Question Corner: Can a Catholic date a person whose marriage has not been annulled or is this a sin?

Q: Can a Catholic date a person whose marriage has not been annulled or is this a sin?

A: For a few reasons, it’s hard to determine in the abstract whether or not “dating” a divorced person who has yet to receive a declaration of nullity is strictly speaking a sin per se. However, I would say that in general it is a bad idea.

For some background, we as Catholics believe that a valid, consummated, sacramental marriage cannot be ended by anything other than the death of one of the spouses. Even though the Church is willing to tolerate civil divorce in some cases, at the end of the day we see divorce as essentially a legal fiction. That is, even though divorced spouses may lead legally separated lives, in the eyes of God and in the view of the Church they are still bound by their marriage vows.

Our belief in the absolute permanence of marriage is rooted in what Jesus himself taught us in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, unless the marriage is unlawful, and marries another commits adultery” (Mt 19:8-9).

That caveat Jesus gives us — “unless the marriage is unlawful” — is the theological and scriptural foundation for the Church’s marriage nullity process. That is, Jesus allows for the possibility that some apparent marriages may have been “unlawful,” or that there may have been some problem at the time of the wedding that was of such a nature and severity that it prevented a true marriage from ever taking place. For example, one or both parties may have been lacking the proper intention or the psychological capacity necessary to consent to marriage.

The Church’s nullity process, conducted through marriage tribunals, exists as a way to determine whether one of these invalidating issues was in fact present at the time of the wedding.

Now, while the Church does have a well-established theology of marriage as well as a robust moral theology of chastity in general, we do not have a theology of courtship or “dating” as such. For instance, there is no official Catholic definition of what exactly constitutes “dating” versus a friendly or platonic interaction.

So, considering this more concretely, in and of itself it’s not necessarily a sin for a man and a woman — even a man and woman who are married to other people — to, for example, have dinner or coffee together and enjoy a personal conversation.

But of course, this same couple would be guilty of the sin of adultery if they crossed the line into physical intimacy. And in real life, depending on specific circumstances, even a chaste one-on-one social engagement might be at least venially sinful if the couple is deliberately placing themselves into a situation where they know they will be tempted to be unchaste (what we would traditionally call a “near occasion of sin”), or if their relationship became a source of scandal within the community.

Apart from questions of whether or not this kind of dating is sinful, we should keep in mind that a fundamental principle undergirding the entire marriage nullity process is that “marriage enjoys the favor of the law” (Code of Canon Law, Canon 1060), meaning that we presume a marriage is valid and binding unless and until it is proven otherwise.

Therefore, a divorced person, even a divorced person actively pursuing a declaration of nullity, is still seen by the Church as married. And engaging in a romantic relationship with a view towards marriage when one or both parties involved are not actually free to marry is very imprudent.

Declarations of nullity are never guaranteed, and a couple is setting themselves up for heartbreak in event of a negative decision that leaves the relevant party still bound to his or her original spouse and thus unable to remarry.

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