Weddingbee boards

If it is God's will for the two of you to marry, than you will marry in His time.  Take a step back and try this prayer on for size:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Remember, God is in control and that when we pray to God, we are taught to pray "Thy will be done" not "my will be done."  Try not to grasp on for so much control.   How many times have we heard "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."  God has his own plans for your life and learning to surrender to them is a part of the Christian journey.

You probably won't be able to get married in 5 months, but just try to surrender those anxieties.  My fiance' and I had to move back our wedding date as well, not to mention the tons of hang ups I've had to go through to plan this wedding.  Seriously, I wanted a wedding in a beautiful old Catholic Church with a schola singing beautiful traditional Gregorian chant and polyphony.  But I had to give up the old church for a more modern looking building, and 3 months before the wedding, the chior director informed me that he has no singers to offer me, even though we'd come to an agreement 6 months prior to the wedding.  As such, I'm only having an organist.

But really I've had to learn what is important is not that my wedding fulfill some childhood fantasy, but that we come before God to enter a valid and sacramental marriage.  Beyond that, its just inviting the family to celebrate our marriage.  My advise is to take whatever instruction you need to take to get things done and allow everything to work out in God's time and in accord with God's will.  He will not let you down.  The key is to learn to trust Him

Sorry, just have to say that it really angers me when I read about priests going against Canon Law and their bishops to appease parishioners, which then leads others to advise that they could go another route which isn't actually a licit route.

Here's the hard truth.  If a previous marriage validly occured, no second marriage can occur till that person's death.  It is not an issue of sacramentality.  Your marriage, if valid, is sacramental if both people are baptised and you are the ones who confer the sacrament, not the priest.  Getting a convalidation is supposed to be a way for the priest to help people who have left the faith and married outside of the Church to come back to the faith.  It is not meant for a priest to actually advise people to marry outside of the Catholic Church and then to get a convalidation.   It is called a convalidation because if you get married outside of the Catholic Church (and you're Catholic) your marriage is invalid.  Its recognized by the State, but the Church considers you unmarried.  If you divorced without a convalidation, and then sought to be married in the Catholic Church later, you wouldn't need to go through the annullment process because you're not really married.  The convalidation makes your marriage valid, it does not make it sacramental.  And if only one of you is baptised, you'll have only a natural marriage, not a sacramental one.

My response was in regards not to the OP, but to someone else who responded mentioning a different couple who were advised by a priest to marry in the courthouse and that he agreed simply to do a convalidation afterward.  Such stories make me rather frustrated because that response from the priest was totally outside of his authority to do and was basically his way of working the system rather than respecting the beautiful teaching that marriage is indissoluble.  Its that approach to working the system that give annullments the rep of being Catholic mumbo jumbo or Catholic divorce.

As for Sacramental vs natural marriage, this is my understanding. 

Marriage is and has always been a covenant.  Covenants are not contracts.  Convenants only end when one of the parties dies.  As such, Christ pointed out that from the beginning marriage was meant to be indissoluble, and that Moses merely permitted people to divorce their wives because of the hardness of their hearts.  Then he taught though that when there is divorce and remarriage, what occurs is adultery.  And when the disciples said that this strict teaching on marriage was far to hard, all He basically said "Yep, it is.  But let those who can accept it, accept it."  (not an actual quote from scripture by the gist of the pasage.)

As such, when a person is divorced, whether they had a sacramental marriage or just a natural marriage, it is simply the breaking of the marriage contract that the State had them sign.  But the covenant still exists and thus that person is still bond to their spouse regardless of divorce. 

The annullment process exists in recognition that not all attempted marriages actually occur.  This can be because the couple is not free to give matrimonial consent (because they are already married, made vows of perpetual virginity, are attempting to marry a relative of too close of relation, they were a Catholic who attempted marriage outside of the Catholic Church) or because they did not give consent freely (someone had a gun to their back, fear was the primary motivator, the other person had grossly deceived them) or they did not consent to be married (refusal to have any children, refusal to fidelty, or approaching it with an attitude of if this fails, we'll just divorce and I'll find someone else). 

The nature of sacramental marriage is simply that when two baptised people have validly been married, their marriage is sacramental by its nature.  It confers grace on the spouses to aid them in living out their vocation as husband and wife.  Every time they renew their vows through the marital embrace, they are engaging in a sacramental action.    So the difference is only in whether or not there are sacramental graces at work in your marriage or not.  

Since the Church does recognize the validity of marriages among non-Christians, I believe regardless that all previous marriages must be investigated by the marriage tribunal -- unless its something simple like a Catholic marrying outside of the Catholic Church.  Without a convalidation that marriage is autmatically invalid.  If the Catholic did get a convalidation, then that marriage again would have to go through the marriage tribunal.

Its a sad reality when the Church grants so many annullments because that means that a lot of marriages aren't being validly entered.  Either that or its corruption in the marriage tribunals, which then means a lot of second marriages are being invalidly entered.

Its a harsh teaching, but it is a beautiful teaching.  The beauty is knowing that when you are marrying the person you stand before, it is totally for life and completely exclusive.  Such a commitment is such a radical act of love, the gift of receiving someone's consent to become your spouse is receiving a bit of a sacrifice of that person for that person in marrying you loses their freedom to marry another.  They offer you their freedom to choose from any other person in the world and they give it to you.