Reasoning behind Catholics living in invalid marriage?

[OddBird]

I’m in an invalid marriage because I became Protestant and never bothered to formally leave the Church. Now I’m going home and this is one of my main issues.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

In the other case, the spouse’s priest told me that she repudiated her marriage on her deathbed. (I am assuming that she did this outside of the confessional seal. He pointed her out by name in explaining to me that such a thing can happen.)

This seems extremely inappropriate for a priest to do. Did he really need to mention her by name?

IIRC, it was during my catechism lessons when I was being received into the Church. It was a small town where people pretty much all knew each other (at least neighborhood by neighborhood, and there was a Catholic ghetto of sorts near the parish church, which was the custom at that time in many places), and they were a well-known family. Perhaps she was given a church funeral and people needed to know that she died having “gotten right with God”, lest scandal be given. This could be a powerful witness to the truth, and could let people know that there is hope for the salvation of people living in an invalid marriage, if they will just do the right thing and renounce that marriage before they die. (This is assuming they know their death is approaching. Not everyone gets that privilege.)

Things were more “black and white” back in those days (1960s and 1970s, and ours was a very, very conservative parish and diocese), and people living in invalid marriages were just assumed to be hell-bound. There wasn’t this “no one can know their heart” and “we cannot judge” mentality that there is nowadays.

 

[Psalm30]

HomeschoolDad:

In the other case, the spouse’s priest told me that she repudiated her marriage on her deathbed. (I am assuming that she did this outside of the confessional seal. He pointed her out by name in explaining to me that such a thing can happen.)

This seems extremely inappropriate for a priest to do. Did he really need to mention her by name?

IIRC, it was during my catechism lessons when I was being received into the Church. It was a small town where people pretty much all knew each other (at least neighborhood by neighborhood, and there was a Catholic ghetto of sorts near the parish church, which was the custom at that time in many places), and they were a well-known family. Perhaps she was given a church funeral and people needed to know that she died having “gotten right with God”, lest scandal be given. This could be a powerful witness to the truth, and could let people know that there is hope for the salvation of people living in an invalid marriage, if they will just do the right thing and renounce that marriage before they die. (This is assuming they know their death is approaching. Not everyone gets that privilege.)

Things were more “black and white” back in those days (1960s and 1970s, and ours was a very, very conservative parish and diocese), and people living in invalid marriages were just assumed to be hell-bound. There wasn’t this “no one can know their heart” and “we cannot judge” mentality that there is nowadays.

I believe things have changed for the better, though I have a feeling you are not going to agree with me on that. I strongly agree with Pope Francis’s desire to make annulments easier to get and to make it easier for divorced people to remarry. I would truly like to believe that God sees the greater good to be had by giving people second chances at marriage, and that He is more interested in the loving and compassionate spirit of the law than He is in following it to the letter at all costs.