A friend of mine has a sister living in Scotland. She is LDS but inactive, divorced, and is planning to marry a Catholic man in his church. In meeting with the priest he asked where she was married. She told him a LDS temple. He said until she gets a “cancelation of sealing” from the Mormon church, she cannot be married in the Catholic church because she is still sealed in the LDS church.

Has anybody ever heard of such a thing? I think there is more to the story, as to make such a requirement would mean that the Catholic Church recognizes LDS sealing as a legitimate marriage. She is legally divorced from her previous husband. This does not sound right.

All I know is that the catholic church is seriously strict about who they allow to be married in their church. They even do intensive background checks on both parties.

I know this because i saw a true crime story about a woman, Jane Colville Reth, who killed her hubby in Alaska. She moved to the midwest and remarried. She told this hubby what happened to her last one.

They stayed married almost 20 years then divorced.

That hubby tried to get the marriage annuled so that he could marry another woman in the catholic church. When the catholic investigator tried to verify the chain of events he noticed that Jane had been previously married which apparently matters to the catholics. He questioned the ex husband and the story came out about the murder and she was arrested and incarcerated.

Actually, it sounds like they're considering the mormon "sealing" INVALID.
Since declaring a previous marriage invalid is one of the few ways you can get married in the catholic church after a divorce:

http://catholicweddinghelp.com/questions/divorce.htm

It sounds like they want a "cancellation of sealing" from the mormon church to show the previous marriage was invalid, clearing the way for them to be married in the catholic church.

I could be wrong...

My guess is the priest in Scotland doesn't understand the Catholic Church doesn't consider the Mormons Christian. That means the original marriage wouldn't be considered a valid Christian marriage so I'm not sure why the priest is concerned about it.

It sounds to me like they're only "recognizing" it as a union she entered into that would not be acceptable to the Catholic church. They would view it as an invalid or heretical marriage, so her priest is requiring her to be released from that before entering into Catholic marriage.

neener neener, I asked First!

Ex-catholic here. I'm a bit confused by what her priest requested. A marriage is a marriage in the eyes of the church, whether civil, Christian or sanctified in some other religious tradition. If a Catholic person wants to marry, in the church, someone who has been previously married, the divorced party has to seek an annulment of that marriage through the archdiocese in which the couple reside. I've been through this with my husband, whose first marriage was to a Mormon. It was NOT a temple marriage. Even if the divorced person is not Catholic, the annulment process has to happen. What the church will seek to establish through the process is whether that first marriage was formed on faulty grounds. For example, one or both of the two parties involved entered the marriage fraudulently or without true intent to be married. There are a number of grounds they consider. It's a pretty long, exhaustive process. There's no buying one's way to a good outcome, either. Records must be produced of the marriage and divorce, witnesses are questioned, and both parties may respond.

She would not need a cancelation of sealing, that is irrelevant.

What she would need is an annulment, however.

The Catholic Church regards Mormon baptism as invalid.

See: "Response to a 'Dubium' on the validity of baptism conferred by <<The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints>>, called <<Mormons>>" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 5, 2001).

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010605_battesimo_mormoni_en.html

Since Mormon baptism is invalid, Mormons are non-baptized persons. Consequently, marriage between two Mormons is marriage between two unbaptized persons.

Therefore:

"[M]arriage contracted among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or with a baptized party is not a ratum marriage, nor therefore a ratum et consummatum, even 'if the spouses have completed in a human way the act which is per se appropriate for the generation of children, to which marriage is ordered by its very nature' (cf. can. 1061)."

"It is Catholic teaching that a 'marriage that is ratum et consummatum can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except by death' (can. 1141), while a marriage that is not ratum even if consummatum, given determined presuppositions, can be dissolved by the power given by Christ to the Church."

"Since it is certain that Mormon Baptism is not valid, there is the certitude that the marriage between two Mormons and the marriage of a Mormon with a baptized person is not ratum and therefore can be dissolved just as other marriages between two non baptized persons or between a baptized person and an non baptized person, as long as the necessary conditions are met."

Fr Urbano Navarrete, S.J.
"Response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about the Validity of Baptism Conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" (L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 1 August 2001, page 5).

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010605_battesimo_mormoni-navarrete_en.html

Notes:
"Ratum" = established* (refers to marriage between two [validly] baptized persons)
"Consummatum" = consummated
"Ratum et consummatum" = established* and consummated

I regard the catholic church and the mormon church as invalid.

My TBM ex-husband totally abandoned me and our children, and vanished out of our lives, for about 4 years. Turns out, he was living with different women, and didn't want Mommy and Daddy to know, because they would have dis-inherited him. It was perfectly OK to abandon his children, though, and not pay child support or alimony...go figure...they were mormons.

Anyway, out of the blue, I get a phone call from my cheating ex-husband. He wanted the name and address and phone number of my first husband, to whom I was married in the temple, for a brief period, during which he beat me, strangled me, and kept me prisoner. I asked him why he needed this information.

My cheating ex wanted to marry one of his women, who was a catholic, and she wanted to have a catholic church wedding. My ex could prove that my temple husband and I were still married in the eyes of the mormon cult--for eternity, right. I had been trying for 20 years to get a temple divorce on the grounds of extreme physical cruelty, and continued threats on my life. The mormons never did grant me a temple divorce--even when my temple husband had two more temple marriages (he beat both of them, too.)

A Catholic "annulment" means that, according to the Catholic church, the marriage never existed. It is not a divorce; therefore, the problems surrounding a divorced person re-marrying, never is an issue. The annuled person is free to get married in the Catholic church.

A catholic annulment is granted to a spouse, if the other spouse cheats in the marriage. My ex wanted to prove that I was still "married" to my temple husband, according to the Mormon cult, so that technically, I was a bigamist, or something.

The catch is, that when a catholic annulment is granted to a parent, the children of the marriage are considered bastards--no longer the legal children of the person receiving the annulment. He is no longer the father of my children.

My ex wanted my help in this. I told him to go to H---, and that I would not do anything that would harm our children.

He got the annulment without my cooperation, and they got their Catholic marriage.

My fanatic TBM in-laws did not consider my children, nor their other son's children, to be their "real grandchildren", because they were not sealed in the temple. Their daughters' children were sealed, so they had other grandchildren to dote on.

If you knew my wonderful children, and if you could see how loving, honest, hard-working, and helpful they are, then you would know what a jerk my BYU Mormon ex-husband is, to continue to ignore them. Jerk ex and his new wife wanted to adopt a child, but they were turned down by everyone. It seems that adoption agencies don't think kindly of parents who abandon their children.

My ex called me to complain about his wife pestering him to have children, and also to complain that he had to pay the catholic church over $10,000 for the annulment and re-marriage. I laughed my head off!

You can also see why I dislike organized religion. You can buy your way into or out of anything, if you have enough money, and if you are a man.

"I regard the catholic church and the mormon church as invalid."
---Dave The Atheist

Agreed! (Notice that Dave didn't use capital letters for those organizations.)

>>The catch is, that when a catholic annulment is granted to a parent, the children of the marriage are considered bastards--no longer the legal children of the person receiving the annulment. He is no longer the father of my children.

As an ex-Catholic, I can reassure you that however (IMO) nutty the process of Catholic annulment, the church does not take the parents' marriage issues out on the kids. The children would in no way be considered bastards.

In a way, it's somewhat similar to a Mormon church sealing still be valid for the children even if the parents divorce.

Even as a child I knew that I would never put myself through the insane, leagalistic process of a Catholic annulment. I had a Catholic cousin who divorced, and she simply remarried in another church.

She has yet, then, to get permission from her former spouse to allow the temple sealing dissolved. He may not do it.