focus on is making the best confession you can as honest as you can and then be at peace and not continue to question the validity of confessions. There is too much of that on here.
 
Last edited:
ORIGINAL POSTER HERE – It would have been nice if I had been merely one thing my whole life and always known all the rules. But life is full of twists and turns and ups and downs and is not a straight line.

When I say I “was raised catholic” by my mother, it wasn’t a deeply religious upbringing. Additionally, as I mentioned, my father was and is an atheist, which greatly influenced me. Feelings about religion in my childhood home were fluid and not concrete. To this day my mom doesn’t have a real grasp on Catholic doctrine and I’ve tried hard to discuss with her all the things I’ve learned in the last year but she is less interested these days than I would like.

Then, once I was confirmed, I treated it as “graduating” from the Church, and I didn’t care any more about God or religion.

Walking on water is nothing compared to the miracle of my reversion. It was a great experience. And by the way, it was merely that – a personal experience.

When you cite my reversion as an experience when I should have become aware of the Church’s position on marriage, the fact is my reversion was a personal experience that led me to seek out catechetical resources on my own. I have always known the Church’s doctrine and position on sexual activity and that it must be confined to married couples and open to new life. I thought I WAS married, is the point.

A word on the clergy who have helped me: my wife and I approached the priest at our parish after resuming mass attendance. I asked him if the church “considered us to be ‘living in sin’.” He said “no.” This was a part of the story I left out but is key.

Furthermore, when you cite my 50 confessions as another opportunity to have discovered more quickly the fact that my marriage was not recognized by the Church and that I should have been living “as brother and sister” with my wife until it was validated, the fact is I always state my age and station in life at the beginning of confession and that means I say “I’m married.” The priest assumed that meant it was valid, and I didn’t know I needed it convalidated… so whudya gonna do??

This is an extremely sensitive situation for me and if you hadn’t noticed I am distressed by it all.
 
Last edited:
Many Catholics are unaware of what must be done for Sacramental/marital validity (being married in the Church or with a dispensation). Just like many Catholics do not know what words (form) is to be used by the Priest in Confession (“I absolve you…”) and don’t realize when an invalid form of the absolution is used .
Searching1 said:
This fact was only recently revealed to me when I stumbled upon it in confession.

I promise I omitted this particular sin from that initial confession in good conscience , and not to intentionally deceive the priest
Click to expand...
We should take the OP at their word that they are being honest that they were not aware of their situation, thus their confessions were valid. We have no reason to believe otherwise. I can easily see someone who left the Church a long time ago not realizing that their marriage that they entered into at somepoint therein was not considered valid Sacramentally in the Catholic Church.

Assuming they are being honest, there is no reason to re-confess (as the invalid marriage and it’s omissions from Confession were not true mortal sins—being that the OP was not aware that it was grave matter for a Catholic to be married outside the Church without dispensation), all that needs to be done is for OP to have his marriage convalidated and should speak to a Priest about this and any other concerns.
 
OP - You need not be distressed by your situation nor by posters who seem to want to argue rather than talk or discuss or even acknowledge that others have a very different life than they do and should be compassionate in responses. Sadly, the divisiveness that is elsewhere in social media seems to be creeping in here in small doses. I have posted another thread about common-law marriage and I cannot figure why some people are even answering but they are complaining that it there is no need to discuss the subject because it does not impact them or whatever reason…they are argumentative…don’t let them get you down.

Just sat for hours today in PA listening to a Catholic Treasure, Dr. Scott Hahn, speak about matrimony amongst a couple other subjects. He mentioned frequent confession and the graces received when you confess all “known mortal sins” and YOU popped into my mind. You know the issue now and so speak to your pastor and if necessary, the marriage tribunal. There is a way for people to return to full communion with the church even after they find out they are actually sinners…🙃 God sent his Son to care for us sinners…He will take care of you.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top