To think Boris should not have been married in Westmister Cathedral?

[buggerbuggery]

Divorced people are not allowed to be married in a Catholic church. Boris Johnson has been married twice before. His first marriage was annulled, so the church does not count. But his second marriage does count. So he should never have been allowed to marry in a Catholic Cathedral.

Well he's right really. It looks bad. Because the explanation isn't simple. But what was the alternative? Dealing with people like him in any capacity looks bad - and worse if people are assuming a Catholic marriage is some kind of lifetime endorsement from the church. It's not.

He was treated like anyone else in his (relatively unusual) situation. No one's proposing to canonise him.

He can get married in a Catholic church as in the eyes of God he has NOT been married before.
His previous marriage was a civil ceremony.
Had he been married in any church before he wouldn’t be allowed to marry in the Catholic Church.
It’s really very simple.
The church HAS NOT changed their rules for him, this has always been the case and is why divorced people can be married in the Cc if they were married in a register’s office.

Well that’s a funny little loophole about the invalid marriages. I would never want to say a marriage that produced children was invalid on any level for any reason. Just seems insulting to them, even though there’s nothing wrong with choosing to have children without marriage if you want to.

Perhaps the Catholic Church rules are wrong? Just saying...

Mrs1970, this is not the case.

The Catholic Church considers all marriages to be valid including non sacramental ones.

The exception is if one or both of the people getting married is a Catholic.

Baptist marries Baptist in Baptist church - valid marriage.

Baptist marries Catholic in Baptist church without the Catholic church’s consent - invalid marriage.

The same is true for civil ceremony’s.

If I had been a non Catholic who had married another non Catholic in a civil ceremony, the Catholic Church would say my marriage was valid.

Yes and no.

Your prior marriage would be respected as a valid marriage in the sense that a genuine relationship existed, and it wouldn't be any business of the RC church except insofar as the RC church sees all marriage as a good and necessary pillar of society and essential for the welfare of children.

If you wanted to marry a RC for your second marriage, the RC church would want to see your divorce papers to make sure you were legally allowed to remarry. This goes for RCs seeking an annulment too - in countries where divorce is legal, the RC annulment process does not go ahead until you are legally divorced.

The circumstances of your previous nonRC marriage/s would be looked into to determine if there was any impediment to validity. Impediments can include but are not limited to an extramarital affair that was going on at the time of marriage, lack of religious faith on the part of at least one of the parties to the marriage, procuring an abortion, a lack of understanding at the time of the marriage of what the state of marriage entails (lifelong commitment, monogamy) forced marriage or marriage because of pregnancy, no commitment to accepting children in the relationship, and more.

An annulment doesn't affect the status of the children and is no reflection whatsoever on them.

Afraid you are wrong Libertymole.
The Catholic Church doesn’t consider all marriages to be valid only those made in the eyes of God and not civil ceremonies.
How else could a divorced person get married in the Catholic Church?

Yes, the church might find my marriage invalid for other reasons but it wouldn’t be due to lack of form simply because it was a civil marriage.

Here 1970. It is under lack of form:

‘When a Catholic party gets married, he ordinarily must have a Catholic wedding ceremony in order for his marriage to be valid. This usually entails a marriage contracted before a priest or deacon in the presence of two witnesses. Once a person is a Catholic, he remains bound by the Church’s form of marriage even if he later falls away from the Church.

The Code of Canon Law states, “The form . . . must be observed if at least one of the parties contracting the marriage was baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it” (can. 1117). The Church’s God-given authority imposes this law—Jesus gave the Church the authority to enact such laws that bind her citizens (see Matthew 16:18, 18:18). Thus, a Catholic ordinarily must observe canonical form in order for his marriage to be valid.

If a Catholic wishes to validly marry any other way (for example, observing his fiancé’s Protestant form), he must obtain a dispensation from the Catholic canonical form from his bishop. (This is ordinarily handled through his local pastor.) If he fails to obtain a dispensation and proceeds with a wedding apart from the Church, his wedding lacks canonical form and his marriage is not valid. Lack of canonical form constitutes grounds for annulment.’

Peter Phillips had to renounce his place in the succession because he married a Catholic. Catholicism is anathema to the Royal family.

@BalloonSlayer, I think actually Autumn Kelly decided to renounce Catholicism and be received into the CoE in order for him to keep his spot in line.

Am just trying to explain the rules of the Catholic Church LM.
Not saying I’m in agreement with it all 🙈.
It’s a shame that anyone can’t get married in the church if they want to but the rules unfortunately are very defined and unbreakable.

@LibertyMole

Here 1970. It is under lack of form:

‘When a Catholic party gets married, he ordinarily must have a Catholic wedding ceremony in order for his marriage to be valid. This usually entails a marriage contracted before a priest or deacon in the presence of two witnesses. Once a person is a Catholic, he remains bound by the Church’s form of marriage even if he later falls away from the Church.

The Code of Canon Law states, “The form . . . must be observed if at least one of the parties contracting the marriage was baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it” (can. 1117). The Church’s God-given authority imposes this law—Jesus gave the Church the authority to enact such laws that bind her citizens (see Matthew 16:18, 18:18). Thus, a Catholic ordinarily must observe canonical form in order for his marriage to be valid.

If a Catholic wishes to validly marry any other way (for example, observing his fiancé’s Protestant form), he must obtain a dispensation from the Catholic canonical form from his bishop. (This is ordinarily handled through his local pastor.) If he fails to obtain a dispensation and proceeds with a wedding apart from the Church, his wedding lacks canonical form and his marriage is not valid. Lack of canonical form constitutes grounds for annulment.’

I think @LibertyMole has explained it fully - it's "lack of form" - Catholic contracting non-Catholic marriage without permission - that covers it in Boris's case. And would in any similar case.

Otherwise though - on the question of Anglican marriages etc, if B had been an Anglican. He'd have needed to make the case that this hadn't been a full marriage and - look at the list from @mathanxiety. Lots of non-Catholic marriages could involve such impediments because they aren't requirements of the faith involved. In other cases, individuals won't have been committed to the full list.

So in practice, a non- Catholic religious marriage is likely to be relatively easy to declare invalid? But for a Catholic contracting it without permission, it's automatically invalid.

Mrs1970, I understand that you are trying to explain the rules but you are incorrect.

The Catholic Church doesn’t consider civil marriages between non Catholics to be invalid:

catholicleader.com.au/life/marriage-matters/what-is-the-difference-between-a-sacramental-and-a-civil-marriage/

[quote LibertyMole]Mrs1970, I understand that you are trying to explain the rules but you are incorrect.

The Catholic Church doesn’t consider civil marriages between non Catholics to be invalid:

catholicleader.com.au/life/marriage-matters/what-is-the-difference-between-a-sacramental-and-a-civil-marriage/[/quote]
But I think a civil marriage would be fairly easy to declare invalid on grounds of the parties' understanding of marriage, so comes to the same thing?

I knew a priest once who was offered a lovely long sabbatical to study law in Rome and turned it down flat. Said he knew it would end with him spending the rest of his career in a back-office scrutinising annulments.

Johnson's case - must stop calling him Boris - starts to look like an easy one ...

Given the history of the Catholic Church with things like indulgences there’s usually a way around the rules with technicalities. Money and power also don’t hurt.

As far as I understand it, if you are getting an anullment for reasons other than lack of form, no distinction is made between non Catholic and Catholic marriages.

@LibertyMole

As far as I understand it, if you are getting an anullment for reasons other than lack of form, no distinction is made between non Catholic and Catholic marriages.

Yes - but assuming the non Catholic marriages are contracted between non Catholic / mixed / non practising partners, a lot of the grounds for annulment are going to be there I think.

@NinaMimi

Given the history of the Catholic Church with things like indulgences there’s usually a way around the rules with technicalities. Money and power also don’t hurt.

Sure but that's not what's happened here. It's a big, old institution. It has rules. Even some quite clear rules, as in this case. They've applied the rules.

Would you prefer them to have treated him differently from any other Catholic? On what grounds?

‘Yes - but assuming the non Catholic marriages are contracted between non Catholic / mixed / non practising partners, a lot of the grounds for annulment are going to be there I think.’

Yes, that makes sense. You could certainly make a claim more easily that you did not intend your marriage to be a life long distinction.

But I certainly think it is an important point that civil marriages are not automatically invalid in the eyes of the church. If for no other reason than people in civil marriages are often clearly offended by their loving marriages being called automatically invalid.

The Catholic Church doesn’t consider all marriages to be valid only those made in the eyes of God and not civil ceremonies.
How else could a divorced person get married in the Catholic Church?

@Mrs1970, there is a difference between marriages which are sacramentally valid and those which are valid in a legal sense. The RC recognises legal marriages as valid and will investigate the circumstances of all prior marriages if one party subsequently wishes to marry in the RC church.

Don't know the ins and outs of Boris' circumstances, but it is actually possible to get married in a Catholic church when one partner has been divorced. I know because I did! Admittedly I didn't think it was going to be possible. We did have to go to a church court, I've forgotten what it was called - it was 35 years ago! Basically, if the church doesn't recognise the previous marriage, then you can. My DH's first wife had been married and divorced before she married him so the church didn't recognise his first marriage.

@NinaMimi

Given the history of the Catholic Church with things like indulgences there’s usually a way around the rules with technicalities. Money and power also don’t hurt.

For a board full of people who I assume spent many years toiling away at RE classes in school, there seem to be many, many misconceptions about the RC church floating around.

They doubt count is they were civil marraiges not church ones.

An exception hasnt been made for Boris. I'm catholic and have understood this to have always been the case. I know of 2 marriages that took place in a catholic church where one of the persons were divorced. One of the previous marriage had been in a registry office & the other 1st marriage had been in a church of England.the situation just wouldn't come up so often. The registry office divorced person was my uncle. He had been married for 2 years the 1st time and had a son from that marriage. It was important to his second wife to marry in the catholic church. His son from 1st marriage was in the wedding party.

It's not my place to say who can't get married in a church. Often a church wedding can mean more to 1 of the marrying couple than their partner. I dont think that should be taken from them.