Q: I received this email from a priest in our diocese:
“A couple are applying to be married in the Church. He is Hindu, she is Catholic. The Hindu party is firm in his beliefs – he is very definitely not Christian and appears to have no desire to be one anytime soon. He is comfortable in not preventing his prospective spouse for exposing the children to the Catholic faith, but he has made it clear that he will also expose them to Hinduism and whatever other faiths the children may wish to investigate. So, he is comfortable with signing the pre-marriage statement about not preventing his spouse from trying to raise the children as Catholics. That being said, how are we to get around the actual marriage vows? In the Rite of Marriage between a Catholic and non-Christian, the third vow reads: ‘Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?’ The rubrics say the vow can be taken out, but then only alludes to old age where the couple are past child-bearing years. As it currently stands, he has said he cannot affirm that statement due to the second clause of the sentence.”
Questions aside regarding the wisdom of this couple getting married, or a priest presiding at a marriage where the stated intent is to expose the children to a variety of religions so they can pick one, CAN this priest simply remove this particular question, given that it is removable under at least one circumstance? Especially if he knows that the removal is because the groom objects to the Church’s intention? (All I know regarding this is #41(3) of the rite book “…If it seems more appropriate, the questions before the consent may be omitted…” but that is given to the conference of bishops, not individual clergy.)
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A: There’s no problem removing that question because these circumstances do suggest it. The age of the couple is cited as an example, not the only example.
I didn’t treat that point specifically, but you may find helpful this talk I gave in 2017: https://paulturner.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/When-is-a-sacrament-not-a-sacrament-original-copy.pdf