← The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
"Can I Go to the Wedding?" Answered
00:09:04
If you're Catholic, you're probably aware that not every wedding is the same in the eyes of the Church. You may have heard of situations—or been in ones yourself—where you're not sure if it's okay for you, as a practicing Catholic, to attend such a wedding. How do you know when it's okay and when it's not okay? Fr. Mike not only gives us a couple of guiding principles but also breaks down most of the situations you might find yourself in and tells us what Jesus and his Church asks of us.
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Is a practicing Catholic. Can I go? This person is getting married to this person. I was invited. May I attend the wedding? Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension presents. The best answer I've ever read is from a priest named Father Francis Hoffman or Father Rocky Hoffman. I think it's on a website called Simply Catholic. When people write to me, this is the answer. I send them. I just copy and paste and actually it's kind of funny because his first two points is, one, you never have to attend a wedding. Number two is, can I attend the wedding? Yeah, if it's a real marriage, then you may go. I recognize that the cry of the heart is, oh my gosh, I'm so sad. Either I've done this in the past or I'm hoping to do this in the future. To attend a wedding where it's like, actually, you can't go to the one of these. I understand that that could be an incredible, incredible burden on one's heart. Especially when it comes to, oh, these relationships could be destroyed. Like, if I don't go to this wedding, I will no longer have a relationship with this person. If I don't go to my sister's wedding, I will no longer have a relationship with her. I don't go to my whoever the person is, my child's wedding. I will no longer have a relationship with that person. Person. Now, keep these two or three things in mind. Number one, I really strongly believe that if someone wants to have a relationship with you, that relationship is bigger than one day. If someone wants to have a relationship with you that they're asking you to respect their decisions, they're asking you to respect their choices. And you get to ask. In a real relationship, you get to ask, okay, I do respect your choices. I respect your decisions. I'm also asking you to respect my choices in my decisions. If I can respect the fact that you don't believe the same thing as me, I hope that you could respect the fact that I don't believe the same thing as you. Relationship is a two way street. And so I'm going to honor you and respect you. Even though we don't believe the same thing, I'm asking that you honor and respect me. Our relationship is bigger than one day. It's up to the both of you whether you're going to keep each other in each other's lives. I think that's really important to understand and just to lean into that now. Why is this question even burning on all of our hearts? We're stuck between two things, Christ and our culture. That here is the teachings of Jesus Christ, who is God himself. If you distill Christ's teaching, you'd say that marriage is always and only between one man and one woman for life. Jesus further said these really difficult truths in like Matthew 19 where he says if someone divorces their spouse and marries another, they're committing adultery. So that that second marriage quote unquote, marriage is actually adultery. So that being said, may I attend a Catholic wedding in a Catholic church? The answer is yes, you can always go to a Catholic wedding in a Catholic church. Easy one. Number two, a Catholic wedding in a non Catholic setting. So you have two Catholics and or one Catholic, one non Catholic. Christian people are going to want to get married on the beach or wherever they want to get married because the bishop can say yep, you have permission. You can have a Catholic wedding in that non Catholic setting or no. If the local bishop has given them a dispensation for that, they may get married and you may attend. That's a valid wedding. If they have that dispensation from their bishop, then we're assuming that they're free to marry. So they're not previously married and divorced without an annulment. They are free to marry. There's no other objections, no other obstacles to them getting married. That would be a valid Catholic sacrament. Valid Catholic wedding you may attend. Also along those same lines, if this is a non Catholic wedding of two non Catholics, you can go so you have a Lutheran and a Methodist are getting married on the beach. You can go to that wedding, provided if they have communion, we don't receive communion. We only receive communion in the Catholic Church. So keep that in mind. Scenario number three, a non canonical wedding of a Catholic. So what that means is here is a Catholic or two Catholics who are not getting married in the Catholic Church and they don't have the dispensation from their bishop to to get to have that as a Catholic wedding or as a Catholic sacrament. Now can I go to that wedding? You could go to that wedding because the couple either doesn't care, they're nominally Catholic, right? Maybe they were just baptized and received some sacraments, but they don't practice the faith anymore and they don't really consider themselves Catholic. And so like why would we get married in the Catholic Church? I remember really having a really tough time wrestling with this one back in the day. Like when I first got ordained, I thought like no, absolutely not, you wouldn't go to that thing. And then I realized there's an aspect where, again, ignorance or indifference, that sense of they might not know any better. That's the ignorance part. Or, you know what, I was raised Catholic and I don't care. That's the indifference part. And so even though they were, you know, raised Catholic and baptized Catholic and all those kind of things, they never embraced their own Catholic faith. It's not going to be a valid wedding. It's not a sacramental wedding if this is between a Catholic and a non Catholic or between two Catholics and they don't have the dispensation. But you could, as their guest, attend that wedding with reservations because they can remedy that. They can actually appeal to the bishop, they can appeal through their pastor to have that wedding. You know, what they call seated sanation is a term for healing. They could have that wedding that you. Some people say they could still have their marriage blessed, like that kind of thing. There's still hope there. And so to attend that wedding would not be necessarily. You wouldn't necessarily be sinning. You could choose to do that. Especially again if, like, you know, they're nominally Catholic, they never embrace their faith, and, and they're just like kind of living their lives. You could go to that wedding. Now, on the same note, if those two individuals are not Catholic, that wedding is considered valid. We can, they're two Baptists or, you know, whatever combination of, of non Catholic, Christian. If they get married, we as Catholics consider that wedding to be a valid sacrament, even if they're not going to call it a sacrament. Okay, scenario number four, the remarriage. A divorced person without an annulment, this could be a divorced Catholic without an annulment, this could be, again, those two Baptists, they got married. The Catholic perspective on that is that was a sacrament. The Catholic perspective was that if you two Baptists, however, you got married, that was valid. If they get divorced and try to marry someone else, that is the remarriage of a divorced person without an annulment. Almost every case, we may not attend that wedding. As Jesus himself said, again, remember Matthew 19, as Jesus himself said, if you divorce your spouse and marry another, you're committing adultery. That second wedding would be a wedding celebrating essentially. Even if no one's thinking this way, my mind might not be in that place, my heart might not be in that place, but it is a wedding that is formalizing adultery in Jesus own words. And so we have to take Christ's words as they are. You have to take his teaching as it is. And so Catholics may not attend the remarriage or attempted remarriage of a divorced person without an annulment. At the same time, Father Rocky notes in his article that there are some wise and prudent priests who have offered an alternative to this using the principle of double effect. And if you're interested, go to Simply Catholic and find Father Rocky's article where he has a little paragraph on that. The fifth scenario is the attempted marriage of two individuals of the same sex. This is an action that goes against canon law and it goes against natural law. It's not remediable. Right? It says the person marrying outside the Church who can, like, have their marriage blessed later on. It's not remediable. Therefore, there's no circumstances in which a Catholic may attend the wedding. Attempted wedding of two individuals of the same sex. I can't make it to this wedding because we don't share the same beliefs. I don't believe that this is actual wedding, or I don't believe in divorce and remarriage because of Jesus. But here's the last piece. Jesus In Luke chapter 12, he even says this. He says, I did not come to bring peace. I came to bring the sword. And remember, I remember thinking like, what? What are you talking about? He said, from now on, Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother in law against daughter in law, and daughter in law against mother in law. Remember? Thinking like, that's crazy that that's. We live in like, you know, a Christian culture that doesn't happen anymore. And then I realize here in the post Christian culture, that happens all of the time. It's one of the reasons why Jesus had said, if you love father or mother more than me, you cannot be my disciple. You could also expand that if you love brother or sister more than me, you can't be my disciple. If you love your children more than me, you can't be my disciple. And in some of these cases, I'm going to choose my child over Jesus. Okay, what's that mean? I can't be a disciple of Jesus. In some of these cases, I'm going to choose my sister or brother over Jesus. In that case, this is the hard word of Jesus. He's like, okay, you're not being my disciple in this moment, or choose my parents over Jesus for not being his disciple. Our choices matter. And so we've gotten the invitation. Will I go? Hopefully after this video, you know, whether or not you are permitted to go and whether at this, after this video, you know, that if I go, I'm actually conspiring, condoning evil. It's a really hard word. Jesus said, if you want to be my disciple, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me. And so that's what we're doing today. And because we follow after Jesus, because we deny ourselves, because we pick up our cross, there are some places we have to go. And because we're following Jesus, there's some places we may not go. And these might be some of them. Anyways, from all of us here. Ascension presents. My name is Father Mike. God bless.