Question:
Answer:
You are very welcome to participate in parish life as non-Catholics, including participating in Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) classes and coming forward for a blessing at weekly Sunday Mass when Catholic parish members receive Holy Communion.
However, your diocesan bishop and pastor will require you to have your respective first marriages adjudicated by the diocesan marriage tribunal before you can come into full communion with our Lord Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church. As we see in Sacred Scripture (Matt. 19:1-12), Jesus takes marriage very seriously, and he has given his Catholic Church the power to bind and loose in safeguarding the Faith, including through determining whether a marriage was entered into validly or not (see Matt. 16:18-19; 18:15-18).
In addition, the OCIA process is ordered toward one’s (or a couple’s) coming into full communion with Christ and his Church, and to receive the sacraments of confession, confirmation, and Holy Communion before the Church has determined whether your respective marriages are adjudicated would be to put the ecclesiastical cart before the horse, so to speak. The Church doesn’t want a couple to presume that they will receive declarations of nullity (annulments) regarding their respective first marriages, only to be rudely surprised after becoming Catholic when one or both don’t. The Church wants such a couple to freely and fully assent to the Faith, and when they are free to marry in the Church, they can do so full of joy and thus without any reservation. On the other hand, if the Church allowed you to join the Church and one (or both) of you didn’t receive an annulment, you might leave the Church, causing grave scandal to yourselves and others in the parish (see Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 2284-87).
In the meantime, your parish pastor is going to encourage you to live as brother and sister—i.e., having no sexual relations—until if and when you received your respective annulments—which, again, is not a sure thing. Living as brother and sister will help you grow in holiness, to rely on God’s grace in a childlike manner (see Matt. 18:1-4). Such is not easy, but it’s certainly possible with God’s grace (Matt. 18:26; Phil. 4:13), and you’ll be faithful and fruitful witnesses to the Catholics at your parish and others in your life (Rom. 8:28).
There is another important consideration. As Pope John Paul II reaffirmed in his 1981 apostolic exhortation, a couple who do not receive annulments regarding their respective first marriages have “the obligation to separate,” unless there is a “serious reason” for them to stay together, e.g., “the children’s upbringing” if they have procreated a child together, or if one is elderly and financially dependent on one’s invalidly remarried spouse (Familiaris Consortio, 84).
What if a divorced-and-invalidly-remarried couple do not receive annulments regarding their previous marriages, and yet remain desirous of becoming Catholic? See my related Q&A for counsel in such extraordinary circumstances.
Finally, to further understand why the Church takes so seriously the sacrament of marriage and the reception of Holy Communion, please see my related essay in connection with serving well divorced-and-remarried couples.