Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Requirements for Marriage

Options
  • 18-10-2014 1:13am
    #1
    Jellybaby1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,108 ✭✭✭


    I heard that you couldn't get married if you weren't baptised or confirmed. Is this really true? For a priest/minister to marry them in church would someone have to be baptised as an adult if they hadn't been baptised as a baby?


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    kuang1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,438 ✭✭✭kuang1


    Short answer...NO!
    And if any member of any clergy asked or insisted on that then they're lying.


  • Options
    #3
    Jellybaby1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,108 ✭✭✭Jellybaby1


    Speedy reply, thanks.


  • Options
    #4
    kuang1
    Registered Users Posts: 3,438 ✭✭✭kuang1


    I was married without the 'reverend' asking for any proof of my baptism. (even though I had been) 6/7 years ago. If I hadn't been; I think all I needed to do was look him in the eye and persuade him that I had been through whatever rituals he was hoping for and my word would have been enough. (Combined with the fact that I emphatically loved my wife-to-be)
    (It's not like they have a database that they can access online!)

    If these guys are 'true to their calling', then they shouldn't care whether ye've been baptised or not. They should only care about whether the two of ye care about each other; and how much.
    **** the denomination.


  • Options
    #5
    Elizabetha
    Registered Users Posts: 224 ✭✭Elizabetha


    jellybaby did you mean for our ancestors? I think Kuang1 means now. I thought that they had to be baptized at least to marry in RC church.


  • Options
    #6
    KildareFan
    Registered Users Posts: 683 ✭✭✭KildareFan


    I've found annotations on baptismal registers where the people married outside the parish. So some priests must have checked up in the past.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #7
    CeannRua
    Closed Accounts Posts: 470 ✭✭CeannRua


    KildareFan wrote: »
    I've found annotations on baptismal registers where the people married outside the parish. So some priests must have checked up in the past.

    If it's 20th century, Ne Temere came into operation in 1908 and the below site says this: all marriages must be registered in the place or places where the contracting parties were baptized

    From: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35103

    I think this is probably to do with 'freedom to marry' so as to help prevent subsequent bigamy.

    To go back to Jellybaby's query there is a procedure nowadays called prenuptial enquiry.


  • Options
    #8
    Jellybaby1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,108 ✭✭✭Jellybaby1


    Thank you for your replies. Yes, of course, genealogical thread, genealogical question! Sorry, I hadn't made that clear and so confused matters.

    I have two marriage records 1940's (RC), and one 1950's (CoI). No baptism or birth records for either person. I read Mr. Grenham's piece about missing records and all that may happen to make a record disappear but just tossing this around with family members, someone said, maybe they weren't baptised at all, it just made me stop and think would they have needed a baptism record for marriage, and also is the baptism record used to write up a birth record? Most of the family would have been married in their own parish anyway, they just moved address quite often and so changed parish as well.


  • Options
    #9
    Elizabetha
    Registered Users Posts: 224 ✭✭Elizabetha


    Your thread didn't confuse me jellybaby it was Kuang1's reply that confused me.... my grandmother was not baptized for a reason I'm not sure of but when she went to marry my grandfather she had to be baptized before she could marry him so that is why I always thought that to be married back then you needed to be baptized.


  • Options
    #10
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,123 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    The strict position under Catholic canon law is that you don't get a Catholic church wedding unless at least on member of the couple is a baptised Christian. In practice at least one will usually be a baptised Catholic; why else would the coiuple be seeking to marry in a Catholic church.

    In practice, and especially in the past, a priest might refuse to celebrate a marriage between a Ctholic and a non-Catholic, insisting or at least strongly urging that the non-Catholic should be baptised. But there was a degree of flexibility on this, so if you find that a wedding was celebrated in a Catholic church it doesn't necessarily mean that both parties were baptised.

    If you are a baptised Catholic and you marry in the Catholic church, the fact of your marriage is noted against your baptismal record, but not the other way around.

    The birth of children is not normally noted against the parents' baptismal records.


  • Options
    #11
    robp
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,934 ✭✭✭robp


    kuang1 wrote: »

    If these guys are 'true to their calling', then they shouldn't care whether ye've been baptised or not. They should only care about whether the two of ye care about each other; and how much.
    **** the denomination.
    I don't intend to derail the thread but I think you are missing the point. Catholic marriage is a vocation for people who want to serve God through married life in the Catholic tradition. People who just love each other should by all means get married but that is what is civil marriage is for.

    Of course things are less strict nowadays but I think the typical priest would be reluctant to marry when both parties appear to be non-Catholics and quite rightly so.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #12
    Jellybaby1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,108 ✭✭✭Jellybaby1


    That's helping with my RC man thanks. I will start checking baptisms around the time of the marriage. What about my CoI woman then?


  • Options
    #13
    pedroeibar1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,108 ✭✭✭pedroeibar1


    Jellybaby1 wrote: »
    ........... someone said, maybe they weren't baptised at all............
    That is highly unlikely IMO. I needed my Baptism cert when I got married - I cannot remember if I needed my Confirmation cert also (herself did the paperwork!) I actually had to get my Bapt Cert translated and sworn as the original was in Irish, as is my entry in the GRO!
    Have a read of this which is the official RC site on what is involved - and it would have been tougher at the time of the dates you quote.
    FWIW I've heard that in the 1950's what the RC Church regarded as 'mixed' marriages e.g. CoI and RC did not take place at the altar, but within the body of the church.
    Local priests have some discretion, but I would discount any suggestion that you can tell the priest what to do.


  • Options
    #14
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,123 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Jellybaby1 wrote: »
    That's helping with my RC man thanks. I will start checking baptisms around the time of the marriage. What about my CoI woman then?
    In the C of I, until fairly recently, you didn't have to be baptised at all, in any Christian denomination, to be married. Part of the legacy of having been the state church was accepting an obligation to the public at large, whether or not members of the C of I, and part of that was that the C of I would celebrate the marriage of any member of the community. That changed a few years back, but in the 1950s there was no requirement to be baptised and, presumably, no check on whether anyone was.


  • Options
    #15
    Jellybaby1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,108 ✭✭✭Jellybaby1


    Thanks for that too, so my hopes are dashed then for the CoI. There must be another reason I can't find the birth record. Will concentrate on the RC one for the moment then. Thanks all.


Advertisement