Is a Church of England marriage valid in the Catholic Church?

[ofwarren]

My husband and I are both baptised church of England and got married in a church of England church.
If I was to convert to Catholicism, is our marriage recognised in the Catholic Church or is some form of ceremony necessary to validate it?
Neither of us have been married before.

I think there are quite a few now who were married vicars and converted to Catholicism. It was quite a shock the first time I heard a parish priest mention his wife during mass. That was in London.

What happens if you married in a C of E church but one of you wasn’t baptised? Does the Catholic Church still recognise that marriage as valid if one or both converted?

@minkfondant

What happens if you married in a C of E church but one of you wasn’t baptised? Does the Catholic Church still recognise that marriage as valid if one or both converted?

It's complicated.

There are two main reasons why it might not be valid:

1. if the person who was baptised was baptised Catholic rather than CofE. In that case their marriage would only be valid if conducted in a Catholic Church or with a dispensation.

1. if either of the people were married before and the former spouse was still alive at the time (i.e. a second marriage after divorce)

If neither of those applies, then it's what the Catholic Church would call a valid natural marriage, so it's valid but not a sacrament. This makes absolutely no difference legally speaking (except in one very very specific and unusual circumstance, which your priest would tell you about if it applied). It automatically becomes a valid sacramental marriage when the second person is baptised.

Thank you Fink. The baptism was a C of E one, and no previous marriages. So it sounds like it would be valid.

There's legally and spiritually - remember all the fuss about Boris Johnson?

We got married in a Church in Wales church.
DH is Catholic, and we registered our wedding in his mother's church afterwards. It was quite a simple procedure as I remember (30 years ago!)

A family member who married a catholic in a C of E church had to have another wedding ceremony in the Catholic Church if they wanted to bring their children up in the catholic faith and attend that church.
IIRC it created a lot of hoo ha and unpleasantness between the catholic and non catholic sides of the family.

Yep, sounds good @minkfondant, almost certainly valid.

@ArnoldBee, the issue with BJ was that he was (is) a baptised Catholic whose previous marriages were held outside the Catholic Church without permission, so they were invalid in the eyes of the Church. If he had been baptised CofE or something else, they would have been valid. It's not really to do with legal and spiritual, it's about two different legal systems: the law of the land is that his previous marriage were valid (but that he was free to marry again after divorce), the law of the Church is that they weren't (and so he was free to marry because he had never been really married before).