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If you get married in Jamaica, can you come back to the States and have your marriage blessed by the Catholic Church?

Question:

If you get married in Jamaica, can you come back to the States and have your marriage blessed by the Catholic Church?

Answer:

Getting married in Jamaica is not an impediment to a valid marriage, and those who validly marry there are not required to travel to the United States in order to have their marriage blessed, or convalidated.

Catholics are required to be married in the Church; if one marries outside the Church, whether in or out of the United States, then one’s marriage will not be valid unless it is later convalidated. To deliberately marry outside of the Church and live as husband and wife is not a minor irregularity that one can always plan to straighten out later; it is a grave betrayal of our obligation as Catholics to live by the law of the Church and a sin against God, in whose eyes the marriage is nonexistent.

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