Huh. I was going to go along with everybody else here, saying, “you swim in their pool, you follow their rules.” Since all you’re using is their minister and their ceremony, that puts a little different light on things.
I’d say go with it anyway; they probably want you to go through with the whole shebang in case you decide to get married in the church after all; it’s also possible that the minister won’t perform the service anywhere at all if you’re not properly prepared for it.
The main point about the classes has been well made; I’ll just reconfirm that the classes are not a bad place to reflect on what you’re committing to, and are pretty painless.
The “priest interrogation” part, however, is a fascinating laboratory in which to watch a practitioner of a dogmatic religion (to which I belong, BTW) manuever between the prescribed questions he must ask and the realities of modern life.
I remember two things from that experience. One was the very artful phrasology the priest used in asking the tough questions: “You are aware of that in the Catholic faith it is considered a sin to use birth control”: “You are aware that in the Catholic traditional premarital sex is frowned upon”, and so forth. I confirmed with him that yes, my awareness was complete. He seemed very relieved to get past those, and almost hugged me when he figured out through inferences that we were not living together.
The other thing I remember was that while my wife was facing the quizmaster, I watched the Simpsons from the rectory couch.
On preview, I note that I am somewhat uncomfortable in light of recent revelations re: Catholic priests with both (a) the “near-hug” experience and (b) the ready availability of cartoons in the priests’ lounge area…maybe I should have asked if he was aware that “messing with little boys is the fast track to hell”…
Also, does anyone here have any idea if the Church will even marry us at my parents house. We are not just doing it for shits and giggles. I have a little sister who is bed ridden, and just getting her into her wheel chair and out into the yard to see me get married will be exhausting for her. I cant imagine her not being there, and there is no way she would be able to come to the church. Does the Church work to help you out in these types of situations?
Ps I agree whole-heartedly with rubicon; pedophilia is right up there with line-dancing as the most heinous of crimes.
You’re right, AWB, I should have chosen my words better. Marriage is a sacrament in the Catholic and Anglican churches, and I presume Orthodox although I don’t know much about Orthodoxy.
I would assert, though, that Protestant marriages are more than a covenant between the two individuals, but a covenant between the two individuals and God. But of course there are a million different interpretations in the various Protestent churches.
Excuse what might be a hijack, but I’d like to ask a couple more questions about how such an Encounter session, or extended counseling or courses, might end given certain circumstances. I haven’t seen an unambiguous answer yet to a question implied by the OP, “Does the Church have a veto power over whwther you are allowed to be married within it”?
It would seem likely that the answer is yes, under some circumstances. Is this correct?
And if so, what would be grounds on which the priest (or whoever ) would do so.
Suppose **HoviBaby[b/] and his fiancee were insistent about their lack of interest or intent in following Church dogma on issues related to marriage and relationships. Which of the following comments might result in the church refusing to perform the ceremony?
Yes, we’re sleeping/living together now, and no, we won’t be stopping that between now and the wedding.
Yes, we’re presently using birth control, and we pray fervently that it keeps working! 
If, God forbid, the birth control fails and we have any children, they would never see the inside of a Catholic church. We’re doing this for our parents, because they’d like us to be married by a priest. But we won’t promise away our children’s future just to keep the folks happy.
I don’t mean to suggest that HoviBaby would would personally make such choices. But his comments do suggest a challenging attitude, and I’m curious as to which straws might be the ones that break the church’s figurative “back”.
I would say that your biggest problem will not be the church, but your girlfriend’s parents. If they have the 'nads to tell you how to get married, gawd only knows how meddlesome they’ll be in other aspects of your life. (shudder!)
My sister (the firebrand heathen) went through the Catholic classes for the sake of her husband-to-be’s family, and managed to survive them without bursting into flame or whatever normally happens when the unbaptized set foot in a church. 
So much depends on the individual church and the priest involved. In my sister’s case the priest went off on a tangent during the sermon about “fruitfulness” that most of my half of the family found either amusing or embarrassing. Fifteen years later, they have two children and have deemed that to be sufficiently “fruitful”.
I got married in an ELCA church and also had to go through a few sessions with the pastor (to be honest, we hated him, but the spouse was Lutheran and the church was gorgeous and had the best acoustics in town). We apparently scuppered his speeches on marital longevity and living together as we were already cohabiting and both sets of parents had been married for more than 30 years at that point.
Oops, HoviBaby, didn’t see your last post.
I have been to marriages outside of churches where priests perform the ceremony, so I know it’s possible.
That’s the very first question you should ask when you contact someone in the church to schedule all this stuff. If they say no, it HAS to be in a church, you can re-evaluate your willingness to hoop-jump.
Getting a Catholic wedding performed outside of a Catholic church requires a lot of dancing and hoop jumping even if you’re a member of the Kennedy family.
Remember, marriage is a sacrament in the Catholic Church, and the Church is very protective of how and where sacraments are adminstered.
Well, no priest is under any obligation to grant anyone a sacrament if he has misgivings about the attitudes of the people requesting them. I’ve known two couples who wanted to get married in the Church, but who were turned away by a priest who told them “Based on what you’re telling me, I couldn’t perform this wedding in good conscience.”
In neither case, mind you, was the pastor’s objection religious in nature. But the principle would undoubtedly hold. If a couple told that pastor, “Look, we don’t believe in any of this God crud, but we just want a church wedding,” I’m pretty certain my current pastor would sigh, and tell them to go find a justice of the peace.
Similarly, if a non-practicing Catholic couple told him, “We don’t believe in God, but we want a christening for our baby so we can have a big party for the grandparents,” I’m quite certain he’d refuse.
But, as far as I know, there’s no absolute rule telling a priest whether or not he should perform a wedding. So, even if MY pastor would refuse to perform a wedding for two non-believers, there are undoubtedly priests who would hold their noses and perform such a ceremony, if only as a favor to the couple’s parents.
Re: Getting married in your back yard.
Have you cleared this with the priest, yet? Rare is the bishop nowadays that will allow a Catholic wedding outside the church building (for good reasons, permission is regularly given for marriages in a Protestant church [e.g., the bride’s dad is a minister] or a hall [e.g., fiance is Jewish]).
Regardless of where you get married, the marriage is never a private affair. The civil state is involved with all its marriage laws (ownership of property, legal rights, child custody, name change, etc…). And likewise a church marriage makes the marriage a public event in the life of the whole church, not just for you and your families. And so, the church sets the rules for a church marriage, no matter where it happens.
Re: The wait.
Church law requires preparation for an engaged couple. It doesn’t set a specific time, but the overwhelming majority of bishop’s have set six months as the minimum (the dioceses of NJ require a year!). The purpose of the wait is so that preparation can take place. I’m sure you think you’re ready, and you think you have no need for what the RCC might want you to know or consider, but one would hope that the Catholic party would want to at least check out what her own church would like her to know and prepare for.
The preparation is more than just learning how to be married. It’s not just a class.
First, the church needs to make sure that you two are free to be married in the church: that you’ve not been married before; that you’re not just doing this on a lark; that you understand this is for life; that you’re not brother and sister; etc… You’ll even be asked if you’re able to physically engage in intercourse, since that’s a requirement of consummation.
Second, the church wants to make sure that you’re really prepared. Sociologists point out that couples often have blind spots in the relationship, i.e., topics they both avoid for fear that their possible disagreement might be a deal breaker. The preparation the church puts you through is to go down a list and make sure you’ve discussed everything you need to discuss before you get married. It’s not too good a situation for a couple to marry and then find out one wants one child, the other wants ten.
Third, the church also wants the opportunity to sell you on the spiritual and yes, moral, aspects of married life. While the ban on artificial contraceptives is controversial, there are other issues which should be quite amenable. For example, the church also promotes other moral stances like equality in relationship (the RCC doesn’t go into that fundamentalist “man is the head of the woman” crap); mutual respect (which preclude physical and psychological abuse); praying together; raising the children with Christian faith; etc…
What to expect
You’ll have one to three meetings with the priest or deacon preparing you for marriage. He’ll ask basic questions about your relationship. Be honest and you’ll be fine. He’s seeing if you two have the barest minimum ability to express your desire for marriage. Why do you want to get married? Why this person? Describe your partner’s personality to me.
If you’re a mope and can’t think of one nice thing to say about your fiance; or there’s talk of abuse or alcoholism or severe arguments; then your priest might refer you to counseling. This isn’t to judge you, but to help you two work through whatever the problem might be.
If you’re living together, the priest may ignore it, or challenge you two to separate until marriage, or, take a middle ground and just discuss it with you. You don’t need to worry too much about it, being an agnostic, it’s your Catholic fiance that will have to explain herself. Note that the priest can not force you to separate or call off the wedding if you’re living together. The catholic party has a right to marriage and cohabitation is not a canonical impediment to marriage.
The marriage workshop might be a one-day session, or two-nights, or a weekend retreat. This is the easy one. When run well, these workshops operate on an adult model of education, i.e., they don’t teach you how to be married, but rather, set an environment where you two prepare each other. Talks from the couples who present are only supposed to be jumping off points for you two to talk about these topics with each other. You fill out work sheets and compare answers. Nobody grades, nobody looks over your shoulder, nobody judges.
I recommend that if given a choice between several workshops that you get a recommendation from someone who’s gone before. Some can be deadly dull, others can be absolutely invigorating.
And congratulations on your engagement.
YMMV depending on the priest you get/weekend session people, but this was my experience:
The priest, when he noticed my then-fiancee and I gave the same address as our current place of residence, merely gently requested that we abstain until the ceremony, supposedly to have us focus more on more spiritual and other aspects of our relationship.
The priest didn’t ask us this, while the weekend encounter included a short pitch for a natural method involving basal body temperature and ovulation times, plus the older couples who were leading the session talking about things when they got married like “shopping around” for churches that wouldn’t condemn contraception. There was no outright prohibition of “artificial” contraception methods.
This last one would probably do it. To be married, my husband had to affirm that he would do his utmost to see that any children we happened to have were “raised Catholic” (we interpreted this to mean that bringing them to other churches was cool too, and I believe talked with the priest about that at the time), and I had to affirm (IIRC) that I understood my husband had said this and would support him. If you said “no way this kid will ever be in a Catholic church”, that would most likely end the situation right there.
[veering out of GQ territory for a moment]One guess for the reasoning is that you’re showing some measure of devotion to the church - they aren’t there to be pretty backdrops for weddings, they’re a church. They want people who believe in their way of doing/believing things to continue worshipping there or in a similar church, and if you basically say “we just want to get married here, but you aren’t good enough for our future kids”, that’s pretty insulting.[/end veering]
Your father married the pastor?
Yes. A baptized Catholic has a right to be married in the church. But like most rights, it is not absolute.
There’s a list of canonical (of Church law) impediments to marriage, e.g., you’ve been married in the Church before, you’re mother and son, you’re an ordained priest, etc…
If a priest were to deny or delay marriage, he must provide a canonical reason. He just can’t say, “they look funny.”
Every Catholic who has a physical residence (even if it’s only part time) has a local Catholic parish they belong to. Every square inch of the earth is divided up that way. Their local parish must provide the sacrament of marriage when it is requested. However, the Catholic must go through the appropriate preparation and follow the norms of a church marriage.
What often happens is that a Catholic who is only marginally Catholic will approach a parish that is not their own (because it’s pretty or near where they want the reception); or, they won’t wait the minimum waiting time; or, they want to be married on the beach (against most bishops’ rules). In these situations, they’re told: no, you have to go to your own parish, and get married in that church building at their scheduled time. At which point, the marginal Catholic runs off telling everyone, “The Church wouldn’t marry me!” When in fact, they could’ve gotten married in the Church if they cooperated with the rules.
Cohabitation is not a listed impediment to marriage. And so, they would get married. There might be a slight delay in scheduling the date while the priest continues to make the pitch for them to see the light. And if they already had children, no priest would ask them to separate first.
However, if they make their point in a completely dismissive and mocking attitude toward the church, the priest can delay the ceremony until they get a change of 'tude. A complete lack of faith is impediment to any sacrament.
This gets tricky. Completely ruling out children under any circumstance is an impediment to marriage. However, use of artificial birth control to regulate the number and spacing of children is not an impediment. (In fact, Church doctrine is that couples have the right and obligation to regulate birth. The catch is you can’t do it by means of artificial devices, drugs, or surgery.)
Raising your children in the faith is one of the ‘laws of the church’ and would go toward the argument of rejecting the Catholic faith, and thus, this would be an impediment to marriage. Also, “doing this only for our parents” might also cause a pause. The Catholic party must say that they choose this for themselves freely.
Do you take this man to be your awfully wedded husband?
Ah, that’s a new data point.
Wait until you’re face to face with the priest and get a chance to show that you’re respectful and reasonable. Then ask politely. Express that you know it would be better in a church, but this is for your sister. Make sure your fiance is 100% behind this and expresses that she wants this, too.
It’ll help if you ask for a tissue to wipe your eyes.
Face to face, priests are a soft touch if you don’t demand but plead earnestly.
If he’s in anyway resistant, ask if you could write a letter to the bishop for persmission, knowing that the priest ‘is only doing what the bishop wants’ (the priest has to get permission from the bishop anyway to do this, and given the reason, it will most likely be granted).
One last angle: given that you’re not Catholic, you might not be allowed to have a Catholic Mass for the wedding, but just a Wedding Ceremony. In this case, a deacon can do the wedding. While a priest may sniff at doing a wedding in a home, one of the parish deacons might love the idea. And so, again, if the priest seems reluctant, ask if a deacon can do it.
Good luck!
Whatever you do, don’t go the mother-of-the-bride or the bribery route. That’ll just piss him off.
HoviBaby, you have my best wishes. Like a previous post, I am concerned a bit about the parents insisting on ANY particular stipulation of YOUR wedding plans, but since you are agreeable, so be it. Just beware of future parental meddling, and hope your wife can deal with them later if need be.
I just wanted to offer one piece of advice to you and your fiance’, if I may be so bold: Separate Bank Accounts.
You want to avoid financial headaches? That’s it baby. She has her money, you have your money, and you’re each responsible for keeping your end up. My wife an I even write two checks for each bill. It sounds silly, but it works for us. We NEVER argue about money. We never have to. We tried a “household checking account” once. It was a pain in the ass.
Jus’ my two cents.
As I read this thread, I see many posts from people who “went through it” and married a Catholic. How about one from somebody who did the same thing, and ended up not being married to the Catholic?
It was one of the factors that eventually separated us, though not the only one. I was raised Protestant (Presbyterian, actually), and she was, as she liked to say, a “cradle Catholic.” We attended the classes at her church, where the wedding was to have taken place, and for the most part, the classes weren’t bad at all. They dealt with such things as finances and children–and while the emphasis was on raising children as Catholics, there wasn’t any threat that if we didn’t, the kids wouldn’t be accepted into any Church. We met some nice couples, and the facilitators were pretty accepting of non-Catholics. Not so bad, so far.
Where we ran into problems was in the Catholic church’s insistence that I have a baptismal certificate. I don’t; I never have. Yes, I was baptized, and that fact is on file at the church where it happened, but my fiancee’s church expected me to be able to produce some kind of certificate, like a driver’s license.
My attitude was, “Sorry, no can do. You want proof, you call the church where it happened. Here’s their number.” But they wouldn’t call. To make them happy, I had to be able to produce a certificate out of my wallet, like a driver’s license. Which my baptismal church wasn’t willing to issue–my baptismal church was waiting for a phone call from the Catholics with a request for a document. Talk about a Catch-22!
I was very lucky, and found that one of the parish priests was about my age, and enjoyed an evening of TV sports and a couple of beers. In fact, we used to meet for such an evening once in a while at a local pub. He was a good guy, and I will always think kindly on the Catholic priesthood because of him–although some of his colleagues would have made me think otherwise. I won’t get into the time I had to tell one of them to “f— off,” but it did happen, and while I’m not necessarily proud of it, it had to be said. And it was because his faith meant that he saw me as some sort of lesser person than a Catholic.
But my priest friend told me to hold my ground–that if we both insisted, and regardless of documents, a wedding could take place, in the Church, with a Mass for those who were Catholic (my mother threatened to leave for a quick smoke while all those Catholics ‘ate their goddamn Catholic crackers,’ but at least my priest friend said that it was possible). In the end, my Catholic fiancee and I broke up, and my mother died. But that’s not germane to this thread.
This is getting away somewhat from your original question, HoviBaby, but I hope that it serves to prompt you to ask questions of the priesthood, questions of your fiancee, and possibly, questions of your fiancee’s parents. I wasn’t about to let Rome run my life, and while your decision is up to you, I would hope that you and your fiancee can have a wedding that goes according to your own wishes, and not according to what Rome, or your fiancee’s parents, say.
'Nuff said for now.
You’re confusing Catholics with Baptists.
The Catholic Church can be very accomadating under reasonable circumstances. Your request to be married at your parents’ house for your sister’s sack is reasonable, and I’m sure your priest will understand.
As for the hoops they put you through, it doesn’t matter that you’re not Catholic. You want to be married within the Catholic traditions, then you follow the rules to do so.
The six month waiting period helps in many cases, but every rule can be bent/broken. My sister ended up getting pregnant and wanted to be married to her fiance before the child was born. The priest was very accomodating (even though the church had the six month waiting period) and they got married in 2 months. They had to do all of the classes and counselling required though.
I was told by my priest before getting married that the waiting period was actually part of trying to get couples to think about things more – just like the classes and counselling. By waiting for six months rather than rushing into it, the couple is more likely to evaluate the marriage more so that they are certain about their decision. It also does make things easier for scheduling and getting through the requirements.
Enjoy and good luck!
Thanks everyone. You’ve calmed my nerves a lot. I’m not bringing a bat with a nail in it as I had originally planned.