Hi Stephanie,

Congratulations on discovering the Catholic faith! That is good news indeed. Thanks be to God.

You will need to obtain annulments for your previous two marriages. For details about the process, contact your local parish priest. It's a process that takes a year or more and requires witnesses and statements and reams of documentation.

The goal of the annulment is to ascertain whether the marriage was valid when it was contracted. Nothing that happens after the marriage affects whether the marriage is valid, although evidence after the marriage may shed light on the circumstances before the marriage, for example, behaviors only evident after the marriage might highlight a condition that existed at the start of the marriage that impeded its validity. A good booklet on this subject is:

• Annulments: What you need to know by Jimmy Akin from Catholic Answers

I recommend you get this book and study it.

Generally if you are actively married, you must obtain annulments for previous marriages before coming into communion with the Catholic Church. If an annulment is denied, it may be possible to be received by forsaking your marital rights but talk to a parish priest about it.

If you wish to go deeper, consider buying a cheap copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to learn everything we believe as Catholics.

Hope this helps,

Eric

Hi, Stephanie —

Your first marriage is clearly valid so that would need a declaration of nullity, commonly known as an annulment.

There is not enough information on your second marriage as we do not know the faith of the second husband — only that he didn't practice.

If he was never of any faith, then the second one would need to be declared null after the first one was proven invalid. They can be done relatively simultaneously.

As to the faith-hopping, that is not a hindrance canonically, but if I were your priest I would definitely explore it as we would not want your Catholic faith to be just another experiment.

Rather, the priest should be sure that you are making a fundamental decision for the rest of your life.

Good luck. You will need a bit of patience but God makes us wait sometimes — this too is part of being a Catholic.

Fr. Jonathan