I am recently divorced. I am Catholic and my ex-wife is Catholic. However, when I married my ex-wife, she was divorced from her previous marraige (Catholic). Because of this, we could not get married in the Catholic Church. We were married in a Protestant service and we were married for 13 years. Since my divorce from her, I have met a Catholic woman whom I love very much (she has never married). We would very much like to get married in the Catholic Church. Does the church consider my marraige to my first wife valid? If so, since it was not a Catholic marraige, am I eligible to get married in the Catholic Church?

-- Adrian R Backer (abacker@altrionet.com), January 14, 2005

Answers

The Church does not consider your first marriage valid, since (1) the woman you "married" was not eligible for marriage, and (2) a Protestant ceremony does not constitute valid marriage for a Catholic. You will be eligible for marriage in the Catholic Church once you secure an annulment, an official declaration by the Church that your first marriage was not valid.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), January 14, 2005.

but was your first marriage valid in gods eyes

-- kat (riesoracle@hotmail.com), January 14, 2005.

I think the Scriptures indicate that your wife was not eligible to marry you in the first place since she was divorced. And since you married her anyway--you committed adultery with her. That is, of course--if you are still bound by Old Testament Law!

Oh but hey--there's always the annullment angle.

Romans 7:1-6

Do you not know, brothers–for I am speaking to men who know the law– that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.

So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

-- (anon@anon.com), January 14, 2005.

Matt 5:31-32:

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

-- (anon@anon.com), January 14, 2005.

Anon, you forget that the first few marriages were "not valid", therefore there was no such thing as a "divorce."

how can people so obviously twist Christ's words?

is this a case where tradition "overrules" GOD'S VERY OWN WORDS?

-- rina (hellorina@aol.com), January 19, 2005.