wedding blessing abroad.

ferletiak

I recently got married. We had a civilceremony in iIreland. My partner is Slovakian. Would anyone know if it's possible for us to have a church blessing in Slovakia..

Peregrinus

ferletiak wrote: »

I recently got married. We had a civilceremony in iIreland. My partner is Slovakian. Would anyone know if it's possible for us to have a church blessing in Slovakia..

Highly likely that it is possible. The predominant religion in Slovakia is Catholicism, and the Catholic church is generally happy to celebrate a sacramental wedding for a couple who have already been civilly married. Of course, that's subject to the usual caveats about Catholic church weddings, e.g. that neither of you has been married before and has a spouse still living, that at least one of you is a Catholic, etc.

tatli_lokma

Peregrinus wrote: »

Highly likely that it is possible. The predominant religion in Slovakia is Catholicism, and the Catholic church is generally happy to celebrate a sacramental wedding for a couple who have already been civilly married.

I think you will find the opposite actually. The Catholic church generally don't recognise civil marriage as being valid in the eyes of God. Been there, asked that ourselves. The only places where I know it happens easily are countries where a civil marriage has to be separate to a religious marriage

I know some priests here and abroad do make exceptions so it is worth asking a few priests in Slovakia and you might get lucky. But generally speaking the Catholic Church do not bless civil marriages.

Peregrinus

tatli_lokma wrote: »

I think you will find the opposite actually. The Catholic church generally don't recognise civil marriage as being valid in the eyes of God . . .

The Catholic church doesn't recognise a civil marriage as valid if one or both parties are Catholics; otherwise it's perfectly valid.

But, of course, the Catholic church considers that committed conjugal couples should be married. And if they've had is an (invalid) civil marriage ceremony, and they wish to be validly married, then the Catholic church generally seeks to accommodate them. They hold what's called a "convalidation of marriage", and you can have a ceremony for this which looks strikingly like the regular marriage ceremony.

(If neither of them are Catholics, then they're already validly married on the basis of a civil ceremony alone, and the Catholic church won't purport to marry them, though in theory it could bless their marriage. But this doesn't arise very often because, if neither of the couple are Catholics, why would they approach the Catholic church looking for a ceremony?)

tatli_lokma

I'm not going to argue with you, you may be right, but my own personal experience, and that of others on this site holds true that often getting a 'blessing' unless the priest is a family friend or well known to the couple is not easy.

I enquired about it myself and was told marriage in the eyes of the catholic church involves accepting the sacriment of marriage. A blessing is not something that the church officially recognises (but as I say you can get the odd priest willing to do it). If you are married outside of the church and then want a catholic acknowledgement of this marriage, from my experience and what I have been told you can only do so by having a further full marriage and accept the sacriment. This usually is only normal practice in countries where all marriages must have a civil non-religious element also (I think Holland used to be like this, not sure if it still is).

As for them accepting civil marriages as valid - they always acknowledge they are legally valid, whether one, both or no parties are Catholic. The issue is not that it is a 'valid' marriage in the legal sense, it is just that they are not valid in the Catholic sense as the sacriment of marriage has not been accepted. This is another reason why the whole divorce issue is such a problem for the church. I have heard of divorced people being remarried in church as their first marriage was civil. I have heard of others who were offered 'blessings' instead, and yet another person I know was told unequivically no, you're divorced, you can't have any sort of catholic ceremony. So as with much of the catholic church, there are rules, there are those who will bend or ignore the rules and those who don't even know the rules! Makes getting married a lot more complicated than it needs to be for a lot of couples!

Peregrinus

OK, this is complex, but basically the Catholic church’s position on marriage is this.

What constitutes any marriage is the mutual commitments of the couple - the promises of permanence, fidelity and exclusivity. There is no fundamental reason why these promises have to be exchanged before a priest or a minister of religion, or in a church building.

However for Catholics, and for Catholics only, the Catholic church imposes an additional requirement - they must get married in a Catholic ceremony, or else they must get a dispensation from this requirement from the church.

The upshot of all this is that, if two non-Catholics, A and B, marry in a civil ceremony, or a non-Catholic religious ceremony, or any ceremony at all, really, that’s a valid natural marriage (subject to the usual conditions, that they are freely consenting, that neither of them is already married to someone else, etc). (And if A and B are baptised Christians, that’s a valid sacramental marriage as well.) And if, say, they later get divorced and A then seeks marry C in in a Catholic ceremony, the answer will be no, you’re already married to B. A valid natural marriage is a marriage. You can’t marry someone else unless B dies, or you can show that your marriage to B was invalid all along, and get it annulled.

What if A and B seek, being already married in this way, seek to marry one another again in a Catholic ceremony? Well, since neither A nor B are Catholics, this won’t arise very often. But suppose they convert to Catholicism and feel the need to have their marriage “churchified”? They can’t get married, because they’re already married. But they can have a church ceremony in which they repeat and renew their wedding vows, which to the casual observer can look a lot like a marriage ceremony.

OK. Now take two other people, F and G. F is a Catholic; G is, say, a Methodist. They marry in a non-Catholic ceremony - it could be a Methodist ceremony, it could be a registry office affair - F having obtained from his bishop a dispensation from the usual requirement to marry in a Catholic ceremony. As far as the Catholic church is concerned, that’s a valid natural and sacramental marriage. Unless one of them dies or the marriage is annulled, neither of them can marry someone else in a Catholic ceremony. If they later decide they want a Catholic ceremony for their marriage to one another, they can have a renewal of vows, but they can’t have a marriage, because they’re already married.

Finally, consider J and K. J is a Catholic. They marry in a non-Catholic ceremony, without J having obtained a dispensation from the requirement to marry in a Catholic ceremony. As far as the Catholic church is concerned, this is not a valid marriage. They can get an annulment very easily and quickly, and then both J and K will be free to marry someone else in a Catholic church (provided civil legal requirements are also met, i.e. J and K have to get a state divorce as well as a church annulment.)

What if J and K do not break up, but instead feel the need to have their marriage recognised by the Catholic church? They do this by getting what’s called a "convalidation"; effectively, rectification of the failure to get a dispensation in the first place. This doesn’t have to involve a ceremony, but it can if the couple want it to.

Now, in no case do the couple get a ceremony called a “blessing” of their marriage. In the first two cases, they get a renewal of their marriage vows; in the third case, they get a convalidation of their marriage. But the point is that in each case they can have a ceremony. They’ll probably have to jump through hoops; they’ll be asked why they want the ceremony, and if the answer is “to keep the mother-in-law happy” or “because we’ll get better wedding photographs in a church”, those will probably not be seen as the right disposition with which to seek the ministry of the church. But if the answer refers to their own need to celebrate their commitment in a formal way, before God and in the presence of the church community, yup, they’re in.

tatli_lokma

As I said, I don't disagree with you as you seem to know what you're talking about. However in day to day terms explanations like yours and not provided by priests and people either get told 'no' or get a blessing which shouldn't really happen. For e.g my friend married in Turkey. Obviously a Catholic ceremony would be difficult to arrange so they had a civil ceremony. Upon return to Ireland 6mths later they wanted to have a second ceremony for those family members who couldn't attend. They approached the local parish priest, asked and like us were told emphatically no. We don't do blessings, there is no such thing. No other ceremony options or convalidation was offered.

So Mammy of the bride asked around. Got a priest relative of a friend of hers to agree to a blessing in the hotel. It certainly had no sacraments or anything, and was basically a repeat of the vows, with a few prayers and the priest giving a blessing over them. I honestly don't think there was any formal paperwork completed to recognise the marriage as Catholic.

So what I'm saying is that informing people properly what their options are and why seems to be unusual for the Catholic Church to do.

But thank you for taking the time to explain as everything you say makes sense and I always wondered about the whole process - especially when you hear conflicting experiences, I knew there must be more to it than we were told or indeed our friends. Very informative.