Question about remarriage in the Catholic Church

[wifeandmomoftwo]

UPDATE! I originally posted this Sept. of 2006. Since posting, we went to see a Priest and were able to be married in the church Oct. of 2006. I received Reconciliation, First Communion and am currently working on Confirmation, going thru the RCIA process. My husband and I are teaching an infant baptism class and I also have been commissioned to take Communion to the ill. It has been an exciting year and a very fulfilling one too. I thank God every day for our Priest, he has been a true blessing.

How wonderful!!!
Congratulations to both of you:extrahappy:

 

[bilop]

That is my understanding as well.

I don’t know what his intention was on the day of our wedding. How in the world would one ever** prove** that he had no intention of being faithful? I mean, really, if I knew that his intentions were to be unfaithful, I’d never have married him in the first place!

This is an example of where there is such a disconnect between the RCC and the real world. Believe me, I would love nothing better than to be able to “come home again”. I just don’t know how.

I am not a Canon lawyer or expert, but I believe that if your husband cheated on you repeatedly, from an early stage of you marriage, or even before, that would be a strong indication that he never intended to be faithful.

Please go to a good Priest and lay it all out for him.

God Bless

Gddean, Congrats!

 

[benedictgal]

So what I’m understanding about divorce and remarriage is this: in the Catholic Church, I can NEVER be in a state of grace again because I divorced my first husband (he’s Catholic and we were married in the Catholic Church) and married again? Even tho I divorced him because he committed adultery over and over and over with a number of women?!

I don’t understand how God would find it acceptable that - even tho I was blameless (at least as far as the sin of adultery) and my husband was the one who broke every single vow uttered on the day of our wedding - I should be left alone and lonely and of course celebate for the rest of my life. Even if I live an exemplary life, keeping my faith and doing everything else that is right in God’s eyes?

Is he still in a state of grace because he hasn’t remarried?!

You do not say if you have remarried. If you have not remarried, then you are free to receive the Sacraments, provided, of course, you go to confession. If your pastor has given you inaccurate information regarding your present state, you can go to your diocesan marriage tribunal to begin proceedings for an annulment.

The Church is very specific about marriage and remarriage because Jesus, himself, was very specific about it in the Gospels. Jesus made some very clear statements regarding marriage.

Please don’t think I’m insesntive. My paternal grandmother (whom I love very much) went close to 40 years without receiving the Sacraments. She and my grandfather divorced and she, subsequently remarried outside of the church. However, she never stopped going to Mass. In fact, she was the one who introduced me to the Paschal Triduum. Not a day went by that she didn’t recite her Rosary nor read her bible. When I was 14 years old, I graduated from Catholic school with a Mass. To my surprise, my Grandma and stepgrandfather both approached the communion line and received Our Lord for the first time in almost half a century. It was then that I learned what an annulment was. My grandmother finally decided to pursue it and she told me that her going to receive Holy Communion was her present for me (I did get money, too ).

Since then, she and my stepgrandfather became active members of their parish up until their deaths last year.

I present my grandmother and her struggles as an example to you of a woman who for whatever reason did what she had to do, but, who never blamed the Church nor severed her ties with her Faith. She accepted the teachings of the Church and when the time finally came, she and her second husband were reconciled to the Church. While I will never know the circumstances behind what happened, I do know this: my grandmother was never, ever, bitter towards the Church. She still fulfilled her obligations of assisting at Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. We can’t pick the families into which we are born. But, I am grateful to God for giving me the gift of a beautiful Grandmother. I only wish I had half of her faith and devotion.

 

[benedictgal]

That is my understanding as well.

I don’t know what his intention was on the day of our wedding. How in the world would one ever** prove** that he had no intention of being faithful? I mean, really, if I knew that his intentions were to be unfaithful, I’d never have married him in the first place!

This is an example of where there is such a disconnect between the RCC and the real world. Believe me, I would love nothing better than to be able to “come home again”. I just don’t know how.

Kamala, in my previous post, I failed to read that you have, in fact, remarried. Please go and speak to your diocesan tribunal in order to get this process started.

In my previous post, I put my beloved Grandmother as an example. She and I were very close, as I was her oldest grandchild. Not once did she ever tell me (or my dad, her son) that she held any bitterness towards the Church even when she was unable to receive the Sacraments. She never felt bitterness towards the Church nor did she ever believe that the Church abandoned her. If that were the case, why did she persist in going to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation even though she couldn’t receive Holy Communion? Why did she insist on rearing my Dad and his half-sister in the Church? My Dad has an excellent foundation in the faith because of my Grandmother. She may not have been able to fully participate in the Church’s sacramental life, but she never shirked her duty to rearing her children Catholic (and in supporting her oldest grandchild in the Faith).

It is not that there is a disconnect between the Church and the “real world”. It is that Jesus said some very specific things regarding the Sacrament of Marriage that the Church holds sacred even today. The Church cannot change what Jesus has said. She must be faithful to her Divine Spouse in that manner. She does offer you a remedy to fix your situation. It took my grandmother over four decades to straighten out the situation; but, for the last 24 years of her life, she was happy to be in full Communion with the Church. For her, that was all that mattered.

My Grandmother was not perfect. She didn’t exactly win the lottery with her second husband. In fact, he turned out to be abusive towards my dad (and verbally towards me). I will never understand why she married him. But, that’s not my call to make. All I know is that my grandma was a woman of perserverance. That is my hope for you. Please don’t be bitter at the Church. She is only following what Jesus said regarding this issue. Peter even said that this particular teaching was hard. But, Jesus said, “let him who has ears hear.”

God bless you.