J.J.,

A formal canonical inquiry needs to be made. It depends on when she left the Catholic Church and if she made a formal renunciation of it.

If it is invalid, assuming neither of you were previously married, it's a simple procedure called convalidation. The two of you should consult her pastor.

As far as her return, all she would need to do is go and receive the Sacrament of Confession and confess her departure and any mortal sins she may have committed in the interim.

Eric

J.J.,

The reason your marriage may be invalid is because Catholics are subject to canon law and are required to follow certain procedures for a marriage to be valid. It's like if you are a U.S. citizen, you have to follow U.S. law to legally accomplish certain things. Bad things can happen when you don't follow the law, regardless of whether you are aware of it or not.

In Catholicism, Catholics are required to be married in front of a priest or deacon with the Church's blessing. The Church:

• gives them some catechesis and
• verifies that they understand the obligations of marriage,
• that there are no active, conflicting marriages, and
• that everything is on the up-and-up.

It is possible, with a dispensation, for a Catholic to marry a non-Catholic in front of a non-Catholic minister, as long as the paperwork has been done.

In order to underscore the importance of proper marriage prep and so forth, the Church makes not just the liceity ("legal-ness") of marriage contingent on contracting it with the blessing of the Church, she makes its validity contingent on it. So, if you don't follow the rules, your marriage is null and void.

It may seem legalistic, but the Church has well over a billion people and has existed for almost 2,000 years. She's the oldest, if not one of the oldest, continuously-functioning organizations in history. You can't run a large organization in an ad-hoc fashion. There have to be some rules and formalities. And, with the Church's 2,000 years of experience, she's run into every conceivable odd scenario and problem, so those are accounted for in the law. (There's a canon that deals with people who kill their spouses to be able to remarry, and canons that deal with secret marriages in countries where it is a hazard to be publicly married.) That being said, compared with the U.S. code, which is 54 volumes and 60,000 pages, canon law is merely 1,752 fairly short paragraphs, which is remarkably small for an organization of its size and age.

You and your wife did not follow the proper procedure for Catholics to get married. Depending on when your wife left the Church, she may or may not, under canon law at the time you were married, have been regarded as a Catholic. (Today it is not possible for Catholics to canonically leave the Catholic Church; at one time this was possible. There was simply too much ambiguity about what constituted formally defecting from the Catholic Church, so they closed that avenue.)

In order for her to receive Confession and the Eucharist, until convalidation, you would simply have to live as brother and sister, temporarily giving up your marital rights.

Eric

Hi J.J.,

You said:
I now understand our marriage is seen as outside of the precepts of Catholic Canon law, which makes, by default, our marriage invalid and illicit.

• Are we therefore guilty of committing the sin of adultery, a mortal sin I think, which needs to be confessed ASAP?

Well, technically the sin in question would be fornication, not adultery; but if you did what you did in good conscience, thinking you were married, you would not have been culpable.

Eric

Hi J.J.,

You said:

• Does the sin now become applicable since we have now been consciously made aware of it?
  
• And are we now culpable until our convalidation?

Yes.

Eric