Free Republic

Q: Please help me with a matter weighing on my conscience. My husband and I married in our parish church 16 years ago, but I agreed to get married there only because that’s what my parents wanted. Unlike my husband, I wasn’t really practicing my faith, I just went through the motions… gradually I had a reawakening of faith, and now am fully committed to the Catholic Church. But I’m afraid our marriage isn’t valid because I didn’t embrace concepts like indissolubility at the time of our wedding, nor did I want children, although I later changed my mind…. What...

Q: My family is doing genealogical research, and we’ve discovered discrepancies in the birth-dates of a couple of our great-grandparents…. They married very young, and depending on which birth-dates are correct, we’re thinking it’s possible they may really have been too young to marry validly in the Church. If a marriage is invalid due to the age of the spouses, does it automatically become valid when they’re old enough? Or do they need to have another wedding ceremony once they’ve reached the minimum age? –Frank