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Good evening Father, 

my name is M. and I am 54 years old. 

I would like to have your opinion concerning a matter that is very close to my heart.

I am divorced, not by my choice. I have subsequently cohabited with the father of my son for 7 years, but we parted ways at the end because he was a violent man. After several years, I met under difficult circumstances C., we lived together for four and a half years but then, due to the great friction between him and my son, I had to ask him to leave my house. Even if we have not seen each other for one and a half years, we kept thinking about each other. 

Recently, we casually met again, and we would like to resume a serious and conscious relationship, while living separately.

I talked about this in confession with the priest who follows me, and I was quite surprised when he said that, even if we don’t live together, if we have a physical relationship, I can no longer receive Holy Communion. This would be a heartache for me, I didn’t think that it would be an issue as big as living together, which is a mortal sin. 

I am keeping C. in suspense, he is waiting to know my decision, a decision that affects my whole life, and his life as well, with relative suffering, so I am not in an easy situation. 

I am finding myself having to choose between him and God, I am completely lost in a great confusion that I would have never imagined. I know that the Priest must follow the law of the Church, however, I believe that keeping in mind the human side would not be wrong either. 

What do you think about this? 

I thank you for your response. 

Kind regards. 

M. 

Priest’s answer

Dear M.,

1. Marriage is not just any form of common life, along the same lines as cohabitation or de facto unions.

Through marital consent, the two spouses surrender themselves to each other.

Somehow they dispossess themselves and in the fullness of love say to each other, “I no longer belong to me, but I belong to you. I am yours forever. In fact, I am exclusively yours.

I promise to love and respect you all my life.”

The marriage celebrated in the Church enshrines this union before God.

The bride and groom are happy to be told on that day, “what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (Mt. 19:6).

2. Therefore, although you are divorced and your husband has committed grave errors against you, for which he will be held responsible in front of God, you still belong exclusively to him. And he belongs exclusively to you.

If your husband is with another woman, he is living in a situation of permanent adultery.

And you, too, by uniting with other men who are not your husband, commit adultery.

3. This is why the priest could not give you absolution: because you live in a situation of permanent adultery.

The priest also has a conscience and knows that he has to answer before God for what he does.

If he tells you that extramarital sexual relations are licit he is committing a mortal sin and if he continues to celebrate Mass he is committing sacrilege.

4. The priest, even before being faithful to the laws of the Church, must be faithful to God of whom he is a minister.

What can he say or do to help you?

5. The first thing would be to check whether the marriage celebrated at the time was valid.

A dispute for the declaration of nullity of the bond could be instituted in an ecclesiastical court.

If granted nullity, you would be able to marry again.

At the same time, you have to check whether the man you would like to marry can do so. If he is also a divorcee, he continues to belong to his wife and cannot give himself to you.

6. You say that the priest should also consider the human side of this issue.

Yes, that is true. That is why the priest should not limit himself to tell the faithful that he cannot give absolution. Very appropriately then, pastoral care must be established for people who live in a state of irregularity before God and before the Church.

However, the priest must stand by the faithful as a priest and that means, as one who guides those entrusted to him in the ways of God, through the ways of sanctification.

His primary task is precisely this.

7. As you see, I have brought you back to the reality of the marriage you celebrated.

That marriage before God never ended with divorce.

On the day of your marriage, a man was handed over to you for you to guard him in the journey towards eternal life.

This man is legally separated from you, but he continues to remain yours.

Your task of guarding him for eternal life has not ended. On the contrary, it is yet to be fulfilled.

8. Just as God does not abandon a man when he is unfaithful but continues to pursue him in secret ways to bring him back to himself, and just as Jesus Christ does the same with the Church because he does not abandon him even though many of his people are unfaithful, so too are Christian spouses called to do.

9. With sacramental marriage, christian spouses have agreed to be for each other a visible sign of the faithful and exclusive love of God for man and of Jesus Christ for the Church.

They draw their mutual sanctification by imitating the ever-faithful love of God for man and Jesus Christ for the Church.

Sometimes this imitation is authentic martyrdom. But is it not through martyrdom that Christ obtained redemption for us?

10. Christian spouses should always keep before their eyes what God says to them through the mouth of Paul: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So (also) husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.” (Eph. 5:25-32). 

What husbands are to do for their wives also applies to wives towards their husbands.

11. “This mystery is great.”

Mystery means: hidden reality.

The hidden reality that Christian spouses must aim to live and manifest is precisely God’s way of loving and Jesus Christ’s way of loving. It is in this way that they feed their specific sanctification.

I am aware that these words perhaps put you even more in crisis.

But this is the Gospel about marriage that is to be proclaimed.

I gladly assure you of my prayers.

I wish you well in Christ and I bless you.

Father Angelo