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Jay,
- What, specifically, are you referring to as "all the preparation beforehand"?
If you mean pre-Cana classes, this preparation is in your best interest as it will help to strengthen your marriage and your faith and make sure you are making the right decisions. If you mean all the logistical details of a wedding, I expect those can be greatly simplified if not eliminated, but the person to talk to is your pastor or whoever would be doing the wedding.
Planning up front to have a civil marriage first and then a convalidation later is, at least under normal circumstances, frankly an abuse of the system, so to speak, a sin known as presumption. Let me explain.
For Catholics, to have a "valid" (real) marriage, they must, under normal circumstances, be married in the Church; the courthouse doesn't count. To faithfully follow the Catholic faith calls for abstaining from sexual relations entirely until you are married in the eyes of God in the church. To do otherwise is a grave sin (called fornication; one which, if you are aware of it and choose to do it freely knowing that, deprives you of God's grace and your salvation, i.e., puts you in imminent danger of Hell). The apostle Paul states,
| “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness . . . and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21). |
So if you are planning to do this ahead of time, and plan to have sexual relations before your convalidation, you are planning on committing a grave sin. This should bother you as a practicing Catholic.
Convalidation is intended for people who wander away, ignorant of their Catholic faith, who later discover the truth and repent of their misdeeds and wish to make things right. To casually plan to do a convalidation after getting civilly married is not cool — it's like intentionally wronging a friend to your own advantage knowing that they will forgive you, and relying on that to get away with wronging them.
- Is there a specific reason why after ten years you want to get married in such a rush?
I can see at least one situation where this might not be so bad a course of action, and that is if:
- you are under some kind of duress, for example, if you were with child and wanted to get married before the birth. In this case, a church "marriage" would certainly be invalid and you would have to wait.
- Or maybe you won't have access to a priest for an extended period of time.
- Or maybe there are other extenuating circumstances you haven't mentioned.
To drill down you really need to consult your priest; it's hazardous to make an assessment based on a single e-mail over the Internet.
My first recommendation is to turn to the Lord with all your heart, putting Him above all things, and ask Him earnestly for the grace to do what is right and pleasing to Him.
My next recommendation is that if you have been having sexual relations, to cease (with the help of prayer and God's grace) until you get married in the Church, having a deep change of heart on the matter with sorrow for what you've done, and seek the sacrament of reconciliation for this and all the rest of your sins.
I know it's hard, and you may fail from time to time, in which case the sacrament of Reconciliation in conjunction with prayer for God's grace will give you the strength you need.
Eric |
