How is it that a CAtholic can get married, divorced, married again and divorced again??? Doesn't the church disallow that--- I was thinking of Jennifer Lopez... Curious about this...

-- susan (susanlatte@aol.com), October 27, 2003

Answers

A Catholic cannot "divorce and remarry". Ever. The ONLY way a Catholic can actually "remarry" is after the death of their spouse. However, if a first putative marriage is annuled, that is, ruled initially invalid by a marriage tribunal, a person can then marry. However, this is not in fact a "REmarriage" since the person was not validly married the first time. Before ruling on the validity of a putative marriage, the Church requires a civil divorce in order to avoid needless conflicts with civil law. However, the divorce proceding is a formality from the Church's viewpoint, and has no effect on the subsequent annulment proceding, which may or may not result in a decree of nullity. No Catholic may "remarry" after simply going through a civil divorce, without a subsequent declaration of nullity, for the simple reason that a Catholic in such a situation is presumed still married to their original spouse.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), October 27, 2003.

This is still confusing..how can a person who is Catholic get married, divorced and married again??? Jennifer Lopez has done this...or are there different rules for celebs!

-- susan (susanlatte@aol.com), October 27, 2003.

Susan, anyone Catholic can get civilly married and divorced time after time and unless they are married in the Church with no impediments, etc, they aren't really married. I believe JLo's had several invalid marriages, ie not really marriages, just "living in sin".

The Church does not allow divorce. Divorce does not exist for Catholics. Anullment exists, but that says a marriage never happened, and it's not the same as divorce, as I'm sure you know.

If JLo ever got married as a Catholic, in the Catholic Church (not necessarily in a church building, but in full communion with the Church) then that marriage would be valid and all her other civil "marriages" would have been simply sinfully living together as married.

-- Psyche +AMDG+ (psychicquill@yahoo.com), October 27, 2003.

Ok.....is a "marriage" considered not valid if it took place in a Presbyterian Church? Or is the marriage valid because it was in a Presbyterian Church?

still confused...

..

-- rod (elreyrod@yahoo.com), October 27, 2003.

A person, having the power to move a mountain, still cannot keep a marriage once the spouse decides to leave. He can pray all he wants; it isn't gonna happen that she stays. So, his choices in life become confusing. He winds up in sin because he allowed his heart to fall in love. I guess this is whay they call it "fall". There is no way to correct what has been done. I hope God understnds; men may understand, but they are the one's who've condemned me already.

rod..

..

-- rod (elreyrod@yahoo.com), October 28, 2003.

Happy are they who've never experienced a divorce. Happy are they who've stayed Catholic and have never had life experiences destroy their faith in the Church. Happy are they who can stand up and be called Catholic. Happy are they who can judge the strays. Happy are they whom partake of the Holy Eucharist.

rod

-- rod (elreyrod@yahoo.com), October 28, 2003.

Who is judging who??

For those of us who aren't Catholic this is a valid question...

sheesh

-- susan (susanlatte@aol.com), October 28, 2003.

Money has nothing to do with it. A tribunal will review a marriage, regardless of one's means.

God bless,

-- john placette (jplacette@catholic.org), October 28, 2003.

I don't understand Susan's reply. Please explain.

-- rod (elreyrod@yahoo.com), October 28, 2003.

susan,

i know this may seem hard for you, but put the anti catholicism aside for a little bit. you'll find no one who you can entrap here. you ask: How is it that a CAtholic can get married, divorced, married again and divorced again???

well, dear susan, quite simple. the answer is that they are not truly a catholic. it is one thing to claim catholicism, schismatics do that all the time, but it is another thing entirely to live that life. now, if you were speaking of an annulment instead, it is possible. HOWEVER annulments are time consuming, taking up to more than a year to research and dispense. further, because an annulment does not 'disolve' a marraige, as you seem to believe, there must be proper cause to show that something prevented a valid marraige from taking place (ie-- lack of proper marraige form, failure to consumate, wife turned out to be man in disguise) in order for the case to be considered. this means that while anyone can have their little divorce, only those who have valid complaint can receive a declaration of nullity (note: i just dont like them anymore does not constitute a valid complaint)

Doesn't the church disallow that---

oops, already answered this one

I was thinking of Jennifer Lopez... Curious about this...

if you use jennifer lopez as your sounding board for catholicism thats where your problem is coming from. hell, why dont we just talk about madonna instead, she claims to be catholic (although i had heard rumor of her excommunication). you seem to believe that all of us catholics undergo some mind control, and if we disobey the rules then it is a failure of the church. that is horribly inaccurate. what we fail in is our responsibility. a celebrity does not sidestep the laws of God, not even if the church ever DID grant permission. this is something that Jennifer lopez will have to answer for.

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), October 28, 2003.

Happy with your answers susan?

The Catholic Church is in a battle over truth, particularly involving marriage.

The hierarchy have decided to let the carnage happen as long as it takes to burn itself out. Their answer is easy annulments no matter how unjustly a person establishes their eligibility for their case being heard. It is that simple. They do not care about the destroyed souls their system has created.

Go ahead, Paul, moderate me.

Karl

-- Karl (Parkerkajwen@hotmail.com), October 28, 2003.

For the record, I'm a craddle Catholic; 12 years parochial school; a registered member of my parish; hopeful of being able to afford sending my daughter to the parish grammar school.

Having said that, I think Susan's question is valid. The semantics behind the issues of an "invalid marriage" and "annulment" are not genuinely descriptive of actuality. That is to say, in fact, in law, and in the concensus view of the world, a person who has their marriage annulled by the Church and obtains a civil divorce cannot be said to have not been married.

What is especially troubling to this Catholic is the fact that the Church sanctions this kind of reasoning. It is, in my view, not biblical.

-- Carl Rudorf (carlrudorf@yahoo.com), October 28, 2003.

Paul and Karl,

I am not entrapping anyone here....just want an answer that is complete.

Thank you for you answers and sharing your information.

-- susan (susanlatte@aol.com), October 28, 2003.

I am an Episcopalian who is currently enrolled in RCIA. I have been married to a Catholic for 13 years and have 3 Baptised and confirmed Catholic children. I will try my best as a "Greenhorn" to add to what Paul and Karl have said.

A Catholic has free will which is God given. With that free will a Catholic can get divorced, commit adultery, murder or steal but it is a sin and not approved by the Church. J Lo likely had civil marriages which did not involve the Church at all. She may have married her first husband in the Church but then married her additional spouses outside the Church. Whatever her secular arrangements have been the Church would view her to be fornicating as she is not currently married to a valid spouse.

-- David F (dqf@cox.net), October 28, 2003.

David..thank you for the pleasant answer.

-- susan (susanlatte@aol.com), October 28, 2003.

carl, my boy, what to do?

That is to say, in fact, in law, and in the concensus view of the world

the church holds no regard for the consensus view of the world. the world could burn in hell and the church would stand still on the moral high ground. we're saving souls, not making people happy.

a person who has their marriage annulled by the Church and obtains a civil divorce cannot be said to have not been married.

quite the contrary. a person does not have their marraige annuled. that is a misnomer for the process. a person gets a dispensation of nullety. namely, it is a statement that conditions existed at the time that prevented a marraige from ever occuring in the first place. all children born thereafter are valid, however, the marraige in effect never occured. why?

well, lets say that a man marries a cross dresser, but being a good catholic had no way of knowing it was so (delightfully oblivious to all clues, including five o clock shadow). after the marraige he finds out his 'wife' is really a man. here it is more than clear that had different facts been available at the time of marraige that the person would have denied the rite. therefore, the marraige, because of withheld information, never really took place.

do you understand now?

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), October 28, 2003.

Paul ...who is the last line of your posting directed towards??

I find it rude and insulting...

-- susan (susanlatte@aol.com), October 29, 2003.

susan,

yes, my last post may be taken as rude and insulting, but it was not directed at you. my post was to carl, who claims to be a catholic. if you stick around long enough, you'll learn that while i hold a somewhat rough hand with protestants, i am much harder on those who CLAIM to be catholic and yet deny the truths which their very church teaches. to me, carl needs to seperate himself from his own personal desire for meaning, and look to the Lords truth. so, if im rough handling carl, its because he deserves a bit of discipline for attacking a precept of the church which he claims to be a member of.

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), October 30, 2003.

Susan, I think it's important to point out that in the Catholic Church, Marriage is sometning that is Sacramental. It is a union in which God has a hand. It is God who brings us together and it is God who joins us. We live out this sacrament by calling upon Christ to serve as an example of perfect love, perfect forgiveness and it is through Christ that we draw Christian strength to live out our Christian bond.

A Sacramental marriage is not something that is made of our own doing like a civil union. A civil union is really nothing more than a contract between two people. The people make it, the people can dissolve it. A Sacramental marriage transforms our baptised soul in a fundamental way. No more are there two souls, but one. It's a bond that simply can't be walked away from.

In a perfect world, that's how it is suposed to work. There is nothing in this world like a marriage that grows through different times and it works. When two individuals are married in the church and their union is blessed with a family and that family matures into an example of Christian love for one another, it is easy to see God at work in their lives and that union stands as a Sacrament or "a living sign" to the rest of the world of Gods love for his world.

Of course, we don't all live in a perfect world. When it doesn't work and the wheels come off when the honeymoon is over, for whatever reason, then the "perfect sacrament" becomes a difficult thing. A civil union can just be disolved in a civil court, but a sacrmamental bond can't be undone.

What the church does is to say to the two parties, lets look at what you did and try to understand that even though you were married legally, perhaps the bond didn't "take" in heaven. Even though you were married civilly, it wasn't God who wanted you together.

In simplistic terms, it's as though you took two clumps of play- dough, one colored yellow and one colored blue. If you just pushed the two clumps together, even though they might stick, they could still be pulled back apart and you could still have a yellow clump and a blue clump. In a sacramental marriage, the two clumps are joined and kneaded together untill the original two clumps are intertwined until there is nothing distinguisable from the two original clumps, what you have is one large ball that is mostly green in nature. If the two individuals want to get a divorce and be seperated again, it's not possible to get the two original clumps back, all you can do is seperate the green clump into two smaller green clumps and that's how they go through life. Their baptised souls have been transformed fundamentally, it's not possible to just go back to being who they once were before.

I'm not going to claim any easy answers for the Church and how it handles these kind of things other than to say that they seem to be trying to handle a bond that has it's basis in "mystery" that goes far beyond our limited understanding with an archaic kind of human based court system that looks for hints of the presence of God in bits of evidence in paperwork filled out be the interested parties. In short, it falls short and it hurts people in ways that have little to do with what Christ desires for us.

When I came to the church, I had to go back and go through the annulment process with a previous marriage and it's my limited view that the chruch stumbled all over itself, trying to examine our former marriage, when for me it was something quite simple.

When they explained a sacramental marriage to me for the first time, it was as though a light went on. Yes, that's what it felt like. We were married, but it was missing something, it was never quite right. God was there, but I really felt in my heart that when it was over, he had other plans for me. It was never a permanant bond. For me it made perfect sence to look at marriage in this way. What the marriage tribunal did was so far short of being able to look inside our hearts and souls to be able to see this. The end result was right, but the only way they achieved it was to say that we never had kids, so God wasn't there.

The Three Stooges could have done as well as those three judges, but thats what we work with and it all worked out for me in the end.

In short, the concept of a Sacramental Marriage is wonderful and God's perfection. The church's institution of the annulment process falls far short and as such is a source of constant criticism for us, as it should be.

Peace Susan, and I bless you for your efforts here to try to understand the basic truths of our faith.

-- Leon (vol@weblink2000.net), October 30, 2003.

This is not an answer but a question:

Is there ever a situation where a marriage is annulled and no divorce proceedings are necessary? Or must ALL annulments also be accompanied by a Divorce?

-- Tammy (tmoore7944@hotmail.com), November 25, 2003.

The Church requires the formality of a civil divorce before granting a writ of nullity, just as it requires the formality of a civil marriage license before presiding at a marriage, in order to avoid unnecessary conflict with civil law. The Church does not acknowledge that the divorce actually has any effect on the marital union; and, having the divorce does not guarantee that a writ of nullity will subsequently be granted. The state does not recognize a church annulment any more than the Church recognizes a civil divorce. Therefore, if a couple received a writ of nullity from the Church, but did not obtain a civil divorce, the Church would be in the position of authorizing marriages in violation of civil law; and if one of the parties of the "annulled" union did marry, the state could charge them with polygamy.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), November 25, 2003.

Tammy,

Were one to obtain a civil annulment, which is NOT A DIVORCE, one could then petition the Church for an investigation regarding the validity of that union.

It would be interesting if the Church ruled in favor of the validity of a civilly annulled marriage.

Karl

-- KARL (pARKERKAJWEN@HOTMAIL.COM), November 25, 2003.