Things You Should Know Before You Marry as a Convert

Brief Overview

• Marrying as a Catholic convert means entering the sacrament of marriage with a newly formed Catholic identity that your spouse, your families, and even your parish community may not yet fully understand or respect.
• If you were previously married before your conversion, the status of that prior marriage under Church law must be resolved before you can marry in the Catholic Church, and that process can significantly delay your wedding plans.
• Your conversion changes the theological nature of your existing marriage if you are already married, and understanding what that change means, and what it does not mean, protects you from unnecessary confusion and false expectations.
• The RCIA process, which is the Church’s standard path for adult converts, typically concludes at Easter Vigil, and the timing of that completion has direct consequences for when you are canonically free to plan a Catholic wedding.
• Converting to Catholicism introduces a set of moral commitments, including on contraception, family planning, and Sunday Mass attendance, that your non-Catholic spouse may not share and that will require honest and sustained conversation within the marriage.
• The joy and theological richness of entering the Church are real, but converts who marry quickly after conversion often discover that they have not yet had time to let their faith settle deeply enough to carry the full weight of a Catholic marriage from day one.

Conversion Changes Everything, Including Your Marital Status

When a person enters the Catholic Church through baptism or through a profession of faith, their relationship to Catholic canon law changes in ways that have immediate and practical consequences for marriage. Before your baptism or reception into the Church, you were not bound by the Church’s canonical form for marriage, meaning the requirement that Catholics marry in a Catholic ceremony with proper authorization. After your baptism or reception, you are fully subject to that requirement. This means that any marriage you attempt after becoming Catholic must observe the canonical form unless you obtain a dispensation from the local bishop. It also means that the Church now has a legitimate interest in your marital status and holds you to the same standards it holds every other Catholic. If you were not previously married, you are now a Catholic who is free to marry another Catholic or, with the appropriate permissions, to marry a non-Catholic, according to all the standard requirements described elsewhere in Catholic marriage law. If you were previously married before your conversion, the situation is considerably more complex, and it is one that many converts are genuinely unprepared for when they begin the RCIA process or shortly after completing it. The Church does not automatically dissolve prior marriages simply because one of the parties has become Catholic. It treats prior marriages with the same presumption of validity that it applies to all marriages, meaning that your previous marriage is presumed to have been valid unless the Church’s tribunal determines otherwise. This matters for every major decision you are making about your future, including when and whether you can marry a new Catholic partner. The very first thing you should do after completing RCIA if you have a marital history is talk honestly with your pastor about the status of your previous marriage before making any other plans.

What Happens to Your Previous Marriage When You Convert

This is the question that creates the most pastoral complexity for converts with a marital history, and it deserves a clear and detailed answer. When two unbaptized persons married before one of them became Catholic, the Church considers that marriage to have been a valid natural marriage, meaning a real marriage at the level of the natural law even without the sacramental dimension, since neither party was baptized. If that marriage remains intact, meaning both spouses are still alive and the civil marriage has not been dissolved, then the convert’s marriage simply continues as before, and upon the convert’s baptism, if both spouses are baptized, the marriage is automatically elevated to a sacramental marriage without any additional ceremony being required. This is a significant and theologically meaningful development that many converts find surprising. If, however, the marriage ended before the conversion, or if the non-Catholic spouse remains unbaptized and refuses to continue the marriage after the conversion, then a specific provision of Church law called the Pauline Privilege may be applicable. The Pauline Privilege, drawn from Saint Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 7:12-15, allows the dissolution of a valid natural marriage between two unbaptized persons when one of them converts and the other either departs from the marriage or creates serious obstacles to the convert’s faith. This is not an annulment but a dissolution of a presumed valid marriage in favor of the faith. Similarly, the Petrine Privilege, which operates through the authority of the Pope, can dissolve a natural marriage between a baptized person and an unbaptized person in favor of the faith. Your specific situation determines which process applies, and you cannot determine this on your own. You need to work through your diocesan tribunal with guidance from your pastor.

When a Prior Protestant or Civil Marriage Requires a Tribunal Process

Many converts who were previously baptized Protestant and then married are surprised to discover that the Church treats their previous marriage as a valid marriage that must be formally examined before they can marry in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church recognizes marriages between two baptized non-Catholics as valid and sacramental, provided the parties were free to marry at the time and no canonical impediments applied. This means that a convert who was previously baptized Protestant, married another baptized Protestant in a Protestant ceremony, and then divorced, is not automatically free to marry a Catholic simply because they have joined the Church. The Church presumes that the previous marriage was valid and will not simply take the convert’s word that it was a bad marriage or that they are now truly Catholic and deserve a fresh start. Instead, a formal tribunal investigation is required, following the same process as any other request for a declaration of nullity. The grounds for nullity and the process are the same as described in the annulment context, and the timeline is similarly around twelve months or longer for formal cases. If the previous marriage involved two non-Catholics who were not baptized, or if the previous marriage was a civil-only ceremony where neither party was baptized, then the Pauline Privilege rather than a full formal nullity case may be the applicable process. If one party was baptized and the other was not, the Petrine Privilege may apply. The variety of canonical circumstances that arise in the convert context is wide enough that there is no substitute for a specific assessment of your particular situation by a qualified canonist or by your diocesan tribunal. Begin that conversation as early as possible, because it may significantly affect when and whether you can proceed with a Catholic wedding.

The Convert Who Is Already Married When They Enter the Church

A large number of adults who enter the Catholic Church through RCIA are already married at the time of their reception. Their situation requires specific attention that RCIA programs do not always handle well. If you are already married to a Catholic spouse, your marriage was presumably recognized by the Church to some degree, and your reception into full communion may trigger the need for a convalidation, which is the formal exchange of consent in the proper canonical form. If you were already civilly married and your spouse was Catholic, your marriage was likely invalid in the Church’s eyes from the time of the Catholic spouse’s participation in a non-canonical ceremony, and a convalidation is needed before either of you can receive Communion. This is a common situation that often comes to light during RCIA when a spouse begins preparing to enter the Church and a helpful pastor discovers that the existing marriage needs to be brought into canonical order. The good news is that convalidation is usually a straightforward process when both parties are free to marry. Both parties must consent to the exchange, the standard pre-marital investigation must be completed, and the consent must be exchanged in proper canonical form before a priest or deacon and two witnesses. If you are already married to a non-Catholic spouse, your reception into the Church transforms the nature of your marriage in a specific way. If both you and your spouse were baptized before your marriage, the marriage becomes sacramental at the moment you are both Christian, meaning it is elevated by your common baptism even without a new ceremony. This is a genuine theological development that your marriage preparation or RCIA sponsor should explain to you in detail before your reception.

The Timing Problem for Converts Who Want to Marry Soon

One of the most frequently frustrating experiences for converts is the collision between the RCIA timeline and the desire to marry in the Catholic Church. The standard RCIA process runs from the fall through Easter Vigil, when catechumens are baptized and candidates are received into full communion. This means that if you become fully Catholic at Easter Vigil in April, you do not become free to plan a Catholic wedding until that point, and even then the standard marriage preparation requirements, including a minimum of six months of preparation and Pre-Cana programming, apply to you as they do to every other Catholic seeking to marry. This can feel like a very long delay to a convert who was already planning to marry their Catholic partner before the RCIA process was completed. Some couples attempt to schedule their Catholic wedding for shortly after Easter Vigil, and while this is canonically possible if all preparation requirements are met in advance, it requires significant coordination and advance planning with both the RCIA director and the parish marriage preparation office. In some dioceses, catechumens who are preparing for marriage simultaneously with RCIA can complete their marriage preparation in parallel, provided the pastor approves and the circumstances allow. In practice, however, the demands of both processes are substantial, and attempting to prepare for baptism, confirmation, and first Eucharist while simultaneously preparing for the sacrament of matrimony in the same compressed period creates real spiritual and logistical strain. Many experienced pastors recommend that converts who are engaged allow themselves the time to complete RCIA fully, to receive the sacraments of initiation with proper focus, and then to begin marriage preparation with a settled Catholic identity rather than trying to do everything at once.

Your Catholic Identity Is New, and That Matters for Marriage

One of the most honest and sometimes unwelcome things to say to a newly received Catholic who is eager to marry is this: your faith is new, and the marriage sacrament requires a stable Catholic identity to carry it well. This is not a criticism of the sincerity of your conversion or of the depth of your intellectual conviction. It is a recognition that faith, like any significant way of living, takes time to settle into the habits, practices, and dispositions that sustain it through difficulty. A convert who was received at Easter Vigil and marries in October of the same year is building a marriage on a Catholic identity that has been tested for less than six months. The Catholic understanding of marriage involves specific moral commitments, specific ways of praying together, specific approaches to family planning, specific attitudes toward the sacraments, and specific habits of life that do not form overnight. Many converts report that the first year or two after reception is a time of significant adjustment, including moments of doubt about specific teachings, moments of culture shock at the reality of parish life compared to the idealized Catholicism they encountered during formation, and moments of genuine struggle with moral demands they accepted intellectually but have not yet fully integrated into their daily choices. Entering a marriage during this formative period is not impossible, and many converts do it successfully, but it requires unusual honesty about where you actually are in your faith development and a marriage partner who can support you through the continuing growth of your Catholic identity rather than expecting it to arrive fully formed on your wedding day.

Your Family May Not Understand, and That Creates Pressure

For many converts, the family of origin remains outside the Catholic Church, and the combination of a conversion and a Catholic wedding creates a set of relational pressures that can be significant. Your parents, siblings, and extended family may have theological objections to Catholicism, practical confusion about what a Catholic wedding involves, or simple discomfort with the unfamiliar liturgy and the requirements of the Church’s marriage preparation process. If you come from a Protestant background, your family may have specific and well-formed objections to Catholic doctrine that they express in the context of your approaching marriage. If you come from a non-religious background, your family may regard the whole process as unnecessarily complicated and the Church’s requirements as an imposition. Neither reaction is easy to manage while also preparing for a wedding and completing the demands of Catholic marriage preparation. The practical questions are real as well. Your family may have assumed that family members would serve roles in the wedding that the Church’s liturgical norms do not accommodate. They may want the ceremony in a venue or at a time that conflicts with Catholic requirements. They may be unfamiliar with the Mass and confused about what they can and cannot participate in during the nuptial liturgy. Addressing these questions with patience and clarity, well in advance of the wedding date, is a skill that takes both confidence in your own faith and genuine charity toward people who love you but do not share your convictions. A pastoral resource that many converts find helpful is a simple, honest letter or conversation explaining what the Catholic wedding will involve, why certain aspects of it are as they are, and what family members can expect on the day itself.

If Your Future Spouse Is Not Catholic, Read This Carefully

A convert who is planning to marry a non-Catholic faces the full set of mixed-marriage requirements described in the canon law surrounding such unions, the same requirements that apply to any Catholic marrying a non-Catholic. This includes the need for formal permission or a dispensation depending on whether the non-Catholic partner is baptized or not, the promise to raise children Catholic, and the full standard marriage preparation process. What is distinctive about the convert’s experience of these requirements is that they may feel especially weighty coming from someone who was themselves outside the Church until recently. You may feel reluctant to make demands of your non-Catholic partner that you yourself only recently came to understand. You may feel a degree of sympathy for your partner’s position that makes it harder to hold to the Church’s requirements with conviction. You may also be in the genuinely difficult position of having entered a serious relationship or even an engagement before your conversion, and finding that your conversion has introduced a set of expectations into the relationship that your partner did not sign up for when the relationship began. These situations require honest and sometimes extended conversation, both with your partner and with your pastor. The promise to raise children Catholic is not a nominal formality for converts who are serious about their new faith. It reflects a genuine theological conviction that your children need the sacraments and the faith to reach their true end, and it deserves to be made and honored with full understanding of its weight. If your non-Catholic partner is unwilling to support your promise to raise children Catholic, that is information you need to have and process before the wedding rather than after.

The Moral Commitments of Catholic Marriage Are Not Optional for Converts Either

One of the ways that conversion to Catholicism differs from simply changing a denominational affiliation is that Catholicism comes with a specific and coherent moral framework that governs areas of life that many converts have previously treated as entirely personal choices. The Church’s teaching on contraception is a clear example. As a convert, you accepted the Church’s teaching on this matter as part of your reception into full communion, at least formally, but the practical implications of that teaching within a marriage are considerably more demanding than the intellectual assent you gave during RCIA. Natural Family Planning requires the sustained cooperation of both spouses, mutual communication about fertility, and periodic abstinence during fertile times when there is a serious reason to avoid pregnancy (CCC 2370). If your spouse is not Catholic or is a Catholic who does not share your commitment to the Church’s teaching on this matter, the practical reality of this commitment can become a significant source of tension early in the marriage. Many converts report that the teaching on contraception was one they accepted in principle during RCIA but had not thought through in practical terms for their actual marriage. The same is true of the Sunday Mass obligation, the expectation of regular confession, the standards the Church sets for entertainment and media, and the attitude toward money and material goods that flows from Catholic social teaching. Marrying as a convert means bringing these commitments into a real household with a real spouse who has their own history and their own moral framework, and the process of building a genuinely Catholic life together from those different starting points is one of the central practical tasks of the first years of a convert’s marriage.

What the Church Expects of Converts in Marriage Preparation

The Church does not create a separate, lighter marriage preparation program for converts on the assumption that RCIA has covered everything. The standard marriage preparation requirements apply in full, including the pre-nuptial investigation, the Pre-Cana program, and all the standard documentation. What is different for a convert is that the pre-nuptial investigation will specifically address the status of any prior marriages or attempts at marriage, the circumstances of your conversion, and any aspects of your situation that may affect the validity of the proposed marriage. Your pastor will need to verify that you are indeed a baptized Catholic in full communion with the Church, which typically requires a copy of your baptismal certificate from the parish where you were received or baptized, issued within the last six months. If your baptism took place at Easter Vigil, you will also need evidence of your confirmation, which for most adult converts occurs at the same ceremony. The Church also needs to establish that you are free to marry, meaning that no prior bond exists that would constitute a canonical obstacle to the proposed marriage. Your full disclosure of your marital history during this process is essential, not only because honesty requires it but because providing incomplete information about prior marriages can create serious canonical problems later that are much harder to resolve than if they had been addressed from the beginning. Your pastor is not there to judge you or to create obstacles. They are there to help ensure that the marriage you enter is genuinely valid and that you are genuinely free to enter it, which is the most important service they can provide.

The Sacramental Nature of Your Marriage After Conversion

If you were previously married to a baptized non-Catholic and both of you were baptized Christians when you married, then your marriage was already sacramental before your conversion, even if neither of you was Catholic. The Church teaches that marriage between two baptized persons is a sacrament, regardless of whether either party is Catholic (CCC 1617). Your reception into the Church does not change the sacramental nature of a marriage that was already sacramental. What it does change is your awareness of and responsibility to the sacrament you are living. If you were married to an unbaptized person and you then became Catholic, your marriage was a valid natural marriage but not a sacrament, since baptism is required for the sacramental character of marriage. Your conversion changes your relationship to the Church and to the sacramental life without automatically dissolving your natural marriage. If your unbaptized spouse becomes baptized at any point, your valid natural marriage is automatically elevated to a sacramental marriage at that moment without any additional ceremony being required. If you are about to marry for the first time after your conversion, and your proposed spouse is a baptized Catholic or baptized non-Catholic, your marriage will be both valid and sacramental, provided all canonical requirements are observed. If your proposed spouse has never been baptized, the marriage will be valid but not sacramental, subject to the dispensation requirements applicable to any Catholic in a disparity-of-cult situation. The specific canonical and theological character of your marriage matters not only as an intellectual point but because it affects your understanding of what you are entering and the specific graces available to you through it.

Your Sponsor, Your Parish, and Your Support Network Matter

One of the practical realities of marrying as a convert is that you are entering the sacrament of marriage at a time when your support network within the Catholic community may still be developing. Your RCIA sponsor, if the relationship has been good, can be a real resource during marriage preparation, not as a canonical advisor but as someone who knows your faith story and can offer personal encouragement and perspective. The parish community you have joined may or may not have a strong culture of support for newly received Catholics, and finding the right parish home as a convert who is also preparing for marriage is worth taking seriously rather than defaulting to whatever is geographically convenient. Many converts find that their first years in the Church involve a period of significant theological excitement followed by a period of adjustment as the reality of parish life, with its ordinary human limitations and its distance from the idealized Catholicism they encountered in books and formation programs, becomes the everyday context of their faith. Marrying during this transition period means that both the excitement and the adjustment will be happening simultaneously with the adjustments of early married life. Having good spiritual direction from a priest who understands both the convert experience and the realities of early marriage is an unusually valuable resource in this situation. If your diocese or parish offers ongoing formation for newly received Catholics or for married couples in their early years, take advantage of it. The graces of the sacrament of marriage are real and sufficient, but they work through your cooperation, your ongoing formation, and the support of a community that helps you understand and live what you have committed to.

The Hidden Blessing of Marrying as a Convert

Among the things that honest accounts of the convert experience in marriage tend to underreport is the genuine spiritual advantage that comes with having chosen your faith deliberately as an adult. Cradle Catholics sometimes take the faith for granted in ways that converts rarely can, because converts made a conscious decision to accept a specific set of beliefs and commitments, often at some cost in terms of family relationships or personal convenience. This conscious choosing tends to produce a quality of intentionality in the convert’s faith life that benefits their marriage directly. Converts who marry with a clear understanding of why they joined the Church, what the sacrament of marriage means in Catholic teaching, and what specific commitments they have accepted, often bring a seriousness to their marriage preparation and to their early married life that is genuinely valuable. The process of conversion itself, which involves extended examination of the Church’s teaching, regular engagement with Scripture and the tradition, and the communal formation of RCIA, gives converts a theological vocabulary and a set of formation experiences that can enrich their understanding of the marriage sacrament (CCC 1641-1642). The challenges described throughout this article are real, but they exist alongside genuine advantages that come from the convert’s particular position. You have chosen this faith. You have examined its claims, accepted its demands, and committed yourself to living it out. Bringing that quality of informed commitment to a Catholic marriage is a genuine gift to your spouse and to the family you will build together. The key is to be as honest about the challenges as you are enthusiastic about the blessings, and to approach the marriage with the same intellectual seriousness and genuine humility that brought you into the Church in the first place.

The Ongoing Formation That Marriage Requires

Conversion to Catholicism does not end at the Easter Vigil, and marriage does not complete your formation as a Catholic. Both are ongoing states of life that require continuing attention, learning, and growth throughout the years they are lived. Many converts who married shortly after reception report that some of the most significant deepening of their Catholic identity happened not during RCIA but during the first years of marriage, when the practical demands of living Catholic commitments with a real spouse in a real household confronted their abstract acceptance of Catholic teaching with concrete situations requiring specific decisions. The teaching on openness to children, for example, moves from being an interesting theological position to being a daily lived reality when you are a married couple making decisions about family planning together. The Sunday obligation moves from being a rule you accepted intellectually to being a discipline you maintain through tiredness, competing social pressures, and the ordinary difficulty of forming habits in a household that may not entirely share your commitments. The expectation of regular confession moves from being a sacramental practice you learned about in RCIA to being the specific means by which you address the real moral failures of a real married life. Many dioceses and Catholic organizations offer ongoing formation programs for couples, including programs like Worldwide Marriage Encounter, Teams of Our Lady, and other marriage enrichment resources that are explicitly designed for practicing Catholics who want to deepen their understanding and practice of the marriage vocation. These are not crisis resources but enrichment resources, and engaging with them during the early years of a convert’s marriage is one of the most practical investments a newly married couple can make in the long-term health of their life together.

The Grace Is Sufficient for the Specific Life You Have Chosen

The final honest word for anyone preparing to marry as a Catholic convert is this: the Catholic tradition has a high and specific vision of what marriage is, what it requires, and what it offers, and that vision is not diminished by the complexity of the convert’s particular situation. Converts who marry in the Church, who have addressed their prior marital history honestly, who have completed their preparation with seriousness, and who bring their new faith actively into their married life are entering the sacrament on the same terms as every other Catholic. The grace available to you through the sacrament is not a reduced version reserved for those who were born into the faith. It is the full sacramental grace of Christian marriage, ordered to perfecting your love and strengthening your commitment through every season of your life together (CCC 1641-1642). Your conversion story, with all its particular history, is not a liability in this vocation. It is part of what you bring to it, and for the right spouse, it may be one of the most compelling things about you. The Church is a community of people who came to the faith from every conceivable background, at every conceivable point in their lives, carrying every conceivable kind of history. The sacraments do not require a clean slate. They require honest consent, genuine commitment, and an openness to the grace that meets you where you actually are. Marry as a convert knowing what you have accepted, having addressed what needs to be addressed, and trusting that the God who brought you this far will provide sufficiently for the life you are beginning.