Additional Information...
......to help you determine
what you and/or you partner need to do to become "free to marry" in the
Catholic Church.
A word of caution....the
following is rather complex. It is my attempt to explain what divorced
folks need to know about the rules of the Catholic Church if they want to
marry (again) in the Catholic Church. I am trying to explain something
that is well known to canon lawyers....but not so obvious to the rest of
us!!!! Read the following carefully and then, if you need more help,
get in touch with me.....Rob Ruhnke
|
If you are not a member
of the Catholic Church |
If you are a Catholic
who is divorced |
POINT 1 -
If you are
not
a member of the Catholic Church
and you have been married before
~ even a common law marriage ~ canon law (the official Catholic Church rules)
assumes that any former marriage is equal in value to a marriage
between two Catholics done in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church
considers the marriages of folks who are not members of the Catholic equal
in value to the marriages of Catholics. It may sound odd to you, but
if two people who are not Catholic marry before a Justice of the Peace,
Catholic Church law assumes that marriage has the same status/value
at any marriage that took place in the Catholic Church. If this couple
divorces, and later one of them ~ who is not a member of the Catholic Church
~ wants to marry a Catholic in the Catholic Church, he/she will have
to prove that his/her former marriage failed to meet the criteria of the
Catholic Church for Christian marriage, he/she would do this by going through
the Catholic Church annulment process (just as if he/she was a member of
the Catholic Church!).
If you have never been a member of the Catholic Church and are now divorced
~ and want to marry a person who is a member of the Catholic Church ~ it
may "come across" as unfair that the Catholic Church would require you to
go through the Catholic annulment process even though you are not a member
of the Catholic Church. If you feel like you are being treated unfairly
by the Catholic Church, I can understand your feelings; At the same
time, I want you to read and understand what I said above because it is
my effort to explain why the Catholic Church law is going to take your former
marriage so seriously and give it a status in law that ~ because it failed
~ you may be aware is not justified. But, that is exactly what the
annulment process is for....to give you an opportunity to offer testimony
to the fact that your former marriage was never a true Christian marriage.
So in summary.....In
Point 1 I tried to make it clear that the Catholic Church law presumes
that all marriages of those who are not members of the Catholic Church are
"valid" Christian marriages even if one or more of the individuals does
not claim to be Christian! This may sound odd, but the point here
is that Catholic Church law makes no negative judgment about the marriages
of those who are not member of the Catholic Church...it considered them
to have equal value to the marriages of Catholics.
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POINT 2 -
If you are a Catholic and you are divorced, it is important
to know that the Catholic Church law makes additional rules
for Catholics! In Point 1 I tried to explain that the
Catholic Church law assume that the marriage of a person who is not a member
of the Catholic Church is valid as long as it is legal....for example, it
may have been a civil marriage witnessed by a Justice of the Peace.
In Point 2, I want to explain that the Catholic Church make additional
requirements for members of the Catholic Church, for example, a Catholic
has "to marry in the Catholic Church." This phrase ~ "to marry in
the Catholic Church" ~ means that the Catholic must follow certain rules
that are more restrictive....such as, the marriage must take place in a
Catholic Church or there must be a formal dispensation from the Catholic
bishop that allows the marriage to take place in, e.g., a Baptist Church.
If a Catholic does not follow the additional "rules" for Catholics ~
for example, gets married before a Justice of the Peace ~ then the Catholic
Church law considers such a marriage "invalid." Note, the marriage
would be "valid" in civil law, but it is "invalid" by the standards of Catholic
Church law.
Point 3
- Because of Point 2 (above), it can happen that a Catholic enters a marriage
that is "invalid" by the standards of the canon law
for Catholics. If this marriage ended
in civil divorce, and the Catholic wants to marry (again) in the Catholic
Church, it is not necessary for the Catholic to go through the Catholic
Church annulment process. Why? Because the Catholic Church annulment
process is for dealing with marriages that are assumed to be "valid" in
Catholic canon law (which would include a marriage between 2
persons who were never members of the Catholic Church as in in Point 1 above).
But in the case of a Catholic who entered an "invalid" marriage, he/she
only needs to provide certain documentation to his/her pastor that will
"prove" that the marriage was "invalid," and then the Catholic pastor will
assist the person to obtain a declaration that he/she is "free to marry"
(again) in the Catholic Church......see Point 4 for more information
about the documents that are required.
Point 4
- So if you are a Catholic who entered into a valid civil law marriage
~ but this marriage was NOT valid by the standards of the Catholic Church
for members of the Catholic Church ~ and then the marriage failed and ended
in civil divorce.....if you want to marry (again) in the Catholic Church,
you need to establish your freedom to marry by the standards of Catholic
canon law. In order to do this you need the following 3 documents:
1
- A NEWLY ISSUED AND DATED Baptismal certificate. NOT the original
certificate that your parents may have. The reason for getting a
newly issued certificate is that, when you marry in the Catholic
Church, the information about your marriage is sent back to the place of
your baptism and is recorded in the baptismal register.
Whenever a NEWLY ISSUED COPY of the Baptismal certificate is made a special
form is used which has places for the baptismal information AND ALSO information
about Confirmation and Marriage that has been recorded in the baptismal
record. If a person was married in the Church, this information will
be included on the NEWLY ISSUED COPY. If a person was not married
in the Church, the space for recording the information about the marriage
will include a notation of "no information" and this is part of the
"proof" that the person was not married in the Catholic Church.
This newly issued
certificate has to be obtained from the parish where you were baptized.
It is possible they will not mail it to you but only to the priest (this
is to make sure that no one tries to alter the document).
2 - The
marriage license for your first marriage.
This will provide evidence about where the marriage took place and
who was the official witness of the marriage (this is another
part of the proof that the marriage did not take place in the Catholic
Church and was not witnessed by a Catholic priest).
3 - The
divorce decree which will prove that you are free to marry again in civil
law.
When you have these
3 documents (perhaps the baptismal certificate will be mailed to the priest),
then you set up a meeting with the priest to fill out a standard form into
which he will copy all of the information in these documents. He will
also ask you a number of questions that you must answers under oath, such
as, was your marriage ever validated in the Catholic Church? It is
possible to re-establish the former marriage? Have all the conditions
of the civil divorce been taking care of?...such as child support.
When this form is completed and the priest is confident that the answers
given to the previous questions are appropriate, then he can assure you
that you are indeed free to marry (again) in the Catholic Church. [Note.
In some dioceses the pastor will have to send this form to the diocesan
Tribunal and they will do the processing.]
Point 5
- In addition to what I said above, it is important to add that you may
need to know more than what I wrote here. I only talked situations
in which a person was married once before to a person who was "free to marry"
by the rules of the Catholic Church. But if you were married more
than once ~ or if any of your former partner(s) were previously married
~ this will be critical information that may radically change how the Catholic
Church will deal with your situation. In some cases, it may be
to your advantage that your or a former spouse was previously married!
My critical point here is that you need to provide not only information
about your former marriage, but also any previous marriage(s) of yourself
or your former partner(s).