Question Corner: What does it mean if a couple is asked to ‘live as brother and sister’ during an annulment process?

Q: I’m divorced and remarried, and have recently felt called to return to the Catholic faith. I just submitted my annulment paperwork to the tribunal, but they said the whole process can take at least a year. My parish priest said I could do something called the “brother-sister process” in the meantime to start receiving Communion again right away, but I’ve never heard of this before and I’m not sure exactly what it means. Can you explain?

A: It sounds like what your parish priest mentioned was, ultimately, simply the possibility of embracing the Church’s teachings on chastity in an intentional way.

For background, the Catholic Church teaches that the marriage bond is permanent, and for the most part can only be ended by the death of one of the spouses. This is why divorce and remarriage is so problematic for Catholics. If the original marriage is presumed to be a true and binding one, then living as a married person with a new spouse is technically committing adultery — even if most divorced and remarried people wouldn’t subjectively experience it this way.

Jesus himself makes this point explicitly in the Gospels. For instance, in St. Matthew’s Gospel Jesus states: “But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Mt 5:32).

If Catholics are divorced and illicitly remarried, they are generally unable to receive the sacraments since they are at least “on paper” living in a situation of ongoing adultery, a grave sin. And those who are conscious of unconfessed grave sins are not permitted to receive Communion (see Canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law), nor are they able to receive sacramental absolution validly if they don’t have a sincere intention to end their sinful behavior.

Ideally, Catholics who are divorced and remarried outside the Church would separate. But not everyone is at a point in their spiritual life where they are prepared to make this painful but virtuous choice. Additionally, there may be serious reasons why separation isn’t possible. For example, the couple may have minor children who need both parents at home.

If there is evidence to suggest that the first marriage might have been invalid — or as Jesus puts it, “unlawful” — then it’s appropriate to refer the matter to the diocesan marriage tribunal. If a declaration of nullity is granted, then the civil spouses can “regularize” their marital union in the eyes of the Church and would thus no longer be living in a sinful situation.

However, as you know, marriage nullity cases usually take some time, and a declaration of nullity is not guaranteed at the end of the process.

Yet if the couple is willing to make a radical choice to follow Christ and obey God’s commandments, they can also resolve to “live as brother and sister,” meaning that they abstain from acts of sexual intimacy proper to marriage even if they continue living under the same roof.

Since it is physical sexual intimacy, rather than simply sharing a household, which constitutes the sin of adultery, a remarried couple who lived as brother and sister would no longer be committing serious sin in an ongoing way and therefore would be, in principle, eligible to return to the sacraments.

There isn’t one official canonical process for taking advantage of this option, although some dioceses have their own standard protocol for pastors to guide couples through making this choice.

Typically, if a couple decides to live as brother and sister, they talk to their parish priest. Usually there is some discernment about whether a public return to the sacraments might cause scandal within the local Catholic community, such as if it were well known that a civilly married couple had previous marriages and no declaration of nullity from the Church. But otherwise, all that is needed is a good confession and the resolve to remain chaste going forward.

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