Marriage Question

[Guest Audra]

If a non-Catholic couple were to be married outside the Catholic Church, but then one member of the couple converted to Catholicism after the marriage and agreed to raise their children in the Catholic Church, would their marriage be recognized by the Catholic Church or would they need to go through some sort of renewing vows, remarriage ceremony?

Thanks for answering my question.

-Audra

[cappie]

This is from the Code of Canon Law

MARRIAGE (Cann. 1055 - 1165)

Can. 1055 §1 The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, and which of its own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the procreation and upbringing of children, has, between the baptised, been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.

§2 Consequently, a valid marriage contract cannot exist between baptised persons without its being by that very fact a sacrament.

The marriage of a Christian person with an unbaptised person is therefore what is called a "Natural Bond" and is not by definition a Sacrament.

So to answer your question, a newly baptised person can renew their consent but it still a natural bond and not a sacrament because the spouse is still a non Christian