Catholics/adultery

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Expert: - 4/10/2004


Question
My wife and I have been married for 15 yeaars. She is a cradle catholic and I am finishing RCIA as we speak. I was married once before for 14 years and grew up as a baptist. As I understand it until my annulment is granted, if it is granted, to avoid committing adultery ( a mortal sin )we must live as brother and sister. In order to recieve the sacrement of confession we had to make this commitment. If an annulment is not granted must we remain celibate forever or choose to die with mortal sin on our souls and spend eternity in Hell?  

Answer
Tony, if you are going to become a Catholic, you are likely going to be faced with several instances where your intellect and conscience will question some Church teachings, as well as certain practices within the organized Church.

It's really up to you how you respond to these issues. You are a free being.

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Michael Clark, Ph.D.

Expertise

I'm a progressive Catholic--not a liberal, conservative nor a single-minded critic of Catholicism. I simply believe that adults in the 21C should use the mind God gave them and not just repeat ancient and medieval modes of thinking.

I can probably help with questions that intelligently and respectfully question those aspects of Catholicism that are not infallible. But if you're looking for someone to vigorously defend or perhaps refute Catholicism as a whole, that's not me. So please ask another expert.

Experience

I run an educational website earthpages.org and know what the web has to offer. I might suggest hyperlinks and/or book titles as I have a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and a considerable personal library.

Publications
Print Media:
My table from "Religions and Cults" at earthpages.org is reproduced with permission in L. Lindsey, S. Beach and B. Ravelli, Core Concepts in Sociology, 2nd ed., p. 157

World Wide Web:
My online article "Letter to God" coauthored with Buddhist monk, E. Raymond Rock, appears on several different spirituality-based websites, including http://tinyurl.com/db7a5o

I've interviewed, as a Christian, a self-proclaimed mystic: http://tinyurl.com/cawykr

My articles appeared at the former New View magazine nuvunow.ca and are published at earthpages.org.

Education/Credentials
Ph.D. in Religious Studies
M.A. in Comparative Religion
B.A. Hon. in Psychology/Sociology
For more info, please see my CV and letters of recommendation and my blog at michaelwclark.com.

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