• Britney Spears’ wedding: Who can get married in a Catholic church?

Julia Long
Welcome to Conversation. The Belmont Abbey College Podcast. I’m Julia Long, and today I’m joined by Father Matthew Schneider. Father, thanks so much for being here.

Father Matthew Schneider
Thank you for having me.

Julia Long
Before we get started, I just love for you to tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Father Matthew Schneider
OK, so I’m a Catholic priest with the Legionaries of Christ. The Legionaries are a religious community. We’re all over Latin America and Europe and things like that. And our mission is really to help for people to be apostles of the service of the church. And at least for now, I’m teaching here at Belmont teaching theology. I’m originally from Calgary, Canada.

Father Matthew Schneider
My whole family still lives up there. You know, I’m somewhat well-known on social media and Catholic circles for writing articles and, you know, tweeting and things like that. And I just finished my doctoral thesis in the end, of June, July there. So that’s why that’s kind of the transition to teaching this semester, so.

Julia Long
What was your thesis on?

Father Matthew Schneider
My thesis was on a Catholic theological analysis of the right to information or privacy. So it sounds kind of abstract, but the application to it, which I didn’t get into as much, I stayed more principles would be things like the NSA or Facebook spying on you or your boss ask you for a genetic test or like HIPA, the health privacy rules and things like that.

Father Matthew Schneider
So that would be the application of it. There really wasn’t much in kind of Catholic theology on that. There’s a lot in kind of secular thought. And I thought, well, what can Catholic theology add to this discussion? And so that’s where that’s where I worked with, you know, 400 pages later, I have a doctoral thesis out of it.

Julia Long
So it’s really crazy how that happens. And that’s similar not 400 pages, but I did a master’s thesis a couple of years ago, and it’s crazy how it at some point takes on a life of its own. Well, I really am excited about our discussion today. So first, some context for the audience. Many of you may have seen the same tweet I saw from Britney Spears a little bit ago about not being permitted to marry in the Catholic Church.

Julia Long
And she seemed a little bit disappointed by this fact. And the tweet that I saw was included in an article. And Father, you were quoted in that article, and being a Protestant myself, I’m not very familiar with the requirements to get married in the Catholic Church or the historical context. Why? So I thought that this might be a really good opportunity for myself to be educated and maybe for our audience to learn a little bit, too.

Julia Long
Yeah. So I think a good place to start is just what first of all, for maybe our listeners who aren’t as familiar, what happened with Britney. Right. Let’s get into that. Yeah.

Father Matthew Schneider
So Britney had was visiting some beautiful church out in the L.A. area. I forget the name of it off top of my head. And she said, Oh, I want to be married here. But they said I had to be Catholic and had to do some kind of test or something like that. Yeah. Which does kind of correspond to a Catholic wedding.

Father Matthew Schneider
Like one of the two parties has to be Catholic and you have to do some kind of preparation where you agree to follow church teaching and that.

Julia Long
So, yeah, yeah. OK, so then she took to twitter and shared. And then I think it was really interesting to see some of the discussion. Some people, you know, came out and kind of in support of, oh, well, yes, of course you would need to be Catholic. And then others were saying, why would you need to be, you know, couldn’t you just get married in the place?

Julia Long
So I think this is a good opportunity for you to help myself and our audience understand what is a Catholic wedding, what constitutes a Catholic wedding?

Father Matthew Schneider
Well, I think we have to understand how the church understands marriage, because marriage ultimately is a reflection of the wedding between Christ in the church as a model for a Catholic marriage. And Christ gave himself the church, the church because it gives itself to Christ completely. And that’s kind of the model of a Catholic wedding. So that’s like the kind of ideal.

Father Matthew Schneider
And that’s also where we get a lot of the things that you know, Catholics are known for that, you know, it has to be a man and a woman. It can’t be one man and three women. You know, it has to be open to life because that self-giving and that openness yeah. You know, and things like that.

Father Matthew Schneider
So those type of those type of realities are like the most fundamental reality of the Catholic Church understanding of marriage. In that sense is that sacramental understanding. Obviously, we also recognize a natural marriage. So, you know, two non-Catholics get married, you know, two to atheists or to Hindus or whatever else. It’s still a still a valid marriage or what we call a natural marriage.

Father Matthew Schneider
And it still should follow the same principles. It doesn’t have the same motivation because there’s not that same spiritual connection, you know, with Christ in the church. You know, like two Hindus are not imitating Christ in the church or imitating somebody as it’s also referred to in the Trinity, the father, the son. And then they bring forth the Holy Spirit.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah, but the Hindus aren’t imitating that either. So they’re just like a man and a woman married, you know, have their three kids or whatever. And then the church.

Julia Long
Would recognize that as a natural marriage.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yes, it would recognize it would recognize that as a natural marriage, assuming the proper things are in place for a natural marriage.

Julia Long
Sure. And what are those proper things in place for a natural marriage?

Father Matthew Schneider
So it needs to be it needs to be a man and a woman because it’s kind of, you know, the definition of a marriage is includes like, you know, for the procreation. Education of children like a man and a woman are the only way to make children. And it needs to be open to children. Not to say that it’s necessarily going to have children.

Father Matthew Schneider
Like if you have a widow and widower who get married at 60, they probably are assuming that they won’t have children unless there’s a miracle or if there’s some kind of medical issue. One of them already know it’s most likely they can’t have kids, things like that. It needs to be exclusive in the sense that I intend just for you for the rest of my life.

Father Matthew Schneider
I’m not going to be with other women or other men. Yeah. And then and then permanent in the sense that till death do us part that we all that you know, everybody has remembered from wedding vows that they’ve been to at weddings and things and not just kind of like we’re going to do a trial marriage for the next three years and then we’ll see if we’re going to actually have a marriage.

Julia Long
Yeah. And are those are those three principles the same for a sacramental marriage or are there additional ones?

Father Matthew Schneider
There’s a few slight variations in details there in the sense, but they’re essentially the same OK.

Julia Long
So and you hit on this a little bit, but I had a friend who was not Catholic. She fell in love with a man who was she was Protestant they live in France now. They’re married. He is Catholic now. She is Catholic. And they were married in the Catholic Church. Is there, you know, kind of a need for individuals who are not Catholic to convert to the faith to be married?

Julia Long
Or is that just more of a personal choice?

Father Matthew Schneider
It’s more of a personal choice. There’s a requirement there that they would allow their children to be raised Catholic if they have any children in the marriage and that they agreed to the principles of Catholic marriage. In that sense, you know, we talked about, but they don’t have to have to convert like she got married before she converted.

Father Matthew Schneider
I have a brother in law who was in a similar situation, who’s now Catholic but was not when he got married to my sister and things like that. So those that that can happen, the conversion, but it’s not that necessary to get married in a Catholic church. You need one of the two parties to be Catholic. You don’t need both to be Catholic.

Julia Long
OK, and are there differences in the actual ceremony between two Catholic individuals and not.

Father Matthew Schneider
Not really significantly? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, you know, that would be different.

Julia Long
So yeah, so I think this is a point of discussion in the public space about being able to be married and in the Catholic Church. And I think one thing that always helps is to understand how we got here. Yeah. And the historical context. So can you tell us a little bit about how we got here?

Father Matthew Schneider
OK, well, I think there’s kind of three points. First of all, you know, like any kind of group, if you have a religious house for that group, you’re generally going to at least one of the two parties getting married is going to need to be in that group, you know, like. Yeah, like if some friends of mine who are like a Christian and an atheist went to the synagogue, I wouldn’t unless one of them is, you know, you know, the synagogue is not going to say, yeah, come in because the other is Jewish, like, we’ll do a wedding.

Father Matthew Schneider
But if one of you is Jewish, not if neither of you is. And I would expect the same thing from other religious houses most likely as well. Yeah. And that’s the first thing is that the thing is really that a lot of it goes back to that idea of the union of Christ in the church, you know, in the sense it’s a primordial sacrament.

Father Matthew Schneider
Adam and Eve were married, you know, as the first the first man and first woman. That’s the sacrament they had. And so we have it kind of like at the very, very beginning. We have marriage and that marriage is that union and that’s that. So and it has those factors were talked about, you know, that openness to children, that permanence as from 70.

Father Matthew Schneider
And then the third thing that’s kind of interesting historically is about five, 600 years ago there was kind of a social issue where people would secretly get married and nobody in town knew about it. And that it’s it became kind of difficult because to a certain extent part of the nature of marriage is that it’s public today.

Father Matthew Schneider
Like if you get married, it’s registered with the state. It’s usually with a ceremony that’s open to a whole bunch of people. Yeah. In the church there is a requirement that you basically that it’s posted usually it’s on like the parish website, parish bulletin, like so-and-so is going to get married. You know, if there’s an issue, please.

Julia Long
Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Father Matthew Schneider
Well, yeah. Well, I mean, and the church is not just at the wedding. It’s actually supposed to be in like the Bulletin or something like that or on the website. And that’s and that’s not as needed today because we have all these electronic records and things. But if you go back a few hundred years post that in the town square, somebody else might be like, like she said she was married to this other guy, like told me like, you know, 20 like five years ago, so things like that that, you know, aren’t as artwork records were kept as well 200 years ago or whatever else and things like that.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah. So that’s, it’s so it’s an issue if people don’t know. And so what was happening in these secret marriages. So the church being kind of the one who registered marriages in the society at that time. Yeah. Basically said all the Catholics have to follow canonical form, which is basically a church wedding or an approval from the church to have a wedding in some other form from a Catholic church, which, you know, rarely given but occasionally given for other for other circumstance, for exceptional circumstances.

Father Matthew Schneider
So it’s basically that the, that the church has you have to follow that form being married in a church to be married with permission outside of a church.

Julia Long
Yeah, OK. Yeah. And that’s so interesting to me because and this is probably not the space to get into it, but we know that kind of a recurring hot topic in society is the separation of church and state and all of these types of things. And people have different views about what you know, religious parties should be involved in and what they shouldn’t.

Julia Long
But you pointed out a little bit ago when we were offline that one of the things is that this was actually the church’s responsibility first. Yeah. To kind of I don’t know what you said, like help guide or, you know, intervene when marriage, you know, help.

Father Matthew Schneider
Well, the thing was that that the like for Catholics and I think a lot of tradition like more traditional Protestants you keep a registration at the church like right. Like I was baptized in, say, Thomas Moore Church in Calgary. And if you go to Saint Thomas more church you pull up my record it will have that I’m I was ordained a priest so and if I was going to if I wanted if I like disappeared went somewhere else and tried to be like I want to get married, then they’re going to call Thomas Moore Church and say Can me this record?

Father Matthew Schneider
Oh, he’s ordained. He’s a priest. He can’t get married. Right, right. You know, and so and so that recordkeeping has gone back far in the church. And so the church was responsible for a lot of the records. And Tom, more recently, it was only around the around 1800 around the French Revolution that they that it started that marriages started being recognized by the state directly for all people.

Father Matthew Schneider
Some had earlier more just for nobles, because it’s like noble, noble the set mattered. But yeah, you know, for the common you know, for a farmer and in the 1600s it was the church that registered as marriage, not the state at all.

Julia Long
It’s really interesting historical fact the other things, the other thing that comes to mind goes back to the first point you said which was that it would be assumed that wherever the wedding was being held that at least one of those parties would have an affiliation. Yeah. That use the exact example of the synagogue. Yeah. Why maybe a Protestant and an atheist would want to get married at a synagogue.

Julia Long
One thing that I think though happens, especially in today’s society around marriage, is that people are getting married outside the church. I just saw an article recently about a couple that in Tennessee, which is where I’m from, so I love Tennessee for everyone who’s listening, but a couple in Tennessee who wanted to get married in Italy and couldn’t afford it.

Julia Long
So they went and got married at an Olive Garden and their photos actually were quite beautiful. They did it against the old stone and it was really beautiful. But I mean, I think so it’s really I think there’s an interesting point here because when we think historically about what you bring up about that marriages were registered in the church because it was a religious union, a commitment marriage was right.

Julia Long
And now we’re seeing that kind of and for some it’s still very important, but we’re also seeing society as a whole kind of take it and put their own unique spin on it. Right. From Waffle House to Olive Garden. And it’s like.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah, I don’t know of too many weddings like that. I know like.

Julia Long
Barns are popular.

Father Matthew Schneider
These extended an extended friends and family from my family. Nobody in my immediate family had gotten married like Convention Center or on a ranch or something like that. Yeah. And those are the things I think one of the challenges is that is that when the churches were in charge of weddings, this whole thing, the state wasn’t involved at all.

Father Matthew Schneider
Most towns at least, and even whole societies were relatively religiously homogenous in that sense. Like they were all pretty much like everybody was Catholic. 95% plus of the town was Catholic. And the other 5% might put on the you know, my officially a Baptist even they don’t believe it and put on the air just so they can, you know, participate in society in that sense.

Father Matthew Schneider
Whereas we live in a very pluralistic society so you have, you know, Catholics, Protestants, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, et cetera, all in all in the US. And I think in that sense there is there is that sense and I think a lot of it is that that loss of a religious sense where a lot of the people who are doing that they’re atheists are they’re like we’re religious and we’re Christians.

Father Matthew Schneider
But like we go to church occasionally, we pray occasionally. We’re not really like living the faith in a week to week basis in that sense because I don’t I think most people who are going to a Catholic or Protestant service at least once a week are going to want to get married in their church. Yeah.

Julia Long
Yeah. I will say we kind of had an interesting situation because we got married on family property in Tennessee, which was an old Tennessee walking horse farm oh, OK. We did not get married in our church because mainly we my husband and I grew up in two different churches, and we’re in the process of church searching together. And so we had not we have, yeah, of course, a church now, but at the time we each had our own churches.

Julia Long
And so we thought, OK, well, we got married on family property and we got married by his childhood pastor.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah. Well, in that sense, in that sense, like, I mean by church wedding is like with an official like, you know, pastor officiate because, you know, a lot of Protestant churches are OK with outdoor weddings in the spring, in the past or whatever. Yeah. The Catholic Church in general is kind of hesitant about those. OK, there’s, there’s a few places where like the diocese permitted them, but they want to have make sure you have a backup, an actual church in case like rain it rains or snows or something or inclement weather.

Father Matthew Schneider
And I think personally, I think it would be a great thing for a lot of you know, a lot of dioceses have like a shrine just outside of town. It’s like a marriage, right, or something.

Julia Long
Oh, yeah.

Father Matthew Schneider
And if I if I was a bishop or I was in charge, I’d be like, let’s set up an outdoor wedding chapel there. So then it’s fully Catholic, you know, everything else and then the Catholics who want to get married outside, they can rent that space for 2 hours on Saturday and get married outside the garden chapel and fulfill their dreams and follow everything the Catholic Church teaches.

Father Matthew Schneider
Because I do think that there’s a beauty in nature that, yeah, that is that is proper to, you know, that sense as well. It’s not just like, you know, the stained glass, things like that. Like, I, I really enjoy kind of, you know, where you have kind of that combination of like the beauty of nature and the religious sense.

Father Matthew Schneider
Like you’re like at my office, it’s, I have a picture up there and it’s a church in the woods and there’s like some cardinals, like the birds in the foreground, you know, and that’s and that’s kind of like a beautiful kind of the combination of the nature and. Yeah, and, and religious God’s creation.

Julia Long
I was thinking while you were talking that it’s such an important point when we think about Catholic marriage because and even Protestant marriage, really. But the point of today is Catholic marriage. And we you know, we kind of laid out the three principles and stipulations if you will. But then I think there’s a larger a larger commitment here, right?

Julia Long
Yeah. That’s even once you OK, you’ve gotten married in the Catholic Church you’ve agreed to these three things, but you’re also agreeing to honor God and honor one another. Right. And live a life together. Based on biblical.

Father Matthew Schneider
Oh, definitely. Definitely. I mean, in that sense, like you’re going to live all the things like that, you know, because it’s, you know, like, you know, I promise to honor and respect all the days of my life or the variation on the wedding thing, the wedding vows in that sense. And those are and that’s part of it, you know, that you are going to honor and respect that other person.

Father Matthew Schneider
You are going to live according to the principles of the Bible and the catechism and things like that. Yeah. And there’s also things like that in bring in like you have to be free to marry like if you know, Joe gets Jane pregnant and Jane’s dad comes over to Joe and says with a shotgun and says, you marry you marry my daughter or else.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah, there’s a good chance he’s not really free in that sense to marry in that marriage. You just like he’s just like, here’s if I don’t do this, he’s going to shoot me. You know? And so there is there is a sense in the Catholic Church you have to be free. And that’s when you do the preparation for marriage.

Father Matthew Schneider
You have you usually meet with a priest or somebody else at the church, and they now a few questions, you know, making sure all those kind of things like, you know, permanent, exclusive, open to children, but also making sure you’re free and not like coerced or something like that. And there’s a few other questions, too, but those kind of things to make sure that you’re ready and make sure that you intend to live according to biblical principles, live according to what the catechism teaches.

Father Matthew Schneider
In that sense.

Julia Long
I’m glad you brought that up because I think the concept of being free and as it relates to accepting marriage is similar to how God feels about giving us free will. Yeah. You know, we’re not puppets. He didn’t say, here’s Earth, you have to follow me. He gave us a choice. Yeah. And marriage, I think, is a little bit parallel with that.

Julia Long
You know, in faith, you choose to follow God every day. Yeah. And in marriage, you choose to love that person every day. Yeah. So I think what we were talking about earlier and again, no judgment to anyone who’s getting married in a bar. And I got married outside. But I think what we’re seeing here, right, is a little bit of a societal shift yeah.

Julia Long
Where the place shifts and maybe even some of the ideals shift. Right. And then we come back to the importance of, OK, getting married in the Catholic Church and really making that commitment to have a biblical Christ centered marriage.

Father Matthew Schneider
Oh, definitely. And I think that that’s really that’s really that’s really a good point of it. You know, even like when you were saying like you got married and on the farm, but you had like, you know, you had a pastor, you have the childhood pastor come in and things. And so it was like, you know, it was and he probably followed the exact same form he would have followed had you been in his church.

Julia Long
Yeah.

Father Matthew Schneider
As far as like, you know, we do this and we have these are the vows we use. And, you know, this is the blessing I gave every couple or something. I don’t I don’t know exactly what different forces have slightly different things for those, but the general just is the same. And so and so I think in that sense, we have a lot to learn.

Father Matthew Schneider
You know, we have a lot we have a lot to learn in our society to really go back to that religious sense, to bring in that religious sense the marriage, because it’s not really just a union between the man and the woman. It’s also a union with Jesus in that sense when it’s a sacrament. So it’s, you know, Fulton Sheen, who’s a famous Catholic archbishop from the mid-20th century, probably the best preacher of the mid-20th century, if you ever want to listen to him.

Father Matthew Schneider
He talked about his three to get married, you know, the husband, the wife and the Lord in that sense.

Julia Long
Yeah. And you were saying earlier and we were talking about the history behind this, that originally the church kind of managed, you know, this marriage as a religious union. And then, you know, the state came and said like, hey, we actually need to have this registered through us as well, which in itself is not bad. Right. You can see kind of the logical reasons for why this might need to happen.

Julia Long
But you could also see how with the societal shift, it needs to not be just something regulated by the state and no religious affiliations. You know, I mean, you could say that that is a tough thing for marriage to not be centered in Christ. So there’s kind of that dichotomy there, I think.

Father Matthew Schneider
Oh, yeah. Like I think that the church in that sense, the church in most cases, the vast majority of cases, requires that if you get married and the church is also recognized by the state. Yes, there’s a few exceptions and things like that. But like, you know, I did my sister’s wedding about a year ago, right after they did the vows in the church, and they’re officially married in the church.

Father Matthew Schneider
I went to this actually where we all, like the priest, puts on all our gowns and things, and they signed that that the document for the state, you know, in the best man and best woman, not the best one, maid of honor, maid of honor, signed, as well as the official witnesses and I signed as the officiant or whatever the technical term is there for the state.

Father Matthew Schneider
The state thing. And, you know, and so they’re married that way because and I think a lot of it has to do with just how much record keeping goes on today versus, you know, a few hundred years ago and, and things like that. Like just think about it like even just that we have driver’s licenses. Whereas, you know, 300 years ago, it’s like, you know, if you had the horse, you could ride the horse in.

Father Matthew Schneider
Like, you know, if you didn’t have a driver’s license, you didn’t have to we didn’t have all that paperwork. Yeah. And things. And so and so I think with that, you know, that is a good thing. But I do think you’re right, that kind of that loss of the religious sense of marriage is kind of damaging because it does make it does put that that marriage on a less firm foundation because just instead of like me, you and the infinite God, it’s me and you alone, which is a whole less strong of a foundation.

Julia Long
Yeah. Yeah, that is 100% true. The other thing that I wanted to ask about when we before we kind of leave the historical piece is these secret marriages. You mentioned them, and I’m just it’s probably my journalistic background. I’m so curious. What were they and, and why?

Father Matthew Schneider
I’m not sure. The whole the whole why. I think a lot of times it would be, you know, kind of eloping like the old fashioned version of eloping and things like that. Yeah. But then they wouldn’t but then it wouldn’t be clear even from behavior or things like that where it wasn’t clear who’s married to who. And like, marriage by this nature is supposedly public or part of that public.

Father Matthew Schneider
Is that so? You know, like, you know, they know you’re marriage. They don’t like someone of the opposite sex. Does that approach you think, oh, maybe I can flirt with them and maybe, you know, it’s like it’s like I was you know, it’s like, oh, I just was talking to somebody else and they’re like, oh, they’re wearing a wedding ring.

Father Matthew Schneider
If somebody was single, single, they’re like, oh, they’re wearing a wedding ring. I can’t I can’t flirt with them otherwise. At what? Yeah. You know, and, and that sense and that’s valuable in in society. There is a whole kind of thing. I’m not a super expert in that specific area. I just know that that was a little bit of an issue five, 600 years ago.

Father Matthew Schneider
And that’s why they instituted that. What’s now called canonical form, which is required for all Catholics to get married. So, yeah, you know, either in the church or with, in exceptional cases outside the church with approval from the church.

Julia Long
Sure. So, OK, so we’ve looked at, you know, the initial thing that happened with Britney, which is what got us here. Then we’ve looked at kind of what makes a Catholic marriage, a Catholic marriage. We’ve looked at the historical reasons behind it. And I think we’ve even gotten into a really important topic, which is kind of the societal trends and you know, that maybe some of the loss of religion in marriage today.

Julia Long
So I think this is a good time as we kind of round up here to talk about any misconceptions that people have maybe against the Catholic Church and marriage. So I’ll be honest, one thing I kind of thought because my friend, the friend that I mentioned earlier in the podcast who now lives in France, she converted. I at one point thought that you had to be Catholic to get married in the church right?

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah. Whereas only one party does it.

Julia Long
Right, right.

Father Matthew Schneider
Like my grandma was got married with my grandpa in the Catholic Church, and she was and she was buried at Presbyterian and she was a Presbyterian which got married to a dirty Presbyterian, you know, 40 some years later. Yeah, no. 57 because they had their 50th anniversary.

Julia Long
So yeah, that’s special. So I think one of the things that happens sometimes is that people hear of certain things and they don’t always understand the first that they don’t always understand the historical context of why. And then they may not even understand kind of the full the principle in entirety, right? Like the example here of, you know, only one person needs to be Catholic and not both.

Julia Long
Are there other societal misconceptions you can think of that you just like to point out and explain?

Father Matthew Schneider
Well, I think the biggest one is a lot of people think of like an annulment as just a Catholic divorce or it’s an annulment is saying that that never happened. OK, the law actually the second law even has an almost four marriages, but they’re much rarer than in the church because, you know, I remember I was hearing about some celebrity or something and they got married while drunk in Vegas.

Father Matthew Schneider
And the next day they didn’t want to they didn’t want to be married. And they got an annulment as if that marriage never happened because they’re like, I was I was drunk out of my mind. I was afraid of consent. You know, and the state even recognized that. But that wasn’t a valid marriage. So, like so the Catholic Church, we have enormous.

Father Matthew Schneider
But the annulment is not to say you can get divorce is to say that this marriage never happened because of some sub defect, whether it’s like, yeah, you know, one person was, you know, basically lying on the forms and said, they wanted to be exclusive, but really they wanted to, you know, you know, sleep around with all kinds of women or, or something like that or like they weren’t free or different issues like that that make it so that the marriage never actually happened, which is different from a divorce or just say this marriage happened but we can eliminate we can we can break it off and have a new marriage.

Father Matthew Schneider
And that really goes back to that idea of its Union of Christ and the church and the Union of Christ and the church, the eternal. It doesn’t just break off, you know, and there’s when there’s a little bit of a challenge like, you know, because the church is imperfect and like, you know, this bishop or this priest or something bad it’s not like, oh, we break off the union of Christ in the church.

Julia Long
Yeah. And I remember you referenced that in the article that I that I mentioned at the beginning of this with Britney. You said that in order to be able to get married in the Catholic Church, she would also need to have had, you know, I think, annulment on her previous two marriages.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah. It might have even been her that had the one where she was drunk and I sure, you know, I might have been like she was drunk and it was like the next day she got annulment for that, which in a secular one, I just remember I read that somewhere in the last year or so yeah. And I mean, that’s the reality on the thing is, you need to you need to resolve those deepens you know, there’s different circumstances.

But, you know, it’s not a lot of times when you’re getting married in situations like that, like drunk in Vegas or even, you know, in Vegas, not so drunk out of your mind that you that legally it’s not allowed in. We might have a little higher standard for you know you’re competent to make this choice than the state would yeah.

Father Matthew Schneider
And that’s if you’re kind of drunk on a bender in Vegas or something.

Julia Long
Yeah. So I am so glad you brought this up because divorce and annulment are not something that we have covered here. Are there ever any reasons for a divorce or an annulment that the Catholic Church would recognize as valid, such as, you know, abuse or something like that?

Father Matthew Schneider
Well, so like, the thing is that there’s a distinction here in the sense that like a civil divorce, if there’s abuse, you know, like separation if need be, civil divorce for, you know, to protect the other person. 100%. The church supports that you know, to support the one so they don’t get like beat up or things like that or, you know, that maybe there may be something in there that showing an annulment previously like if, if the person was abusive was basically threatening the person to the point that they felt that if they didn’t go through the marriage, they would be like beat to death.

Father Matthew Schneider
That’s obviously like a lack of that might. Well, I should say there’s very likely a lack of freedom in that. So there could be an annulment on that but it’s not that, OK, you know, this person, this man or woman was abusive. Therefore, the marriages is can be ignored. And a civil divorce can often be needed to protect the other spouse and the kids and things like.

Julia Long
Sure. Yeah, yeah. And OK, that’s helpful to understand and then any other kind of misconceptions that you do you think are worse?

Father Matthew Schneider
I think that’s the biggest one. I think the annulment and then like your thing about that, I think a lot of people, you know, I think we already kind of went over it some of the details, you know, why the churches, you know, require things like, you know, on their man or woman or like openness to children, things like that.

Father Matthew Schneider
But I think we already went over that earlier in the podcast.

Julia Long
Yeah, sure. OK, so let’s just recap the reasons why Britney couldn’t get married in the church. So she goes and she sees this beautiful church in L.A. And she wants to get married there and then she can.

Father Matthew Schneider
Well, the first thing is one of the two has to be Catholic. And I don’t know if Britney is Catholic. She was raised Baptist. She’s expressed interest in the Catholic Church in previous posts. But exactly how far along that’s gone or what’s happened in that regard is not publicly available. I don’t have any special knowledge. Is that what’s publicly available.

Julia Long
Up on the phone to ask?

Father Matthew Schneider
Nope. I don’t have her number I just have, you know, the news reports that are out there and then they would have to, you know, do some kind of usually do some kind of preparation, usually for short period of time, make sure that everything’s set up, meeting with a priest or meeting with a married couple who’s been married a while or something like that.

Father Matthew Schneider
And, you know, agree to all the things we’ve gone over, you know, as far as the, you know, different things for chapel, be a Catholic wedding, you know, and that, you know, we wanted exclusive, just us permanent. We want to we are open to kids and you know we’re going to raise the kids Catholic. But it’s but a lot of those it’s not clear she just kind of said, oh, they did some kind of test, which is kind of vague in that sense.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yeah. And things. So that’s that would be why she couldn’t you know, she’s welcome to become Catholic and follow through with those things. But that might take a little bit of time for her to become Catholic or her fiancé to become Catholic. I don’t know the exact details of his life either. So.

Julia Long
Right. But if he had been Catholic. Yeah. Then and they had agreed to those three things, it is likely then that they could have gotten married in the church.

Julia Long
Right. Even if she herself weren’t.

Father Matthew Schneider
Exactly. I mean, it’s just like, you know, I have a brother in law who was who was not Catholic when they got married. He’s Catholic now, but he wasn’t when he married my sister and they had a wedding, you know, in the in the church my family goes to and everything.

Julia Long
So what her previous marriages have had to have been annulled in order for her to get married. In the church.

Father Matthew Schneider
Yes. You know, I you’d have to go into the details on those what the issues are. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about like Brittany’s romantic life to make any comment on that. Although given the kind of past and the kind of way celebrities are, there’s a reasonably good chance that there would that an annulment would be possible in those cases.

Father Matthew Schneider
Sure.

Julia Long
Sure. Well, it’s been really enlightening personally for me to have you here today, Father. And I appreciate it so much.

Father Matthew Schneider
Thank you.

Julia Long
And I hope it’s been helpful for you, our audience, too. If you’re enjoying a conversation like share and tell your friends you can find us on Google Play, the App Store, Spotify, and anywhere that you usually find your podcasts. Until next time. I’m Julia Long. God bless.