My wife's younger (adult) sister has become pregnant. She is 5 months along now.
The day she told my wife months back, my wife immediately counseled marriage-- marriage in the Church.
She was baptized Catholic, and confirmed (NO, of course), but doesn't practice at all. She flirted with Protestantism as a teenager because of their oldest sister who apostasized at some point as a teenager herself and sought to convert the heathen Catholic siblings (my wife always ignored those overtures, before we met), but I digress...
So she's a Catholic in the NO sense, at least the baptism is valid, but now we're 5 months into the pregnancy and no wedding, no wedding date.
My wife probably shouldn't have left it alone after the initial conversation, probably thinking her sister realized the gravity of her situation.
Anyway, her sister has made off the cuff comments about a civil marriage. She also claimed that they decided they wanted to get married *before* she even got pregnant. Either she's saying that out of shame, or he lied about his intentions as I figure if that was true (he intended to marry her) he surely would have taken her pregnancy as an opportunity to expedite his plans...no?
This guy, the father, is a piece of work. A manchild. He is probably nearing 40 and still fixated on souping up his car and his motorcycle. He's divorced about 6 years ago, so he cannot keep a promise apparently. He has two kids that he pays child support for, so there are real questions as to whether this clown can even support her and her child, but his financial decisions (the car, the motorcycle, etc) don't help anything.
He's got a steady job he's been at for awhile, but he's never gotten beyond an apartment and recently moved in with his married brother's family, so I'm wondering if he can even handle paying rent...
Anyway, I'm not sure if this guy would even consent to a Church wedding, or whether my wife's sister "gets it" and thus, the baby would probably go unbaptized...
Not sure what to advocate here: we are not sure what the point of a civil marriage would be(?) and a Church marriage seems unlikely. Further, what would a divorced guy do with either marriage? He has already demonstrated he'll cut bait when it gets hard. Would she be better off just being a single mother than a divorced mother, as we suspect she'll eventually be anyway?
Is a useless, irresponsible man better than no man at all?
Prayers please? And your thoughts/input? Please be charitable toward this girl. She undoubtedly made bad decisions, you don't have to point that out. Let's see with prayer and counsel if a good decision can come from this. I worry about this baby and she's not even born yet.