The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Catholic, married twelve years, five kids (one of whom has significant special needs, I typed up a long post about him on DSL). I don't know what experiences you'd want to hear about, but the most useful approach I've learned over the years is this: you need to re-frame every problem as something external to the relationship and view your spouse as a teammate in fixing the problem. Do this even if the problem seems to be your spouse.
On a related note, at a certain point the relationship needs to become more important than your individual success or happiness. This works great in a Catholic marriage where divorce is explicitly off the table; not nearly as actionable in other contexts.
Make sacrifices, and make them generously.
Christian marriage in general, although a lot of people in other denominations seem to either ignore this or just never learned it. My wife and I haven't had our marriage convalidated because she has a problem signing a thing saying marriage is for life. And she's a Christian! I have tried pointing out to her that the prohibition on divorce was directly said by Jesus, and that this isn't a Catholic thing. But she just doesn't seem to want to accept it, IDK why.
It's kind of sad because it means I can't get any of the sacraments, but what can you do. At the end of the day, I still took a vow before God (we had a Christian ceremony, just not Catholic) and I intend to uphold it. A lot of people online will say stuff like "you don't have a valid marriage so leave", but that isn't on the table. Even if it means I can never get absolution at confession or participate in communion again, I'm still going to stand by her forever. I just hope she comes around someday.
Have you inquired into a radical sanation?
That kind of rules-lawyering makes me furious. This shows the downside about having a lot of explicit rules, people think that the explicit rules in canon law or the catechism matter more than basic moral law of keeping sacred vows.
No, I was actually unaware that existed. I probably won't go for it yet, but in time maybe. For right now I think that I agree with what the priest at my parish has told me: trust the Lord, if he wants us to have our marriage blessed by the Catholic church he'll lead my wife in the right direction in due time.
Yeah, I know. I think it's silly too, but that's humans for you I guess.
I'm not familiar with the canon law nor am I at this time a practicing Catholic, but from glancing online the radical sanation path might make a lot of sense.
You know much more about your wife's concerns than I do. But speaking as someone from a protestant background -- any sort of formal submission to Catholic authority, even on a matter about which there is agreement, can be very, very scary. I mean, I hope you and your wife both meant your vows to be for life, considering foreseeable possibilities, in accordance with the divine teaching. Do you think she's more concerned about signing a document that says she's signing on to Catholic teaching, or more concerned about making a pledge that she interprets as closing her off from a divorce should you do something radical, which of course you would never do, like have an affair?
I definitely think it's more the latter. She has no intention of just giving up on our marriage lightly, but she also doesn't want to sign a pledge saying she isn't going to divorce me because of extreme cases like what you mentioned. Infidelity, abuse, etc.
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This is interesting, I have never heard of this before. You had a Christian marriage in a protestant church, and thus consider yourself to be living in serious, unrepentant sin - baring you from receiving any sacraments? I thought the church has accepted protestant marriages as sacramental since Vatican II?
The term is 'valid natural marriage'- the church accepts that it's a valid marriage but considers it a serious sin that it hasn't been performed, sacramentally, by the church.
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I don't consider myself to be living in sin. But unfortunately, the church does. My parents were Catholic, baptized my siblings and me, etc. But they chose to leave the Catholic church when I was in 5th or 6th grade, and I spent the rest of my childhood growing up Protestant. As an adult (years after I was married), I decided to go back to the Catholic church, and have been told I need to get my marriage convalidated by the church.
My understanding is that the Catholic church does consider Protestant marriages valid for converts. But because I was baptized (and got first communion), they consider me to have been Catholic the whole time and not a convert. Even though I myself would have said I wasn't Catholic (and I didn't choose to leave the church, my parents did), it means that I have to go through the same steps as someone who was a part of the Church and chose to get married outside it. It's a bit frustrating to be honest, but not much I can do. Anyways, because (according to the Church) I'm living in sin, that means no sacraments until that gets resolved (or unless I commit to living with my wife without any sex).
The "Catholics need to marry in the Church, otherwise the marriage is invalid rule" was put in place to combat couples making private vows and then one partner leaving the other high and dry... 400 years ago. The rules really should have changed by now, people's situations are so different now. But the Church is slow to change.
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