Go for it my friend. I have no intentions of telling you that you are wrong.
I know what the Pastor told me 30 years ago. He told me I had to make a choice between my education/career and the Church. He also informed all other Lectors that if any of them covered for me they would immediately be expelled. All I had asked for was a semester hiatus of serving at Sunday morning Mass because I had been given a morning news shift at the college radio station - totally unheard of for a freshman. I was perfectly willing to take on all Saturday and Sunday evening Mass and any other Mass, as long as it was not between 6am and noon on Sunday.
If seeking an education and being granted an opportunity to get some experience in my chosen field is a sin, then I accept the label of sinner proudly.
I won’t bother you with the details of how a Father dealt with my wedding arrangements while I was in the hospital other than to say he not only never bothered to visit me, he didn’t even bother to return my phone calls.
Not all of them are like that. My wife was literally physically protected in a Catholic Hospital when she went quad. An abusive man her ex was trying to get in to in his words watch the B die. A sister with a blackbelt escorted him out. The sisters even though we were Baptist ministered to her needs even the spiritual ones. The day of our wedding her own dad disowned her in an attempt to stop our wedding. The sister who knew him and had seen it all told her to marry and not to let him stop it. The man was a sadist of the highest order. He was threatening to place her kids in an orphanage and her in a nursing home. We talked of marriage in our future. When this crisis arose we speed-ed up our plans.
The Nuns attended the ceremony as did the hospital Chaplin a RC Priest. We had our Minister do the honors as his wife has also helped my then girlfriend through her abandonment by her first husband for another woman a kid actually. Yes we did recieve our ministers counceling before marriage. We still have the cross the Nun gave us as a wedding present and the Priest blessed.
How ironic too. My family is about 50% RC on my dads side and my cousin a Vicar General in a city I will not reveal. There's several in our family who in their youth were confined for life to wheelchairs Only one has not married and it's simply that persons choice. It's never been made an issue.