Rules

[Mozflan]

Hello
I’m an out of practice Catholic, but do attend Mass each month. This Mass is especially for deceased buried in that parish. I was married briefly once but this was annulled. I’m about to remarry in a civil ceremony. Does this mean I cannot receive Communion ever again, or is it not as cut & dried as this? In the eyes of the church will I be married, or just a poor Catholic? I appreciate your help. I find comfort in the Catholic religion but have found many aspects confusing since my Convent education many years ago. It is very difficult to find a priest with the time for these sort of enquiries.
Thanks.

 

[blessedtoo]

Welcome to CAF!

I’m an out of practice Catholic, but do attend Mass each month.

Attending Mass once a month does satisfy the requirement of keeping Holy the Lord’s Day. As Catholics, we are obligated to attend Mass every Sunday and the Holy Days of Obligation. An inability to fulfill this obligation would present a serious obstacle for any Catholic wishing to be in full communion with the Church.

I was married briefly once but this was annulled.

That’s wonderful! You’ve accomplished a very difficult task that many struggle with.

I’m about to remarry in a civil ceremony. Does this mean I cannot receive Communion ever again, or is it not as cut & dried as this?

If you marry in a civil ceremony, the Church can not recognize your marriage as sacramental. Therefore, you would not be able to receive Holy Communion. If your previous marriage was anulled, as you said, there should be nothing to keep you from marrying in the Church. I would strongly encourage you to speak with a priest or a Parish administrator before you proceed with your wedding. When I returned to the Church after 27 years and was perplexed about my marital status, I made an appointment with the Parish “Welcome Home” coordinator. She was able to answer all my questions without having to speak to a priest. Most Parishes have similar programs so I would suggest you check with one in your area.

God bless!

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

Welcome to CAF!

Attending Mass once a month does satisfy the requirement of keeping Holy the Lord’s Day. As Catholics, we are obligated to attend Mass every Sunday and the Holy Days of Obligation. An inability to fulfill this obligation would present a serious obstacle for any Catholic wishing to be in full communion with the Church.

I think you missed a “not,” unless you meant to say “Once a month is a good start and fulfills for one Sunday but doesn’t get to the whole obligation.” Anyway, I just thought it important to point out that your last statement is inaccurate. Refusal to attend every Sunday and holy day would rupture full communion with the Church, but inability to attend dispenses one from the obligation. In other words, if one is truly unable to attend Mass this has no bearing on one’s communion with the Church.

As far as the civil marriage goes, you’re spot on: Catholics are bound by canonical form in marriage so a marriage unwitnessed by the Church is invalid. Going through such a ceremony is problematic in itself but the practically biggest problem that results is that any “marital relations” between the parties who are not actually married constitute grave matter. I would second your advice. The OP is not married (the first having been declared null), so why not marry in the Church validly?

 

[Mozflan]

Thanks for the answers received. My new partner is divorced and agnostic (I’m working on him!) so we can’t get married in the church.
At least I can continue to attend Mass monthly, but understand now that I cannot receive Communion if I remarry. I feel troubled by this but feel I’ll just have to learn to accept it, as I’m unwilling to halt this impending marriage.
The Catholic Religion is so complex. I remember the surprise I felt, many years ago, when I learned about the existance of the annulment process, so I was hoping for another Catholic ‘loophole’. It was good to find this forum and thanks again.

 

[otjm]

Thanks for the answers received. My new partner is divorced and agnostic (I’m working on him!) so we can’t get married in the church.
At least I can continue to attend Mass monthly, but understand now that I cannot receive Communion if I remarry. I feel troubled by this but feel I’ll just have to learn to accept it, as I’m unwilling to halt this impending marriage.
The Catholic Religion is so complex. I remember the surprise I felt, many years ago, when I learned about the existance of the annulment process, so I was hoping for another Catholic ‘loophole’. It was good to find this forum and thanks again.

Your intended could go through an anullment process with a Tribunal. Depending on his case, it may take longer or be shorter.

As a suggestion, if he says he truly loves you, and you say this is important, I would wonder that he might not do so. And were he to not respect you enough to do this, I might wonder about his level of professed love for you. Just a thought…

And as to finding a priest to sort these things out, if you inquire you might find they are more willing than you think. But first you have to take the time to inquire.

Being a Catholic is not about following the laws; it is about having a relationship now with Christ, with the anticipation of having a relationship with Him in eternity. The rules, that may seem complex, are not there to trip us up; God is not playing “Gotcha!”. God is a loving God, and wants from us our full love. The rules are designed to keep us on the path to Him; it is like they define the edges of that road so we do not stray off it. The Church says we have an obligation to attend Mass every week (and on Holy Days), because in our own sinfulness (among which is laziness about our obligations) we will fall out of relationship with HIm if we don’t “stay at it”.

It is like having a relationship with a spouse; we have an “obligation” to communicate openly and in love, because failure to do so leads to (at best) a very poor marriage. But if we only look at the “obligation” to communicate, we won’treally be communicating; we will only be paying “lip service” to it; and to one who needs to be reminded of this “obligation”, it can fairly be said that they don’t have a very good marriage…

 

[puzzleannie]

Hello
I’m an out of practice Catholic, but do attend Mass each month. This Mass is especially for deceased buried in that parish. I was married briefly once but this was annulled. I’m about to remarry in a civil ceremony. Does this mean I cannot receive Communion ever again, or is it not as cut & dried as this? In the eyes of the church will I be married, or just a poor Catholic? I appreciate your help. I find comfort in the Catholic religion but have found many aspects confusing since my Convent education many years ago. It is very difficult to find a priest with the time for these sort of enquiries.
Thanks.

if your first marriage was declared null through the canon law tribunal process, and you and your fiance are both otherwise free to marry, simply get married in the Catholic Church. If you live together without benefit of marriage (civil marriage for a Catholic is not a marriage) you will be entering into an objectively sinful state, so you could not receive the sacraments. The tone of your question suggests you want to return to better practice and understanding of your faith, so that is no way to accomplish this. Begin to attend Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, make a good confession of all the sins of your past life, and begin receiving communion again. The more you rely on the sacraments, the stronger your faith will become, the more you will want to encounter Jesus through the sacraments, and the more horrified you will become about losing that closeness by an irregular marriage.

it is not a matter of the CAtholic Church and its rules, it is a matter of your immortal soul. If you choose your relationship with this person over your relationship with God you are endangering your soul. If this person truly loves you, he will accept you completely, including the importance of your faith to you, and will gladly undergo a tribunal investigation of his prior marriage to see if he is free to marry you. If being an atheist means he is unable to respect your faith, he cannot be said to truly love you.

 

[blessedtoo]

I think you missed a “not,”

I sure did! And a very important word that was. I meant to say that attending Mass once a month does NOT fulfill your obligation as a Catholic to keep holy the Lord’s Day.

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

Thanks for the answers received. My new partner is divorced and agnostic (I’m working on him!) so we can’t get married in the church.
At least I can continue to attend Mass monthly, but understand now that I cannot receive Communion if I remarry. I feel troubled by this but feel I’ll just have to learn to accept it, as I’m unwilling to halt this impending marriage.
The Catholic Religion is so complex. I remember the surprise I felt, many years ago, when I learned about the existance of the annulment process, so I was hoping for another Catholic ‘loophole’. It was good to find this forum and thanks again.

I think it’s important to look at the two conditions you gave as to why you can’t get married in the Church.

To the second, that your intended is agnostic, this need not preclude a marriage witnessed by the Church. It would require dispensation from the bishop, but the main factor preventing such a marriage would be the agnostic’s unwillingness to go through a Catholic ceremony - which, as someone pointed out, might give rise to questions about his ultimate respect and devotion for you.

To the first, though, that he is divorced, try to remember what the anullment process means that you have already been through and the implications this has for his own situation. You would be free to marry because the Church found that you were never married in the first place, but no such investigation has been conducted regarding his former marriage which means we have to presume his is, in the eyes of God, still married to someone else. So this reason is not one that would exclude him from marriage in the Church but from new marriage(s) at all until the death of his spouse. Is maintaining such a complicated relationship really worth more than Communion with Christ Himself?