Father Mark Drew, an assistant priest in Warrington, tweeted in response to the news: “Can anyone explain to me how ‘Boris’ Johnson, who left the Catholic church while at Eaton [sic] and is twice divorced, can be married at Westminster Cathedral, while I have to tell practising Catholics in good faith who want a second marriage in Church that it’s not possible?”
The rector of St Paul’s in Deptford, Father Paul Butler, tweeted: “Always one canon law for the rich and one for the poor.”
Can anyone explain to me how "Boris" Johnson, who left the Catholic Church while at Eaton and is twice divorced, can be married at Westminster Cathedral, while I have to tell practicing Catholics in good faith who want a second marriage in Church that it's not possible?
— Mark Drew (@PhilHellene1960) May 29, 2021
Always one Canon Law for the Rich and one for the Poor.
— Fr Paul Butler (@RedRector) May 29, 2021
The Rome correspondent for Catholic magazine The Tablet said that “there will be a feeling that, why are some people who are divorced allowed to be married in the church and others not?”
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Christopher Lamb said: “And I think that’s where the church can look at its current rules and see how it can become more welcoming. It has been welcoming to Boris Johnson, why not to others?”
However, papal biographer Austen Ivereigh has suggested that Johnson’s previous two marriages were unlikely to have been recognised in Catholic law as neither of his former wives were Catholics themselves and the weddings were not Catholic ceremonies. This means that a “simple administrative process” was likely to have been used to declare his previous marriages invalid.
When the canonical form of marriage has not been observed and the marriage was not later validated in the Church, a simple administrative process is used to declare such marriages invalid in church law.
— Austen Ivereigh (@austeni) May 30, 2021
