What is my marriage status?

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riavasile

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I am considering returning to the Catholic Church after 30 years. I was baptized, raised and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. I left the church in my late teens, began attending a non-denominational church (Calvary Chapel) in college, and became “born again.” One of the main reasons of my recent inquisition to return to the Catholic Church, is due to the sad reality that I have gone through two failed marriages. It has humbled me to the point that I am searching for answers and questioning my religious beliefs.

Here’s my marriage history: I married a girl in the church I became born again shortly after graduating from college. She walked out of the marriage just after our first anniversary. We were divorced later that year. The marriage was not blessed by the Catholic Church, nor was it ever annulled. In my Christian pilgrimage, I joined a fundamentalist, baptist style church after the divorce. I met and married a girl there three years after the first divorce. Again, that marriage was not blessed by the Catholic Church. Twenty years later, my second wife and I are divorcing with a grown child now in college. She emotionally left me several years ago even though we remained living together for the sake of our daughter. In that time period, over seven years, she has refused conjugal rights. Even with all the difficulties, up until recently, I have sought and prayed for reconciliation. Barring a miracle, the divorce will be final in the Spring of 2014.

In reading various sources online, I wanted to understand - if I reaffirm my Catholic faith and rejoin the Catholic community - what is my marriage status, now and after I am divorced? It seems rather complicated and confusing, but from what I have read online, it seems as if both of my marriages will eventually be considered invalid. Here’s why: 1) the first marriage was not blessed by the Catholic Church, did not follow the liturgical norms of the Catholic Church; therefore, no sacramental marriage was presumed to have taken place, nor was she Catholic. The second marriage was under the same circumstances, not blessed by the Catholic Church, no liturgical norms, therefore no sacramental marriage presumed to have taken place. However, my second wife, like me, had been baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic as a youth, but defected as well in her late teens. To my knowledge, she has no intentions to return at this time.

Apparently, what nullifies the first marriage, is that it would not be recognized as valid. What nullifies the second marriage, is that I did not have an annulment to remarry after the first marriage.

It all seems very complicated, and quite legalistic, to be honest. I realize, however, that the Catholic Church places a high regard for the Sacrament of Marriage; thus making divorce a complicated proposition. Regarding my marriage status, am I understanding this correctly? If both marriages are invalid, and if I were to remarry in the Catholic Church, would I need to seek the more complicated process of asking for annulments of the two failed marriages, or the simpler procedure called “Defect of Form” based upon the marriages being invalid?"

Please let me know if my understanding is correct or not. If you are wondering why I would be asking this question before making a decision on returning to the Church, I am curious to know if there is a possibility that the Church will or will not bless a future marriage if I were to consider one. I have read that Catholics remarrying without an annulment will be asked to abstain from Holy Communion for the rest of their married lives. I do not take that sacrifice lightly. Frankly, if that were a true possibility, I would have a very difficult time returning to the Catholic Church.
 
Did you, or your present wife, ever formally defect from the Church by declaring it to your respective bishops in writing?

If not, it would appear that both your marriages are invalid due to not following the rules of the Catholic Curch by which you were bound at the time of your first wedding and by which you were both bound at the time of your second wedding.

Your present marriage could be convalidated (blessed) should you decide to remain married because your first marriage is not presumed valid. Should this one end in divorce, you would have two “lack of form” weddings to have dealt with. That’s just checking paperwork before allowing a subsequent marriage in the Catholic Church.
 
The Church assumes you to still be married to your first wife until an investigation can be done. Considering the circumstances in both instances, declarations of nullity should be fairly simple in both cases but what you need to do right now is talk to a priest so he can get the ball rolling for you.
 
Mary_Ellen said:
The Church assumes you to still be married to your first wife until an investigation can be done. Considering the circumstances in both instances, declarations of nullity should be fairly simple in both cases but what you need to do right now is talk to a priest so he can get the ball rolling for you.
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Actually, the Church would not assume him to be married to either wife because he married both outside the Church.
 
While you will still need to go through the paperwork of getting the marriages declared null, they will be.

In the first case, though you weren’t practicing your faith, because you were baptized a Catholic you are considered to be a Catholic. As you married outside the Church and, I presume, without a dispensation to do so (you would have had to go through your local diocese to get it), you had a “defect of form” in the first marriage ceremony–i.e., it wasn’t conducted under the auspices of the Church.

In the second case, the short version is that the same situation of the first case applies in the second (Catholic married outside the Church, no dispensation), with the added complication that technically while you weren’t married to wife #1, you were legally married to her, and that marriage is presumed valid until proven otherwise. The lack of form definitively proves it otherwise, though, so it really is a matter of just filling out the paperwork and going through the annulment process in both cases. You’ll need to speak to a priest to get the process started; I suggest you do so as soon as possible, as, assuming you’re in the States (I think other countries might handle it slightly differently, but I could be wrong), while the annulment folks won’t be able to process the second one until the divorce is final, they can start on the first one, and annulments, depending on your diocese, can take some time to process even if they’re relatively simple lack-of-form ones which don’t require as extensive witness statements as some other types. Speaking to a priest might also get you on the road to sorting out your spiritual life, too, which is, of course, even more important than the paperwork. 😛

Good luck! 🙂
 
UbiCaritas said:
In the second case, the short version is that the same situation of the first case applies in the second (Catholic married outside the Church, no dispensation), with the added complication that technically while you weren’t married to wife #1, you were legally married to her, and that marriage is presumed valid until proven otherwise.
Good luck! 🙂
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No, lack of form marriages are not presumed valid. If they were they would have to go through the full annulment process instead of the paper trail process that is used to deal with them.
 
The marriage tribunal process in the catholic church does indeed appear to be bureaucratic and legalistic. But there is a good reason for this! Human nature.

I suspect that both those other churches you belonged to also believed in the gospel and include Jesus’ rather difficult teachings about divorce, yes? And yet most protestant churches simply leave it up to the individual to figure out how to apply that and will happily bless re-marriages as you yourself experienced. Your experience is precisely WHY Catholicism has a complicated process for examining claims of invalid marriage. Only examination by someone personally removed from the individuals and educated in the principles is capable of untangling the emotional wreckage of a broken relationship to see the facts underneath. We’ve found by long, hard experience that this is the case.

It’s a hard process and it makes you face things that would be easier to avoid. Calling it names like “legalistic” and impersonal might be attempts not to have to face those hard truths. Worth thinking about, isn’t it? Most who go through it honestly and thoughtfully find it to be a healing process and one in which they learn things about themselves that need working on. That’s why it exists in the first place: we take marriage very seriously in the catholic church.
 
As others have said, your situation is actually somewhat simpler than it may seem.

As a Baptized Catholic, you are considered to be a Catholic (albeit one who has ‘fallen away’) and are still considered to be bound by Catholic rules on marriage. Since your marriages did not have the proper form, or any dispensation, you should be able to go through the ‘Defect of Form’ process and have both declared null very easily.

I believe, however, that the Church will usually want the civil divorce to be completed first before moving forward…so you can probably start on the first marriage process immediately, but may need to wait for the second until the civil divorce goes through.

Even so, if you are living chastely, I doubt that would be an impediment to reuniting with the Church and receiving the Sacraments. A moral issue only arises when somebody divorces and remarries when the Church has not annulled previous marriage(s), since we see that as committing adultery. But if you are divorced and living chastely, that is not an impediment. And once both marriages are recognized as null (which they almost certainly will be), you will then be considered free to marry in the eyes of the Church.

So I imagine that the Church will ask you to remain chaste until the civil divorce and ‘Defect of Form’ process is complete with your second marriage, but won’t withhold the Sacraments. And then once all of that is done, you will be free to court, remarry, and so on.

The most important thing you can do right now, however, is meet with a priest at your local Church! He can guide you through what needs to be done and give you a more concrete idea of what to expect. He may also want you to participate in classes and/or study about the Church to ensure that you ‘know what you’re getting into’ (it is up to the pastor of each parish to discern individuals’ readiness for receiving the Sacraments, and they should take that responsibility very seriously!).

In my parish, somebody in your shoes would often be asked to join our RCIA classes (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) to learn about the Catholic faith in great detail…however our pastor will allow people to bypass the classes on a case-by-case basis if the individual demonstrates a good understanding of the faith and what it entails. He does this, usually, when somebody has already been exposed to the faith in-depth, either through individual study, or having a Catholic spouse, etc. But different pastors and parishes will handle this different ways.

I am a convert myself, and ‘coming home’ to the Catholic Church has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. Now I help lead my parish’s RCIA program, so I work with people in situations like yours all the time. Have no fear; your journey home should be relatively smooth, if a bit bureaucratic! I wish you all the best. God bless!
 
Thanking God and asking Him to bless you --and praying for you on your journey back to the Catholic Church.
 
Thank you Scott! I appreciate your encouragement. I am beginning the RCIA program next week! It’s going to be a process for me, because I am quite steeped in Protestant theology. But I trust God and believe he will show me the truth as I pursue to study the Catholic doctrines diligently. I am excited about this journey and fully believe God is at work. I am living a chaste life as well, and will definitely seek out counsel with one of the priests at the local parish.
 
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