Hi all,
Me and my better half are getting married in the summer. We were both baptized in our (EU) countries of origin, but neither of us is a believer, so we never paid the church tax here, since we would never use their services.
Now, to please families, we are willing to marry in the church, abroad. Problem is that the priest in Italy wants to be put in contact with the parish where we live in CH. For example, we need to somehow announce that we are getting married to the community here, in case someone knows that one of us has already been married in the church...
I wonder if anyone here had the same situation? A couple of questions would be:
1 - Which parish should I go to? There are a few churches around our flat.
2 - Will we have to register to the parish here and start paying the church tax?
Thanks!
Talk do your local council/national register office about.
You mean the Kreisburo in Zurich?
The Kreisburo has absolutely NOTHING to do with the Catholic Church and what they will or won't allow. Catholic Church guidelines say that a Catholic can in exceptional marry a non Catholic- only if s/he will respect their partner's faith and agree for the children to be raised in the Catholic faith. If none of the partners is a practising Catholic- be prepared to lie, a lot, if you want to get permission- and to be able to give answers to key questions. Your local Catholic Church depends on the taxes for staff, maintenance, services, etc- so might not be keen to cooperate, I'm afraid.
Yes, we'd have to "lie" about raising the kids as practising Catholics, but I guess we would not be the first ones
We took the preparatory course here (and paid for it), no lies were needed there.
We will make a donation to the church where we marry and never use the local church here, so I would not feel any guilt for not paying the church tax here.
Is it really worth going against your beliefs (or lack of religious ones) and marry in a church to please your family? You are adults, it will be your marriage, and I think most people enter into marriage with the "til death parts us" vision - I would strongly lean towards doing it your way right from the beginning. Depending on how strong the beliefs of your family are, instead of a wedding they will be at a group sinning session .
If you don't feel "the church" adds to your relationship I would not use it as the setting for your marriage ceremony. Far better to find a beautiful vineyard or garden arbour
The mission where we took the course could tell us which church to contact, I guess they'll have the answer to our questions.
Paying the taxes does not matter at all. But having no contact with your local church will be a problem - you need to get what are called 'letters of freedom' from your local parish priest say he knows of no reason why you can not be married in the Catholic church. And there is the thing, if he does not know you, he can't give you the required letter at best all he can say is that he has no record of you marrying in his church and that may not be enough for the bishop in who's dioceses you wish to get married.
But that said, a bishop is always prince in his own dioceses and can override all requirements if he so wishes. So I'd say your best bet is to try and talk with your local priest here and see what his position on the matter is. Some priests tend to be very flexible about these things and are able to produce the required authorisation from their bishop. And if a Swiss bishop issues such an authorisation, then no priest in Italy is going to challenge it.
This must be very dated because even 20+ years ago when I got married in the Catholic church we were not even asked such questions! And to cap it all we even had a muslim man as a godfather to one of our children.