Good morning, Father,
I thank you for the service you make available by providing answers to people’s doubts.
I am a Brazilian girl, engaged to an Italian man.
Although I was baptized in the Catholic Church, I am now a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. However, my fiancé is Catholic.
I have always dreamed, since I was a child, of getting married in the countryside, surrounded by nature at sunset, with a religious ceremony.
But it is important to me that the marriage is validated by the Church, as my fiancé wants it to be valid in the Catholic Church.
So, here is my question: may we receive these two blessings? What shall I do?
Thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Silmara
The Priest’s Answer
Dear,
1. The situation you have presented is quite complicated because, by joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church—assuming you did so consciously—you have denied fundamental truths of the Catholic Church. In fact, you have committed heresy. By doing so, you have incurred excommunication, which means you cannot celebrate the sacrament within the Catholic Church.
2. To be able to celebrate it, you would need to have the excommunication lifted by the Bishop. However, the excommunication can only be lifted if you are repentant and withdraw from the Adventist Church.
3. If, instead, you are determined to remain in the Adventist Church, we must see what solution can be adopted. At this point, a prohibition remains for your fiancé against marrying an excommunicated person.
4. Regarding the double blessing: the exchange of consent cannot be repeated because, once given, it remains irrevocable. A prayer ending with a blessing may be performed, but repeating the exchange of consent is excluded.
5. This situation could be an opportunity to deepen your understanding of the truths of the faith and reconsider your transition to the Adventist Church, which perhaps occurred hastily, without sufficient knowledge of the truths of faith you were effectively denying. It should also be added that the Adventist Church is a Protestant church that does not count marriage as a sacrament.
6. Finally, your dream of getting married in the countryside, surrounded by nature at sunset with a religious ceremony, is certainly beautiful. However, the Sacrament of Matrimony is not merely a religious ceremony. It is a commitment to sanctification made before God, before one’s spouse, and before the Christian community—to love each other as God loves mankind and as Christ loves the Church, as indicated in Ephesians 5:22ff.
7. This journey of sanctification cannot be accomplished by human strength alone; it needs to be constantly purified and nourished by two sacraments: Penance (or Confession) and the Eucharist. These two sacraments are not merely religious ceremonies because they communicate a grace that comes from Heaven, providing an extraordinary strength beyond the ordinary. This strength, while allowing one to overcome various difficulties, facilitates that sanctification which is the primary purpose of our present life and of marriage itself.
I assure you of my prayers, so that you may reflect with your fiancé on what I have written, and I bless you.
Father Angelo
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