Marriage in the Catholic Church is a sacrament, a Holy institution designed by God. I believe this and take Jesus' words seriously, when He said, "what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
I am married to my 2nd husband, but he is my first husband in the eyes of the Church, thanks to a process called an Annulment, but I have jumped ahead. Let me back up a bit.
I as well as most Americans, have grown up during the "Age of Aquarius", the so called "baby boomers". From our generation came Rock & Roll, the "Hippie" movement, and "free love".
Our generation has seen the results of unprotected, unmarried sex, with the onslaught of STD's and AIDS. We wanted to go against the grain, fight against the conventions of our parents. We wanted to free our minds, and tried using drugs of every sort, to experience euphoria. The women burned their bras, refused the "gentlemanly" gestures of our parents, and began to put ourselves beyond the norm, reaching to break the barriers that had been in place; "womens Lib"and Helen Reddy's "I am Woman"became our theme song, and we made ourselves into "Career" women. We wanted it all, to manage corporations, have a husband,( but not necessarily on paper) and family.
Women turned to "uppers & downers" to get through their day. Stress and heart attacks became the new killers of women.
Genesis 1:27-28
27 God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
28 God
blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and
subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and
all the living things that crawl on the earth.
People used to work through their problems, with love and prayer, and sometimes the help of a pastor.
Our children were sometimes the glue that worked out those problems. But during the "Baby Boomer" rage, and then beyond to our children's generation, single moms with children growing up with one parent, we spawned the "Latch key" kids. Children coming home after school to an empty house and left to their own devices, lead to more and more gangs, under age crimes, and seriously messed up kids!
The "family unit" and the strengths it provided for our children was gone for the majority of our country.
Matthew 19:3-9
3 Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, “Is
it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?”
4 He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the
beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’
5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father
and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what
God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
Now I'm not saying that all the single parents, and parent-less kids were messed up, but you have to admit that there were a lot of them. Just look at the self-help section of a bookstore or library. The increase in psycho analysts, counselors. Children going into schools and shooting other children and teachers, shooting their parent, robbing stores, stealing cars; there are more children on death row and life in prison today than at any other time in our history!
Marriage is a blessing and should never be entered into lightly, but with love and consideration.
The Catholic Church requires couples seeking marriage in the church to go through a series of counseling with clergy and then with a married couple. They are encouraged to discuss their goals in life, their openness to children, their faith, finances and in general, how they feel about everything that they may face as a married couple. Usually, this is about a year, a good long engagement, to make sure that the person you want to marry is the right one. The USCCB website has a page just for Marriage. You can find out more specifics there, and you'll see that marriage is indeed a very important matter.
Matthew 19:7-9
7 They said to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man
give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss [her]?”
8 He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts
Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
9 I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the
marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.”
When I first met my husband, he was a wounded puppy, so lovable, I couldn't help but fall in love with him. I was a single divorced mom, who had been married to the wrong man for nearly ten years and finally divorced and returned home to Florida. I had entered into the marriage under the wrong reasons, and stayed to provide a stable home for my son. My Ex had been married previously, in a Catholic Church, and divorced his wife and four kids, "because she got fat". I was young and should have seen this as a warning, but no, I was naive.
Colossians 3: 19
Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward
them.
Anyway, when my new love and I decided we wanted to marry, we found that it wasn't possible to marry in the Catholic Church when we wanted, much to my frustration as a Baptist protestant at the time, I was indignant! My new sweety had been born and raised Catholic but was not married in the church but in a civil union. Needless to say, I was getting married when I wanted, and we found a protestant pastor to marry us in our outdoor wedding. So began our future together.
As time passed, and I continued to attend Mass with my new hubby, and our Catholic friends I had made when we met, (in a previous post I talked about the CYL games as his son was in a Catholic School) I started Inquiry and my sweety talked about how his mother had wanted him to marry in the Church.
So I did what I thought was only practical, I wanted his wish to come true and we went to the church to see what we had to do. As it turned out, the Church didn't recognize our marriages to our previous spouses, mine because my Ex was married in the Church to his first wife, and he because they were married by a notary public. I also had not received my Sacraments. I was Baptized when I was twelve and was able to produce documentation during the annulment process, so it was accepted as my first Sacrament.
1 Peter 3:1-4
1 Likewise, you
wives should be subordinate to your husbands so that, even if some disobey the
word, they may be won over without a word by their wives’ conduct
2 when they
observe your reverent and chaste behavior.
3 Your adornment
should not be an external one: braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or
dressing in fine clothes,
4 but rather the
hidden character of the heart, expressed in the imperishable beauty of a gentle
and calm disposition, which is precious in the sight of God.
Long story short, we completed our instruction as required by the church, I became a Catholic as well and we are now married forever in our eyes, as well as the churches.
It will be twenty years together this fall, since our first marriage by the protestant pastor, and the vows of "through sickness and health, for richer and for poorer", has taken on new meaning, but we have held on to each other for strength and courage through the bad times. I do not regret the decision I made over twenty years ago, and only wish that we had met sooner so that we could have had a house full of kids of our own.
We can also count on support from our church, should we need it, for the Catholic Church has many programs for counseling to help couples who may have hit a bump in the road and need help paving it smooth again.
If you are in need of help, turn first to your Pastor, your church, for help, before heading to a lawyer. God wants us to be one in him, and with God, your marriage is a Holy Trinity.
Blessings,
The Catholic Lady©
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