.Because unless they make a sincere show of repentance and understanding and appreciation for marriage as a sacrament they are statistically at risk of marital problems and marital conflict.
Well, I imagine there is not really any way of knowing whether a couple is planning on using Artificial Birth Control. For those who are living together before marriage, I think we need to keep in mind that the desire to get married in the Church is an improvement on their previous state. While it is of course better to live a chaste life before marriage, it is a good thing for those couples who are living together while not properly married to get properly married
True, but …is not chastity before marriage and basic assent to the Church’s teaching of fidelity and fecundity of marriage that is open to fertility, a requisite norm for enetring into sacramental vows?
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Bill
i don’t feel that’s the “point”. If they are not doing things “right” at the time of the wedding, i don’t see where they have a valid, sacramental marriage… I guess it would good to know the exact rule about that kind of thing but i can’t imagine a priest - an orthodox one, that is
- allowing such marriages…Are you volunteering to individually evaluate each couple to determine whether or not their repentance is “sincere”?
So you think that, if they’re living in sin and decide it’s time to “make it legal” and want to do so in a sacramental marriage, they shouldn’t be allowed to?i don’t feel that’s the “point”. If they are not doing things “right” at the time of the wedding, i don’t see where they have a valid, sacramental marriage… I guess it would good to know the exact rule about that kind of thing but i can’t imagine a priest - an orthodox one, that is
Under these circumstances: That they are required to be educated in the teachings of the Church about the meaning of marriage, that they live separate from each other during at least the last two months of the engagement period (and I don’t mean separate bedrooms in the same house; I’m talking about different postal codes/zip codes) unless there are children present for whom such a separation would prove a hardship, and that by the time of the wedding, they have become unaddicted from whatever pills, injections, patches, etc. they were using for birth control earlier.
Let us pray that at least some of those who didn’t pick NFP were choosing to be completely open to life, trusting fully in God that He will never create anyone “by accident.”
Neither of these are explicit canon law impediments to the Sacrament.
I have a close friend who was married in the Catholic church a few years ago–and her and her bf at that time, were live ins. She didn’t use birth control, so not sure what they ‘did’ but maybe they lived like brother/sister? I am not sure. Thing is, short of planting cameras in people’s homes…how do we know the morality of someone’s life, really?
If they go in to the marriage with the proper intent and consent, then their marriage is valid.i don’t feel that’s the “point”. If they are not doing things “right” at the time of the wedding, i don’t see where they have a valid, sacramental marriage… I guess it would good to know the exact rule about that kind of thing but i can’t imagine a priest - an orthodox one, that is
Sometimes you can’t hold the line. If cohabitation was a rare sacndal then it would be realistic for a priest to withhold the sacrament until a decent time had elapsed and the couple done penance. Similalrly with contraceptives. The fact is we can’t, and although marriages that follow cohabitation have a high rate of failure, quite a few of them succeed, and are better for all concerned than continued sin.