Validity of mixed marriage and ceremony

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Cirdan_XII

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I recently attended a marriage. The bride belongs to a protestant denomination I’m not sure which) and the groom is Catholic. The ceremony took place in a very beautiful and old Catholic baroque-style church located in a forest on a mounatin, so a genuinely beautiful setting. As the Church doesn’t have a regular parish but is more for pilgrimages, it hasn’t been converted and so still has the original east-facing altar etc. The church doesn’t have an organ but they engaged some very good musicians and singers to accompany the ceremony and all this was in keeping with the historic style and spirit place and very appropriate.

It turned out that the ceremony was jointly celebrated by a Catholic priest and a protestant woman priest. I haven’t been to very many weddings so don’t know about the correct form but many of the prayers used sounded to me to be not the authentic Catholic ones. Some prayers were said by one priest and others by the other and some jointly.

They also jointly spoke the Eucharistic prayers and distributed communion. Again, the words used were different from those I am accustomed to in places, but as far as I could make out there was no change in the meaning of anything and nothing was left out. Just to be on the safe side I crossed over to the other side of the church to receive the communion from the Catholic priest.

My question is, was this communion valid and also was the ceremony as a whole valid?
 
I’m sorry, but the page you linked didn’t work for me. The link produced an error message the first time I tried, and the second time it took me back to the forum start page. Could you please check the link?
 
Cirdan_XII said:
It turned out that the ceremony was jointly celebrated by a Catholic priest and a protestant woman priest. I haven’t been to very many weddings so don’t know about the correct form but many of the prayers used sounded to me to be not the authentic Catholic ones. Some prayers were said by one priest and others by the other and some jointly.
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From canon law:
§2. If grave diffculties hinder the observance of canonical form, the local ordinary of the Catholic party has the right of dispensing from the form in individual cases, after having consulted the ordinary of the place in which the marriage is celebrated and with some public form of celebration for validity. It is for the conference of bishops to establish norms by which the aforementioned dispensation is to be granted in a uniform manner.

§3. It is forbidden to have another religious celebration of the same marriage to give or renew matrimonial consent before or after the canonical celebration according to the norm of §1. Likewise, there is not to be a religious celebration in which the Catholic who is assisting and a non-Catholic minister together, using their own rites, ask for the consent of the parties.

It is unclear the extent of the irregularities and canon law violations in such an arrangement. Who received the vows?
Cirdan_XII said:
They also jointly spoke the Eucharistic prayers and distributed communion. Again, the words used were different from those I am accustomed to in places, but as far as I could make out there was no change in the meaning of anything and nothing was left out. Just to be on the safe side I crossed over to the other side of the church to receive the communion from the Catholic priest.

My question is, was this communion valid and also was the ceremony as a whole valid?
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Many, many violations of Church teaching and explicit instructions on ecumenism which state this is not possible.

vatican.va/holy_father/special_features/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_20030417_ecclesia_eucharistia_en.html

See especially starting at paragraph 31. Here’s the hear of the matter:

44. Precisely because the Church’s unity, which the Eucharist brings about through the Lord’s sacrifice and by communion in his body and blood, absolutely requires full communion in the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments and ecclesiastical governance, it is not possible to celebrate together the same Eucharistic liturgy until those bonds are fully re-established. Any such concelebration would not be a valid means, and might well prove instead to be an obstacle, to the attainment of full communion, by weakening the sense of how far we remain from this goal and by introducing or exacerbating ambiguities with regard to one or another truth of the faith. The path towards full unity can only be undertaken in truth. In this area, the prohibitions of Church law leave no room for uncertainty, in fidelity to the moral norm laid down by the Second Vatican Council.

There is no way to know if the “communion” was valid or the ceremony itself either, although I doubt it in light of being co-celebrated with a woman (who is NOT a priest by the way as there is no such thing as a woman priest) who cannot possibly consecrate the eucharistic elements.

This is a question for the bishop.

Perhaps your “friend” did not validly marry through his diocese but instead when to one of those “rent a priest” outfits that advertises they will do “Catholic” marriages in all sorts of unorthodox circumstances.
 
1ke said:
Perhaps your “friend” did not validly marry through his diocese but instead when to one of those “rent a priest” outfits that advertises they will do “Catholic” marriages in all sorts of unorthodox circumstances.
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I doubt it. Although I don’t know the priest personally I do know he is a proper priest and that he is attached to our diocese. He has helped out in our Church on occasions when the regular priest was in hospital or on vacations.I believe he is a Jesuite.
 
1ke said:
It is unclear the extent of the irregularities and canon law violations in such an arrangement. Who received the vows?
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The Catholic priest did. The protestant priest then did the thing with the rings.
 
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