I read a charming story in the Post a couple of weeks ago,
about a wedding that took place in a hospital – in the maternity suites. Not
one of those sad weddings where one of the couple are dying and they rush to fulfill
their desire to marry before death arrives. This was a happy story. A couple
who had been together for a decade was having their first baby. They wanted to
marry before the baby’s birth and had obtained a marriage license. But the baby
decided to come a couple of weeks early, and the parents hadn’t yet made it to
the judge. The chaplain couldn’t make it to the hospital in time, but another
woman in labor heard what was happening and offered to officiate from her labor
bed – she was legally able to officiate at weddings through some online
group. She couldn’t go to the couple
because she had been given an epidural and couldn’t walk, so they came to
her. Fortunately, the bride had the license
in her purse when they dashed to the hospital for the baby. I liked the story –
it was a happy story. It got me to
thinking about all the couples I know or know of who were in “irregular”,
committed love relationships of varying kinds, including those married outdoors somewhere with an officiant who was licensed on the internet..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/05/24/she-was-having-a-baby-from-her-hospital-bed-she-officiated-at-the-wedding-of-another-patient-also-in-labor/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.278fb54f0e38
The RCC teaches that marriage is a “sacrament” that provides
a "special" kind of grace from God. Most Christian denominations do not believe
that marriage is a sacrament – they believe that there are only two sacraments –
baptism and eucharist.
http://religiondispatches.org/marriage-is-not-a-sacrament-for-protestants-and-why-that-matters-to-lgbt-christians/
So, if marriage is a sacrament, what makes it so? Do couples really need a RC priest to act as a "channel" for grace to the couple? A simple matter of having a Roman
Catholic priest be the officiant/witness? That would imply that the millions and millions of
grace-filled marriages that occur among people who do not marry in the Catholic
church are somehow “lesser” - that there is no grace in their marriages. Or maybe it's low octane grace and sacramental grace is some kind of supercharged high octane grace. Seems unlikely.
But even
the RCC teaches that the couple bestow the sacrament on one another and that
the priest is only a witness. Jimmie M
has been with his partner, now husband, for as many years as my husband and I
have been married. We were married in a Catholic church – this was denied to
Jim and his husband. I would suggest that
there is much more grace in Jim’s 45 year relationship than in many official Catholic
marriages. I would suggest that there is
much more grace in many marriages of friends, family and neighbors who are not
Catholic, and some not Christian (Jewish, Muslim, nones) than in many Catholic
marriages.
The husband of one of my husband’s cousins officiated at his
daughter’s wedding. He too obtained his license to officiate at weddings from
the internet. There were no religious
aspects to the wedding (a lovely wedding) because the family were all
agnostic. The young couple seem to be
doing well after 11 years and 3 kids.
Most of our neighbors are not christian – most are Jewish, a few
protestants, some Muslims, Hindus and nones.
The marriages are pretty much solid, happy, and the couples raised "good" kids. Many of us have lived on this street for 45 years. These are marriages that are “full of grace”.
There have been several marriages ended by death in recent years (we are all
getting old), but I can think of only 2 couples who ever lived on this street
in all of those years who got divorced.
If marriage is a “sacrament”, it is because of the love and commitment
of the married couple. Ritual formality
and a priest/officiant at the wedding is not what makes a marriage into a
sacrament.
In regards to marriage, it seems that the official church thinks
(once again) that it’s all about them – the clergy and the institution. Catholics “have” to get married “in the
church” or else they are "living in sin", even if legally married. They say that people should not
go directly to God to confess sins, but have to confess to a human being in a roman collar. They
say that people should not “keep holy the Sabbath” in any way other than
showing up to Catholic mass. They refuse communion to all who are not members of the RC church, even though Jesus shared the bread and wine to a roomful of people who were Jewish and not Roman Catholic. After all, Jesus was not a Roman Catholic, so maybe he could not receive the eucharist in an RC church either.
All of these things seem to have one thing in
common – the rules and rituals keep the institution and the clergy at the center, and keep too many thinking that they need clergy and an institution in order to have a
relationship with God. Some, not married in the RC church, or divorced and remarried without the hoops of annulment, are sufficiently indoctrinated that they still feel some kind of "guilt" - fear that their own loving marriage is not a "sacrament" and that their marriage can't be grace-filled. They feel guilt if they join a not Catholic spouse in communion in a not Catholic christian church. Etc. This is wrong on
the face of it. So is it any wonder that the numbers of “spiritual but not
religious? just keep growing?
"So, if marriage is a sacrament, what makes it so? Do couples really need a RC priest to act as a "channel" for grace to the couple? A simple matter of having a Roman Catholic priest be the officiant/witness? That would imply that the millions and millions of grace-filled marriages that occur among people who do not marry in the Catholic church are somehow “lesser” - that there is no grace in their marriages."
ReplyDeleteThe simple rule of thumb is, "When two baptized persons marry, their marriage is a sacramental marriage". That means that if a baptized Lutheran marries a baptized Baptist, their marriage is a sacramental marriage, in the eyes of the Catholic church, anyway; their own denominations may not agree.
The bar is somewhat higher for Catholics: they must confer their consent to one another in a Catholic church before the church's ordinary minister for this purpose (i.e. a bishop, priest or deacon) in order for the marriage to be valid - and a marriage can't be sacramental unless it is also valid (which is to say, real). Why are the requirements stiffer for us? I guess because it's an ideal that is actually achievable for the great, great majority of us. If I'm not mistaken, that wasn't always the canonical requirement, and there is even a movement afoot to do away with that particular requirement.
I don't agree that a non-sacramental marriage is somehow "lesser" than a sacramental marriage. Marriage is a natural thing to human beings, whether or not they are baptized Christians. Good marriages are good for the spouses, the family and the community, whether or not the marriages are sacramental. Like you, I have known married couples from other faiths, mixed faiths, and no particular faith at all, who have good marriages. To say "their marriage is not sacramental" is like saying, "his eyes are not blue" - even if they're brown rather than blue, brown eyes generally work as well as blue eyes, and they can look good in their own right, too.
There may be some ontological difference between a sacramental and a non-sacramental marriage, but I don't think that difference is visible/detectable by the human senses, and both sacramental and non-sacramental marriages have the potential to be good marriages (or not).
Like you, I think it's quite likely that grace somehow is wrapped up with good marriages whether or not they happen to fall within the church-law definition of "sacramental marriage". Remember: marriage is from God - even the so-called "natural" (non-Christian) marriages.
I hope the institution and the clergy aren't at the center of your marriage (which I hope is a good one). They're not at the center of mine. The priest who did our wedding, as the duly appointed representative of the faith community, did the wedding on the designated day and then faded into the background as far as our marriage was concerned. (In point of fact, I'm sorry to say he died a couple of years after our wedding.) A wedding is a day long but a marriage, we hope, lasts for the rest of our lives. My marriage happens to be a Catholic marriage, which means that our "mode" of living out our lives of discipleship is as wife and husband. I definitely wouldn't say the institutional church is at the center of our married lives, but we do live our lives within the church (i.e. among the people of God), and in fact our family is a kind of instantiation of the church (i.e. we're a domestic church).
LOL! No, the institution and the clergy are most definitely NOT at the center of our marriage. Love is. Love is where the "sacrament", the grace, the holiness resides. It is not something that came about because our marriage was witnessed by a priest in a RC church. Each couple creates sacramentality in a marriage I think. The priest does not confer “sacramentality” on a marriage – it is not an automatic side effect of a particular religious ritual.
DeleteMarriage becomes a sacrament because of love - through the countless choices to love couples make, from the first love that leads to marriage, and during the years that follow, even when it is, as Jean puts it, a "slog" at times - and difficult to choose to love.
Jim - "When two baptized persons marry, their marriage is a sacramental marriage"."
So the church basically says that its marriage rite, witnessed by a priest, is what makes marriage a sacrament. But that seems like an attempt to claim that the church and its clergy control God’s grace.
I believe that we have a grace-filled marriage. It’s a sacrament but this has nothing to do with the fact that we married in a Catholic church with a priest as witness. I do not believe there is any "ontological" difference between those who marry in a church, protestant or Catholic, and those who marry in a hospital room, hours before their baby is born. The sacrament, if that's what you want to call it, is found in the love and commitment of the couple. If that fails at some point, there is no sacramental marriage anymore. I also don't think that there is any ontological difference between those who follow the vocation of ordained clergy and those who marry, or those who remain single.
But it seems sometimes that the church tries to use sacraments as a means of controlling people. You must go to confession to a priest to be "absolved" of your sins. Nonsense - it's seems more a way to keep people feeling they "need" a priest as some kind of line to God. Of course, that's not true. We can all seek God on our own, and if we feel a need to confess sins, confess directly to God. No human intermediary required, even though some find it helpful to discuss their problems with a priest.
Baptism - why is it necessary to have a priest (or deacon) do baptisms? Anyone can baptize someone else, even the church concedes that, but says only in an "emergency". Control again?
As you may recall, a few years ago the German bishops warned Catholics that if they stopped paying the government collected church tax, the church would not baptize, marry or bury them or their families. Power. Control. Anyway, I have wandered again from my thoughts about sacramentality and grace in marriage to the broader issues of the church’s claim that it controls God’s sacraments.
It also seems that some (Jim?) believe that there is no “sacramental” marriage without the participation of ordained human beings during a wedding ceremony that is conducted according to a man-made rites and rules. But, now that I’ve spent time “thinking aloud” on digital paper, I am even more convinced that the holiness, grace and “sacramentality” of marriage is in the married relationship itself and has nothing to do with religious rituals and rites.
Anne, I don't want to keep pressing this point, as I suppose it's clear enough from my previous example of a Lutheran and a Baptist. If they're baptized, and they marry, then their marriage is a sacrament. There is no requirement of institutional control or even involvement. No priest or deacon need be within a hundred miles of their wedding day.
DeleteCatholics lay more of a burden, if you will, upon themselves with their requirements of a church and the church's minister. And if I'm not mistaken, that is not a requirement that goes back to time immemorial - in fact, it's a relatively recent historical development.
And as I mentioned, I don't disagree with you that God blesses some non-sacramental marriages.
There is nothing about my presence at a wedding that makes the marriage sacramental, except insofar as the liturgical order says that I, or someone like me, needs to do and say certain stuff at certain times. Someone has to wear the vestments and run the show. I guess, in theory, the ritual could prescribe some other, alternative roles, words, actions, postures, etc. But it doesn't. And it's not that it doesn't because of some desperate power grab by the church. It's just that this is what our ritual happens to prescribe. I daresay the reasons are some brew of tradition and culture. Please believe me, doing a wedding doesn't make me feel powerful. It's really kind of the opposite: it's a way for me to serve.
And I'm not waving a magic wand. I'm not conferring grace. The couple confer the sacrament upon one another.
OK, Jim, if the couple confer the sacrament on one another, then the sacrament is present even if the couple do not marry in a church - in any church. If they get married while tiptoeing through the tulip field, it is a sacramental marriage?
DeleteA couple of more examples - when my baptized Catholic brother and his Methodist baptized wife married in a Methodist church, their marriage is considered a sacrament by the RCC - complete with sanctifying grace?
DeleteWhen my Jewish friends' daughter married a Jewish man, is the marriage a sacrament?
When my baptized Catholic son married his baptized Catholic wife before a judge, then they also entered a sacramental marriage with all the perqs?
Anne, I think the answers are Maybe, No and Maybe respectively.
DeleteThe Jewish-couple example is the most straightforward. The church would assume that the marriage is valid, but by definition it wouldn't be sacramental because baptism of both spouses - in other words, that the spouses are Christian - is a prerequisite for a marriage to be sacramental.
Regarding your other two examples: for a marriage to be sacramental, the marriage must actually exist, i.e. it must be a valid marriage. To be validly married, a Catholic needs to get married in a Catholic church and meet all the other canonical requirements (of which there are quite a few - cf the questionnaire that we have the couples fill out at the beginning of marriage prep). That is true whether or not the spouse is Catholic.
If for whatever reason they elect to not get married in the Catholic church (whether it's in some other denomination's church or before a judge or in a hospital room or, I suppose, in one of those cheesy Las Vegas wedding chapels), then the couple can request a Dispensation from Canonical Form. If they do this, and it's granted, then everything is copacetic from the point of view of the church. If, as probably is the usual practice, they don't request the dispensation, or they do request it but it's not granted, then in the eyes of the church the marriage isn't valid (and therefore also not sacramental). But it can be made valid (and also sacramental) afterward via the convalidation process.
I think that explanation would apply to both your first and third examples.
My take is that there are many "sacramental" marriages that the Church has not officiated at ... just as there are many saints in heaven that the Church doesn't know about.
ReplyDeleteWe have less than one wedding per year in the local parish because marriage prep is viewed as a joyless drag in which the couple is harangued about duties, obligations, responsibilities, and birth control. A friend, who was married in the Church, agreed with all that, and said, in addition, that it went on for nearly a year.
She described a test at the end in which the couple was put in separate rooms and asked to tell how the other person would respond to certain situations. She and her prospective groom, were both fearful that too many answers that didn't mesh would disqualify them for marriage.
But that's just the prevailing attitude in my neck of the woods.
Marriage is a hard slog. If two people can remain lovers or even good friends, you can get through it and even feel that your life is better for it. But is getting through it the same as having a true calling to the sacrament? And how do you really know for sure until one of you is dead and you realize that you if you had it all to do over again, you'd do the same.
There are so many forces working against marriage--not to mention friendships, parenthood, or any kind of family connection--that I wonder if any denomination or faith can mitigate them. It's really up to the couple to make the commitment and see it through.
A sense of humor helps.
"She described a test at the end in which the couple was put in separate rooms and asked to tell how the other person would respond to certain situations. She and her prospective groom, were both fearful that too many answers that didn't mesh would disqualify them for marriage."
DeleteYeah, this is a thing. It's proponents will be very quick to say, "It's not a test - it's an instrument!" In other words, it's not that if you fail the quiz, you can't get married. It's more analogous to a personality test: it measures you and your prospective spouse's attitudes toward six or seven important sets of topics and stages that are likely to occur during the course of a long life together.
For example: money, which as we all know can be a big source of conflict in a marriage. If her attitude is laissez-faire about money, whereas his is that it's extremely important and he's a control freak about it, that's probably a red flag. Then the marriage preparer is supposed to call out to the couple, "Hey, kids, potential source of conflict here - why don't we spend some time talking about this?" The goal is not to deep-six the wedding, but hopefully to get the couple communicating about stuff that they might otherwise blithely skate right past in their starry-eyed preparations for The Big Day.
Have deacons or other preparers ever been able to call off a halt to a wedding?
DeleteMy friend (also my attorney) and her husband were in their early 30s, so not exactly "kids," and they felt the whole process was infantilizing. Not a good match for the deacon and his wife, I think.
But, they're still together, attend Mass regularly, and are expecting their third child, so it all worked out.
Also, is there some age at which a couple is excused from the obligation of marriage prep? A middle aged couple who were widowed didn't have to go through it. What if you were getting married for the first time at age 55?
DeleteWould that test be the FOCUS pre marriage inventory? Here it is a written questionnaire rather than each one being in separate rooms getting questioned. The only thing I remember us getting questioned separately on is the question of whether we were there of our own free will and without any kind of coercion. I believe that is still the practice, and with good reason.
DeleteA somewhat humorous note about the FOCUS; one of my brothers in law was coaching a nephew's fiancee about it. He advised her, "...don't give any ambiguous answers. Say yes or no, the Church is like the military (he is a veteran) they don't like undecided." Trouble is there is a lot of ambiguity in life.
Katherine - yes, we used FOCUS for some years. We might have switched to something else now, at least there has been talk of it, but nobody has actually rolled it out to me yet. But I actually do very few weddings, and I don't really do the marriage prep per se. I do meet with the couple a few times, but that's basically to get through the canonical paperwork and plan the wedding. I have them do the marriage prep either with the couple in the parish who hosts it, or I send them to an all-day-Saturday event hosted by the archdiocese.
Delete(Actually, I think my money-conflict example is too simplified. I think FOCUS would look for the kind of misalignment where *he* thinks he's a control freak about money, but she thinks he's *not* a control freak. My eyes sort of glaze over trying to keep track of all that.)
Jean - I don't think that the church would, nor should, excuse a middle age couple from marriage prep, especially if this will be their first marriage. But it would be kind to send them to an older-couples prep session, or do private prep that is more tailored to their stage of life. It's definitely annoying for the sophomores to have to sit in the 2nd grade classroom with the 2nd graders.
A deacon or a priest can't stop a couple from being married. But he can certainly decline to marry them himself, and tell them clearly why he thinks they're not ready (or why they should never get married, ever). Thankfully, I've never been in that position, although I did come close once. In this day and age, it's difficult to believe, if a deacon jilted the couple that way, that they wouldn't look to get married outside the church instead.
Oh, yes, I expect getting a refusal to marry would not necessarily call off a wedding. And my guess is that marriage preparers can be wrong.
DeleteA priest in the parish one town over have a nice little homily about nearly tossing a kid out of confirmation. He said he had a talk with him and his parents and decided to let some things slide. Some years later, the kid contacted him, thanked him for his advice, and told him he was about to take his final vows in a monastery. The priest talked about the need for humility and the need for us to remember that we cannot always see what is in the hearts of others.
Jean, yes, I have heard priests say similar things. One priest I know said he has married couples whom he wouldn't have given odds of them being together in five years, and they are still together many years later. And there are others who seemingly had everything going for them, and things unraveled within a short time.
DeleteJean: My take is that there are many "sacramental" marriages that the Church has not officiated at ... just as there are many saints in heaven that the Church doesn't know about.
DeleteYes.
As a young, not particularly rebellious, raised-Catholic, woman, I pretty much felt that if I didn't toe the line the church and clergy set for us, and marry in the RC church, we would somehow be deprived of God's grace for our marriage. I was wrong about that, but I was young and dumb.
Based on the stories I hear today when young couples approach the RCC to marry, I doubt that my husband and I would have married in the Catholic church if it were now, instead of 45 years ago.
My husband went along with a Catholic wedding even though he is Protestant, because he is a nice guy and thought it important to me. He wanted to make me happy. The church where we married had a great pastor (E.J. Dionne wrote a column about him when he retired!) who invited him to receive communion and so he didn't feel like a second-class citizen at his own wedding. Now I hear that if only one is Catholic, most parishes refuse to even do a nuptial mass. We weren't members of that parish when we approached them. We went there because it was near where we would be making our home. I did not belong to a Catholic parish at the time, and my mother's parish was 3000 miles away. Nobody had been putting $ in the envelope but we were not asked to fork over $ up front, as I hear is now done in many Catholic parishes where neither the couple nor parents have been writing checks regularly.
The hoops we had to go through were minimal - an interview with the pastor (who officiated at the wedding), and three rather casual, conversational interviews with the young priest assistant (who later left the priesthood and married in an Episcopal church). No group classes. No mandatory NFP classes. No pre-Cana weekends. No cross-examinations about one another in separate rooms. I'm sure we would have "failed" that particular hoop. Nobody really knows someone until they've gone through a whole lot of life together, and even then, there are still mysteries.
In The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris wrote: Human relationships are by their nature incomplete--after twenty-one years, my husband remains a mystery to me, and I to him, and that is as it should be. Only hope allows us to know and enjoy the depth of our intimacy."
My husband is indeed still a mystery to me after more than 45 years of marriage, and I know that I am to him also. But it took me a while to understand what Kathleen Norris says – “that (the mystery) is as it should be”.
Jean, I agree with your friends that the process of marriage prep these days seems very often infantilizing. There aren't that many teenagers seeking marriage in the church these days and perhaps the marriage prep folk should use a bit of discernment when it comes to individual couples.
Nobody knows ahead of time what marriage demands, just as nobody knows ahead of time what being a parent demands. The church puts couples through months and months of required marriage "prep", yet seems to think that once married, couples have a moral obligation to have children. Many perfectly good and nice people should not have children. Instead, the church should ask couples to go to parenthood prep BEFORE they have kids - not everyone is suited to parenthood. Plus, the divorce rate goes up dramatically within the first couple of years after the first child is born.
The church focuses too much on marriage as being for reproduction, instead of marriage as a love relationship - a sacrament - that can help people get through life, and, one hopes, open them a bit more to God’s grace.
Katherine - "Trouble is, there is a lot of ambiguity in life".
Too bad the church officials don't often understand this reality!
Katherine, I believe parenthood is covered in marriage prep.
DeleteI confess I don't see the point of having someone who got their credentials from the internet officiate at a marriage. If they don't want a church ceremony, why not do like the Quakers, and just declare their intent to marry in front of their guests or witnesses?
ReplyDeleteWell, part of it has to do with civil legality. The couple in the hospital couldn't have one of the nurses sign the paperwork that would make them legally married, with all of the legal requirements and privileges that go with legal marriage. In the case of our relative, the father acted more or less as the director of the action. He also used his role to convey some thoughts about marriage to his daughter and her groom. And he was legally able to make the marriage official in the eyes of the civil authorities. I imagine someone at a Quaker ceremony signs the papers that go to the government.
DeleteI'M N/M, never married, but it's my opinion that a marriage between two Christians is supposed to exist within and part of the Body of Christ. It's supposed to strive to be in a context of something and not by itself. That's a reason to have it before the congregation and in presence of a minister. Otherwise, it's all just window dressing. I think all this could be done without all the folderol, sacramental or not. I just agreed to escort one of my dance partners to a wedding tomorrow. I find weddings harder to attend now, having seen so many marriages turn into plane crashes or Bataan death marches. And, in the old days, I could get plastered which made everything more bearable. Hopefully, there'll be danceable music but wedding reception music usually sucks in that way.
ReplyDelete"It's supposed to strive to be in a context of something and not by itself." Good point, Stanley.
DeleteStanley: a marriage between two Christians is supposed to exist within and part of the Body of Christ
DeleteI see your point when the marriage involves two believing christians. Although even then, I don't think the congregation is necessary - a priest or minister, maybe, within the context of christian belief.
The point I am trying to make is that marriages can be holy - can be a "sacrament" - without people being active christians at all - without the involvement of the christian church. Since I believe that the couple creates the sacrament through their love, then people don't need to be baptized to have a sacramental marriage as Jim says the RCC teaches. The RCC has its own definition of sacrament, but their understanding of what makes a marriage a "sacrament" (holy and grace-filled) is theirs, and does not mean that their understanding is the correct understanding.
Anne, My main criticism of my church regarding marriage is that the whole thing is so legalized, institutionalized and bureaucratized. I would never put a potential mate through an annulment process. That stuff seems devoid of life and humanity and Jesus, too. Of course, one low problematic course is to avoid marriage altogether and it ain't all that bad.
DeleteNearly all my closest friends are unmarried. They all seem quite happy.
DeleteI only know what I'm told by cradle Catholics who went through marriage prep.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed to be less prep and more adjudication: not, we are preparing you for marriage so much as, we are judging your fitness for marriage.
Still, if marriage is a calling, I suppose one has to ensure discernment and trials. And if you can't stand marriage prep, perhaps you won't be able to stand marriage.
Is the divorce rate lower among those who have gone through marriage prep?
We have been married 61.5 years. We had "marriage prep," called pre-Cana conferences in those days. The only thing either of us remembers from it is "drive a stake in your in-law's lawn and them move as far away from it as you can get." There must have been other ideas, and some of them must have been good as well.
ReplyDelete61.5 years ago, we presumed marriage was a sacrament because we had been told and had no reason to doubt it. 61.5 years later we still have no reason to doubt it. But we look around and see that these days it's sort of a kicky thing you do while having a kid and maybe before granny dies to keep her happy. It also gives the young couple a chance to get mad at the church again when they are told, for e.g., that it would't be cute to have the bridesmaids in bikinis. We are currently awaiting nuptials for a couple who have been "together" for nearly 10 years. We will have to wait until a year from this coming August because they venue they desire won't be available until then. There is a different kind of sense of commitment these days than there was when we did it. Sort of whatever makes you happy right now. Cf. the POTUS. There is also a high suicide rate. Probably those things are all unrelated. Maybe not. We'll see. Who knows?
This strikes me as very unfair and unkind.
DeleteYeah, what's with these rich, successful, famous people killing themselves? The good news, if any, may be that depression doesn't have to stop you from doing stuff. These people functioned highly. I think of Meriwether Lewis. Theodore Roosevelt is also reputed to have been a depressive. Perhaps they work hard to stay ahead of the demons but sometimes the demons catch up.
DeleteWould it have been fairer if I had brought up opioids?
DeleteTom, I just don't think what you're describing is really typical or insightful. "By God, we had a sacramental marriage, and that's what's wrong with the world today and why we have bridesmaids in bikinis and people committing suicide!"
DeleteI think there are reasons the kiddies can't maintain a marriage: It's because they didn't see their parents doing it, or they felt their parents were miserable in their marriage, or they have no real support system when the marriage falls apart.
Jean, there were four bridesmaids and four whatevers in our wedding party. Those eight people resulted in seven separate marriages (my best man didn't), all of which lasted until death did them part. Some of them were tough. One involved a murdered daughter. Ozzie and Harriet never existed except on TV. (I once interviewed Ricky in limo the roof of which was being beaten upon by a bunch of teeny-boppers.)
DeleteI understand that things are different now. I understand that this screwed-up way of doing business which St. Ronald inflicted upon the greedheads and airheads has made it tough to have a marriage, and that greedy colleges have locked kids into loans that will never end until Gabriel blows his horn. But we never expected it to be a rose garden. This generation wilts as soon as the bloom comes off.
We went to a sweet wedding of my niece and her fiance a couple of weeks ago. It was at 10:00 in the morning. She found her dress on the internet, and the guys didn't rent tuxes, they just wore suits. They had just graduated college the week before. The one extravagance was real flowers, lots of them, that the groom's sister had put together. A couple of family members did music, I didn't know you could play Pachelbel's Canon on guitar, but they made it sound like a lute. And the couple had jumped through the Catholic hoops, it didn't kill them. They sure seemed happy, now they just have to survive her going to law school. And find an apartment in Cambridge, MA.
ReplyDeletePoint being that a Catholic wedding doesn't have to be a big hairy extravagant ordeal that you go in debt for ten years. Law school is another story, and it'll be longer than 10 years to pay off.
Sounds nice, Katherine. They'll be in enough debt with the school debt. When I was 9, I was a ring bearer in the last wedding where the reception was in a fire hall. I remember it being lots of fun though I left too early and missed the brawl that broke out later. Darn.
DeleteStanley, our younger son and daughter in law's reception was in the K of C hall. We were going to help out and bring in a couple of coolers full of beer and pop. But found out that was a no-no. No outside booze, you have to buy their stuff. Would have been less expensive the other way. But liability issues or something.
Delete"Point being that a Catholic wedding doesn't have to be a big hairy extravagant ordeal that you go in debt for ten years."
DeleteYes, yes, yes! Give that woman a cigar! Katherine, do you smoke cigars?
I couldn't agree more. I think there is a lot to be said for the previous custom of the small morning wedding with witnesses and maybe the immediate family. You don't need hundreds of others, a live band, a music video with the wedding party dancing, a dress that costs as much as a year's tuition in college, etc. etc. etc.
We wanted to go to the JOP and get 'er done when our respective leases ran out, and a larger apt became available.
DeleteWe were pressured by family to have a ceremony and reception, so we rented the college chapel. We had a sheet cake, coffee, a few flowers. Raber bought a suit at JC Penney, and I bought a suit off the rack I could wear again.
We set a time limit, 6-8 p.m. Strictly no booze, but that didn't stop Dad from setting up a wet bar in the trunk of his Crown Vic in the parking lot. My mother showed up with a caterer and brought a photographer.
One of the worst days of my life. But certainly gave Raber a taste of what he was in for from my family.
Fortunately, the marriage turned out somewhat better than the wedding.
"You don't need hundreds of others, a live band, a music video with the wedding party dancing, a dress that costs as much as a year's tuition in college, etc. etc. etc."
ReplyDeleteThat was the OLD days. I recently talked to a couple who had been to the first weekend of a destination wedding, which was for everybody, vans to get the gaping hundreds from the beach to the rented estate. The SECOND weekend was just for several dozen close friends.
Some people in our parish tell me that an old-time Polish wedding lasted three days. Sounds a bit much, glad I didn't have to put up with that!
DeleteAs for destination weddings, I think if a couple wants one they should just arrange for a clergyperson or j.p. to do the honors there, and not expect their friends and relatives to come. Then have a party when they get home. Or not. Because the friends and relatives probably aren't in love with that destination the way the couple is, and wouldn't go if they didn't feel guilted into it.
Katherine, My youngest son (married) has now dragged himself and spouse from Dallas, Texas to Hawaii (twice), Greece and stinkin' little old Seattle for weddings of his law school classmates. Needless to say, none of the parties involved actually lived there.
DeleteAnd I should add that all of our kids -- including the youngest (by 13 years) (who paid his own way through law school)-- grew up impoverished middle class. I never had any money until the last one went off to college, for which I had foresightedly prepaid and for which he won a scholarship anyway, which left both him and me much better off than I ever expected to be. This was, btw, during the terrible Clinton administration. W. Bush reduced us to barely middle class again. Which is why I can't take Paul Ryan seriously.
DeleteI've been to Hawaii once, and its on my bucket list to return there at least one more time before I die. I guarantee it won't be for a wedding.
DeleteSacramental marriage is a Catholic idea I can't wrap my head around, I guess. It might be nice for the Church to offer some kind of review of this for converts to get an idea of what this means. Or I guess I could just go Google it and see if I can find some Catholic materials.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, for a marriage to be sacramental (according to church law) each person must be baptized. Each person must be entering into marriage of their own free will. And no impediments to marriage must exist.
DeleteA marriage can be valid without being sacramental, such as a marriage of two unbaptized people, or a marriage between one who is baptized and one who is not. A marriage of two baptized Protestant Christians who are free to marry is considered sacramental, they are not bound by the form of canon law requiring the marriage to be witnessed by a priest.
This is just a summary of how it is defined by church law; I personally believe that many of the marriages described in Anne's post have a sacramental character.
No, I understand the legal aspect of validity. That was explained ad nauseam to us in RCIA, which was obsessed with the validity of our marriages.
DeleteI just don't know what it means for a marriage to be a sacrament. A sign of Christ in the world? Two people join together to be show Christ's love to the world? Through their actions to each other and to the world at large through their joint efforts? By producing children and raising them in the faith? By impressing on their children the importance of showing Christ's love in the world? All of the above?
If that's so, I think even people who manage to stay faithful to each other all their lives are probably living in a sacramental marriage about half the time. The rest is fighting, apologizing, wondering "what was I thinking?" or just having the White Apartment Fantasy.
I think it is possible for marriages to go through periods in which they are sacramental, and for periods in which there are bad patches when they are not. And by "bad patches," I don't mean financial problems or the house burning down, but periods of years when they feel the marriage was a miserable mistake.
Just my personal opinion, I think people who manage to be faithful to each other all their lives are living a sacramental marriage the whole time. Even through the awful or confused times. My mom used to say it was "the graces of the sacrament" that got one through those times. I don't think she was wrong.
DeletePope Francis made a comment or two on marriage early on in his pontificate, saying he thought half of all marriages weren't sacramental or something to that effect.
DeleteI used to like to read what Sean (forgot his last name), a very conservative Catholic used to write on the old blog years ago. He would say scary things like that marriage was indissoluable and people had to stay together, no matter how miserable they were.
He was pretty harsh and old school, but it got me thinking that if he was right, then it was really in the hands of the couple: They could make each other miserable. Or they could swallow hard, make a vow to let go of the past, and try to reach a detente. It would not be perfect. It might not be sacramental. But it would be better.
If you take the job of being a Catholic and what the Church teaches seriously, I think you have to accept that you live life in a state of messy uncertainty, even when you are trying your hardest.
Living in "messy uncertainty", agree with that!
DeleteMy mom used to say it was "the graces of the sacrament" that got one through those times. I don't think she was wrong.
DeleteMaybe she's right, but she does not say how one defines sacrament, or sacramental grace in marriage.
This is my quibble with the Catholic church's definition - two baptized christians may have a "sacramental" marriage. A baptized christian who married someone who is not christian, is apparently denied "sacramental grace", as are two non-christians, which is the majority of people in the world, and, thus, the majority of marriages.
Really? The RCC has the power to decide for God who is eligible for sacramental grace in marriage?
Jim isn't clear what it means either, since his responses to the real cases I presented above were "Maybe" - (Catholic and Methodist married in Methodist church); "No" to the Jewish marriage (so apparently Mary and Joseph's marriage was not a "sacrament"), and again, "Maybe" - Catholic and Catholic married before a judge.
This implies that non-christians do not ever have sacramental grace in their marriages, that their marriages are somehow "lesser" in the eyes of God, undeserving of the "special" helps associated with "sanctifying" grace through a sacrament - and that it is the Catholic church that has the right and ability to define this. I disagree. It actually seems to be just another attempt of the RCC to play God - to assign to itself that which is God's alone.
Some marriages seem to be a sacrament, while others don't, and it's not a matter of which religion someone belongs to, or where the couple were married. It seems to be a product of the marriage itself - of the love within the marriage, love that generates its own grace. So, if that love breaks down irrevocably, no longer present in any form, even that of friendship, then the flow of grace is thwarted, and the marriage is no longer a sacrament.
I have trouble expressing my thoughts clearly sometimes, but this is the best I can do, since I started puzzling about this issue a few days ago.
Anne, I think you are right that we can't decide for God whom he is going to extend his grace to. Maybe he extends it to everybody, and it's up to them to accept the challenge that it represents.
DeleteI a!so think it's possible for a marriage to die, even if it was sacramental to begin with.
Anne, yes, I agree it is a vexed theological question. The Anglican communion skirts the issue--marriage is a lesser sacrament, can become unsacramental, one do-over allowed. It makes space for mistakes, but divorced couples usually have to talk to the priest before a second marriage is performed.
DeleteAnglican friend's husband divorced her to marry his much younger pregnant girlfriend, leaving her with their two teenagers. She married a nice guy, never married, in his 40s. The Episcopal priest knew the situation and made prep as comfortable as he could, but a lot of hard questions had to be asked about how they would work with Former Husband to raise the teenagers and help them maintain a familial bond with their baby twin half-sisters. Friend said it was gut-wrenching at the time, but she felt that it was extremely worthwhile.
Catholics tend to have classes and programs for sacramental education, with workbooks and tests, commitment contracts, etc. I'm just not persuaded that this approach works well.
Jean, what you are describing the Anglican priest as doing sounds like accompaniment. Which is a thing Pope Francis talks about a lot. Trouble is a lot of people, clergy included, don't seem to know how to do it. So they fall back on workbooks and tests.
DeleteCatholics have a rich history of accompaniment. The saints' lives are full of examples. The beguines began by accompanying each other into their lives from farm to city, and then moved on to accompany their neighbors in their troubles.
DeleteHow many parishes are built on that strong sense of community, though? How many people in a parish a) know about the troubles of others, b) care enough to offer help, and c) have time to help?
When marriages are in trouble, families often take sides instead of trying to help couples work it out.
Or people shrug and say kids today are pansies who won't work at anything that takes effort. I
We expect a lifetime commitmemt, but do we offer the community that helps people live up to the expectations?
Meandering thoughts ...
"Some marriages seem to be a sacrament, while others don't, and it's not a matter of which religion someone belongs to, or where the couple were married. It seems to be a product of the marriage itself - of the love within the marriage, love that generates its own grace. So, if that love breaks down irrevocably, no longer present in any form, even that of friendship, then the flow of grace is thwarted, and the marriage is no longer a sacrament. "
DeleteSure, I understand your point of view here.
We might draw a parallel. Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that you accept the Catholic church's teaching that the Eucharist is a sacrament: that when the faithful gather around the altar with the bishop or priest, that the Holy Spirit comes upon those gifts to make them holy, and they become the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. At least for the sake of discussion, let's assume that is a sacrament.
But what about all the other meals that people eat? What about Thanksgiving dinner, with the whole extended family and other loved ones gather around the table in the home? What about a romantic dinner date in which a couple fans the flames of their love for one another? There seems to be a lot of love present at those meals, too. Why would the church insist that they aren't sacramental, too?
And I think the response is: the church doesn't insist that those other meals aren't filled with love and occasions of holiness. At least I wouldn't insist that. I wouldn't put a straitjacket on the Holy Spirit.
We can make similar points about other sacraments. Dr. Martin Luther King wasn't a Catholic priest and so never received the sacrament of holy orders. But who would argue that his wasn't a Spirit-filled and grace-filled ministry? Gandhi, I think, wasn't baptized, but he lived a good and courageous life.
I guess the point here is that the possibility of grace is all around us. The church doesn't just jealously channel it through its own system of seven sacraments. The church doesn't - can't - constrain God in that way.
To say that a marriage is a sacrament is to say that it images Christ in some way - in fact, that somehow Christ is present in it. Is it possible for a non-Christian, or a non-Christian couple, to somehow image Christ, perhaps unconsciously or unintentionally? I would say it's entirely possible.
Delete"This implies that non-christians do not ever have sacramental grace in their marriages, that their marriages are somehow "lesser" in the eyes of God, undeserving of the "special" helps associated with "sanctifying" grace through a sacrament - and that it is the Catholic church that has the right and ability to define this. "
Let me make a point about this that may come across as a bit strange.
I think it's better for people to have sanctifying grace than not. I think it's better for them to get to know Jesus than not.
The sanctifying grace of the sacraments can be made available to anyone. All they need to do is get to know Jesus. And be initiated into formal Christianity via the sacrament of baptism.
This is what evangelization is all about. That's what it's always been about: ushering non-Christians into Christianity, and making available to them the joy and the saving power of a life as a disciple of Jesus.
We aren't accustomed to thinking this way. But this is traditional Christianity.
"Pope Francis made a comment or two on marriage early on in his pontificate, saying he thought half of all marriages weren't sacramental or something to that effect."
DeleteRight. In fact, I believe what he said is that they're not even valid (as the church understands these things). The gist of his thought seemed to be that young people make solemn promises, either not understanding or not really meaning that these are lifetime promises.
The story of the pope saying these things was subsequently complicated somewhat when the spinmeisters from his press office apparently wordsmithed what he had said in his off-the-cuff comment, and changed the meaning somewhat.
Here is what he is reported to have said originally:
“I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,” he said.
“It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say ‘yes, for the rest of my life!’ but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”
The full story, including the subsequent wordsmithing, is here:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/most-marriages-today-are-invalid-pope-francis-suggests-51752
Jim, well, since I don't accept the concept of "sacrament" as defined by the RCC, there is no basis on which we can continue the discussion. The concept was created by the RCC, and since the basic concept is a construct of the RCC, the additions to "sacraments" over the centuries, and the definitions are also those of the RCC. One either accepts the RCC's concept/definition (making themselves the exclusive dispensers of "sanctifying grace" via the Catholic sacraments, or one does not. You do, and I do not. I don't accept it because I don't believe that God makes these distinctions - God's grace is not broken down into types of grace, with some grace more "special" than other grace. It's all just grace, freely given without - checking baptismal certificates.
ReplyDeleteJim: I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years.’ It’s the culture of the provisional.
ReplyDeleteWell, the priesthood has been set up as a provisional process, unlike marriage.
Candidates for the priesthood go through years and years of formation, in stages, before taking final vows. They have a lot of time and experience in which to test their vocations before making a final decision and may leave pretty much at any time before final vows without penalty by the church.
Even after ordination, priests can decide they made a mistake and request to be released from their vows, and this is done fairly often. I base this "fairly often" on personal acquaintance with a number of priests who left the priesthood after ordination. Considering I don't know that many people (I'm an introvert), it seems that there are more who leave after ordination than the church likes to publicize. They are then free to marry or do whatever.
This is not the case with marriage. There are no provisional "first vows" for marriage. Couples are strongly discouraged from "testing" their vocation by living together for several years before they take "final vows". Not only discouraged, but told they may not marry in the church unless they live separately for a period of time before the wedding.
Of course, the real hang up for them is that the couples who live together are having sex. And not only are they having sex, they are using birth control. As if couples living apart can't obtain birth control and find a time and place for making love . Long before cohabitation became "acceptable", couples were having sex and using birth control before marriage.
Once married, if it turns out the couple had made as big a misjudgment as the ordained priest who requests release from his vows, they are pretty much stuck - while being castigated for not sticking with it for the rest of their lives, while the priest - who was given YEARS to change his mind about ordination before it occurred - is seldom publicly disdained the way divorced couples are.
A bit of a double standard going on there as far as the church's attitudes towards "provisionality" when seeking to enter either the vocation of priest or the vocation of marriage. In one case the provisionality of the formation is institutionalized. In the other, there is no room for "first vows" before taking "final vows".
Anne, priestly promises, like wedding promises, are for life. When priests make their vows, everyone - the priest, his seminary teachers, the bishop - understands that it's a promise for a lifetime. So Francis's analogy was a good one. Priestly vocations and marriages don't always last for a lifetime, and in both sets of cases, it's typically a hard thing for the parties involved when it ends. It's not something that anyone typically intends when they get into it, but sometimes things reach the point where the alternative is even worse than ending it.
DeleteThere is a period of time during which the couple can decide whether or not to go forward with the marriage: the engagement period. Couples can and occasionally do call it off before the wedding day. They should certainly spend that time trying to make sure that getting married is the right thing to do. All those hoops that the church makes couples jump through, like pre-Cana and the Focus test and so on? All of that is geared to helping ensure that (a) the couple is making the right decision and (b) that it's a marriage that lasts. Those activities don't guarantee a good and lasting marriage, but they may help at least a little bit. At the very least, I could wish that all couples could be induced to be thoughtful and prepared before they take the plunge.
Nothing is more common than engaged couples who already are living together. The shocker for a priest or deacon these days is if the couple isn't living together. I've probably shared before that in the pre-Cana process that my wife and I went through prior to our wedding, of the 23 couples in the program, 22 were living together. And that was 30 years ago - a generation ago. I don't doubt that there are priests who would insist that a couple stop living together - there are priests who put all sorts of conditions on weddings whose chief effect is to make couples decide that the Catholic church is extraneous to their wedding and their lives. Commonweal had a pretty good article on that unfortunate tendency last month:
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/wedding-bans
But I don't know of any priests or deacons around here who would refuse to do a wedding if the couple is living together. From the point of view of traditional Christian morality, a wedding is the desired resolution of "living in sin". A couple getting married is good news!
Living together as a "trial marriage" is sort of a popular idea that doesn't really hold up under scrutiny. A lot of couples who live together don't ever tie the knot, and couples who marry after living together are no more likely - probably *less* likely - to stay together over the course of a lifetime than couples who don't live together.
I'm reasonably sympathetic toward couples who live together, but I think a good marriage is better, and I'd always want to help lead or guide a couple in that situation into marriage, if they're willing.
Sidenote - the numbers of marriages in the church continue to plummet. It seems Lori of Baltimore is getting desperate enough to try to meet young people halfway. Will it help turn the situation around?
ReplyDeleteLori permitting outdoor weddings
Yeah, that's really interesting about the Baltimore policy. I agree with it - people should be able to be married outdoors if they wish.
DeleteAn Orlando bishop (in)famously forbade his clergy from doing weddings at DisneyWorld. Wonder if that policy would be up for review?
About two days after I was ordained, and word of it spread through the office, a woman I worked with asked if I could allow her sister to get married at the Newberry Library, which I guess is a place at which someone would want to have a wedding. Since I knew even less then than now, I called the chancery to inquire. When the guy downtown stopped laughing, he said, "No." The gist of it seemed to be, Cardinal George could authorize it, but he wouldn't in a million years.
"Once married, if it turns out the couple had made as big a misjudgment as the ordained priest who requests release from his vows, they are pretty much stuck - while being castigated for not sticking with it for the rest of their lives, while the priest - who was given YEARS to change his mind about ordination before it occurred - is seldom publicly disdained the way divorced couples are."
ReplyDeleteFrom my own experience with divorced and remarried Catholics and with disgraced and disappeared priests, I have to say that paragraph hangs out there without much real world support.
Tom, I guess your real world experience differs from mine.
ReplyDeleteDivorced Catholics are forced to have an annulment, and go through a lot of ugly airing of dirty laundry in front of a bunch of celibates, and very often fighting a spouse who won't cooperate. One huge objection many have is that the church declares that the marriage was never valid, which they find to be both untrue and insulting. It was a valid marriage that for a variety of reasons, eventually failed. So many just don't bother and are told they can't receive communion.
Now I suppose priests who leave without dispensation are also barred from communion, but those who leave during the years of formation before final vows don't face being denied communion from what I understand. The priests I know personally who left with permission, were free to go to communion, and free to marry, but not free to celebrate mass, which is sort of a big waste of resources, given that several hundred married ministers/priests of other denominations are welcomed into the ranks.
"Divorced Catholics are forced to have an annulment, and go through a lot of ugly airing of dirty laundry in front of a bunch of celibates, and very often fighting a spouse who won't cooperate. One huge objection many have is that the church declares that the marriage was never valid, which they find to be both untrue and insulting."
DeleteI can understand the emotions involved.
What a declaration of nullity means is that one or both of the spouses made vows that were defective in some way.
It is via the vows that the spouses confer the marriage. Those vows promise married fidelity for life.
If those vows weren't defective in some way, and the couples meant what they promised, then what circumstances would mean that the "marriage was valid for a while, but then failed"? Infidelity of one of the spouses? One or both spouses deciding they no longer wanted to be married to the other? I agree that those are reasons that people get civil divorces, but really - according to the plain meaning of words, none of that suffices to release someone from a promise that was made for life, with no exceptions or qualifications, through sickness and in health, in good times and in bad.
Of course, this isn't actually some sort of intellectual conundrum: what happens in reality is that people (lots of them, anyway) don't really believe what the church teaches about the indissolubility of marriage. They believe what prevails in our civil society, and apparently in many other Christian denominations: marriage is a private contract between two individuals, and can be dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties. Surely that's the root of Francis's observation which I quoted in a previous comment, that half or more of people's marriages aren't actually valid: they don't believe what they promised. They believe the marriage only lasts as long as they wish it. I'm not a canonist, but that's probably grounds for a declaration of nullity.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems, it seems to me, is that there is no real way to test if a marriage was sacramental "in the eyes of God" from the outset. To believe that some panel of "experts" can actually know whether the initial union was sacramental or not (years after the fact) requires more "faith" than a lot of us have. Given the high rate of annulments granted to those who seek them, surely some people with sacramental marriages are receiving permission to abandon them and remarry. But of course there is no way to tell. Only God knows!
So annulments look to a lot of people like Church-approved divorces. The annulment process is really a "work-around" in a system where out-and-out divorces can't be granted. This is not to say it didn't develop in good faith, and that many people who believe in the system are not sincere.
Of course, annulments to civil marriages can be obtained in certain circumstances, but legal decisions made by courts are not dealing with the idea that what God has joined, let no man separate.
It seems to me (I am in one of my skeptical moods) that Jesus cannot possibly have been laying down rules for "sacramental" marriage, since no such thing existed at the time. Jesus was interpreting Mosaic Law, not Canon Law, and he was looking all the way back to Adam and Eve, who were neither Christians nor Jews. "What God has joined together," if one believes that Jesus spoke with authority, really must be taken to apply to any and every marriage, not just Jewish, Christian, or religious marriage. Marriage in the Old Testament was not really "religious" at all.
As an aside, I remember remarking on dotCommonweal that some claimed matrimony was a sacrament "instituted by Christ" because "Jesus raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament" by way of his involvement in the wedding feast of Cana. One of the participants, whose name I cannot remember, but who struck me as very devoutly Catholic and very wise responded, "If you believe that, you'll believe anything." As I understood him, he was not denying that matrimony was a sacrament, but only scoffing at the idea that Jesus instituted the sacrament of marriage at the wedding feast of Cana.
Another aside involves grace. You seemed to imply that the sacraments gave sanctifying grace. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that sanctifying grace is a yes-or-no condition. You get it through baptism, you lose it by mortal sin, and you regain it through the sacrament of penance (or a perfect act of contrition). So I don't see that marriage gives sanctifying grace.
Hi David - I tried to post a longish response, and got some sort of "HTML too long" error, so let me try brevity for a change.
Delete* Re: whether or not the marriage was sacramental: I see running throughout this larger discussion a sort of conception that what makes a marriage a "sacramental" marriage is some exalted, rarefied sense of love or intimacy between the partners, which exists in some marriages but not others. If that really was what makes a marriage sacramental, then I can understand a person being incensed at the claim that a marriage between, say, a Jew and a Muslim can't be "sacramental". But that's not really what a sacramental marriage is. It doesn't take an expert to discern, after the fact, whether or not a marriage was sacramental. If the marriage was between two baptized Christians (and, in the specific cases of Catholic marriages, also conformed to the other canonical requirements like getting married in a Catholic church), then the marriage also happened to be a sacramental marriage. That is all there is to it.
* Annulments go to validity, not sacramentality. If the marriage is annulled, that means there was something defective about the marriage vows. It is true that annulments "look like" Catholic divorce in some respects, but truly they are not the same thing. I look like Sydney Greenstreet in some respects (waistline, hairline) but anyone who has seen me act would never mistake me for him.
* I pretty much agree with you and your previous correspondent about the Wedding at Cana. I don't think the point of that pericope is to introduce the notion of a sacramental wedding; for one thing, it was a Jewish wedding. Maybe there is some analogous or poetic way that that episode prefigures a sacramental marriage.
* Re: your comment about sanctifying grace: it sent me scurrying to the catechism. I never really studied a taxonomy of grace (or if I ever did, I've forgotten all about it). I think your point is well taken: a sacramental marriage may not be a delivery vehicle for *santifying* grace, but it would be one for *sacramental* grace. (Is sacramental grace a subset of sanctifying grace? Not sure.)
Inasmuch as grace comes from God and helps us to turn toward God and stay turned toward him, that is what I would expect the grace of the sacrament of marriage to accomplish as well. In practical terms, perhaps that plays out by the spouses providing spiritual support and advice to one another - perhaps, on occasion, even spiritual admonishment. I've learned over the years that my wife has spiritual gifts that I don't possess, and through our marriage, I've benefited from them. None of these reflections on my part say anything about the possibility of God operating through a non-sacramental marriage. I wouldn't deny that possibility.
Oops. Well, it started brief!
DeleteNone of these reflections on my part say anything about the possibility of God operating through a non-sacramental marriage. I wouldn't deny that possibility.
DeleteWell, at least a small concession that God might actually give grace to all marriages rather than following the narrow, dictates of the Roman Catholic church as to which marriages are to benefit from "extra" (sacramental) grace and which are unworthy of God's grace. Good to know that God doesn't have to follow all of Rome's rules in order to bestow grace on people in marriages not deemed "sacramental" by a group of men in Rome.
Nobody has yet remarked on the differing standards for vocational "livelong commitment" that exist for those who wish to become priests and those who marry. Years of prep and trying out the vocation before final vows for ordination, but married folk are expected to commit forever without the same amount of prep and experience. A double standard.
Failing to put scripture into the context of the times in which it was written means a lot is missed in the RCC's draconian assumption that all marriages can and should last until death, no matter how miserable remaining in the marriage might be. So the people must suffer for the sin of having a failed marriage - no easy outs for them so that they can receive communion.
DeleteAgreed - divorce should not be too easy. If there are children, every attempt to save the marriage should be made. But some marriages should not be saved - some children are better off with divorced parents. My parents didn't divorce until I was a freshman in college - the youngest of their five. I was so relieved, and wished it had happened far sooner than it did.
I am neither a theologian nor a scripture scholar, nor a sociologist nor an historian. But I do read and I ponder things a lot.
Growing up Catholic, the ten commandments I was taught separated one commandment into two - not coveting thy neighbors' goods and not coveting thy neighbor's wife. This implied that the wife was in a separate category of "possession" than were the goods. Christianity did eventually enhance the status of women compared to ancient days. Perhaps the strict rules on divorce were originally founded in compassion - to protect wives, which is what Jesus was most likely doing with some of his statements.
But the commandment against coveting the neighbor’s property as written does not separate wives from other possessions - the wives are lumped in with the house, the slaves, the ox and the ass.
From the website MyJewishLearning.com
Tenth Commandment (Exodus 20:14)
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his wife, his man-servant, his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.
When Jesus was alive, this relegation of women to the status of a male possession with the same status as the ox and the house was operative in both the culture and the religion. Women were the possessions of men - first their fathers, then their husbands. Marriages were a business contract. The man provided some kind of support and home for the woman. The woman provided sex, children, and labor for the man. Many children were desired partly because of high infant/child mortality, partly to provide labor in the family business, partly to provide "social security" to the parents when they were old, partly to retain and hopefully extend the family's wealth. The men could divorce the women, but the women could not divorce the men. The man had an absolute right to custody of children, and women would be denied her children unless the husband didn't want them. Women who did not have independent wealth, and did not have a family to take them in after a divorce would be in mortal danger, often reduced to begging or prostitution to survive.
Jesus knew this. It was his culture. It does not seem that Jesus was saying that staying in a miserable marriage for decades was a desirable thing. It seems to be that he was trying to protect women from the patriarchal system that prevailed.
Life spans were generally much shorter in the first century than they are now. I once read - in my parish bulletin(!) (but cannot quickly find the source) that the average marriage in the first century lasted 11 years before one partner died. Not 40 or 50 or 60 or more. Women were at especially high risk because the death rate for women due to pregnancy and childbirth was extremely high in that era. Even in relatively recent times, more women died relatively young in marriage than did men. Look at the gravestones in old cemeteries. Look at family genealogies. I once typed up my husband's maternal side genealogy for his mother, going back to 1630 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The number of maternal deaths in that genealogy was a real eye opener. The numbers of multiple marriages - especially on the male side was quite high - remarriages after the death of the wives most often.
It's not the first century anymore.
I hope that this can still be found online:
Deletehttp://ncronline.org/blogs/parish-diary/pope-francis-should-consider-churchs-outdated-annulment-process
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Pope Francis should consider the church's outdated annulment process
Fr. Peter Daly | Jan. 13, 2014 (NCR)Parish Diary
"annulments look to a lot of people like Church-approved divorces." Yep. But to a Scholastic theologian they can't be because divorce is a pre-requisite for an annulment. Q.E.D. or something.
ReplyDeleteAs I see it, the Church has, from the beginning, felt a duty to upgrade and uphold marriage. (Remember, in the beginning the wife's share was linked with the farm animals and slaves.) You have to accept a lot of "Let's Pretend" to upgrade and uphold, or else you wind up where civil society is today, with downgrade the marriage but no downhold on spending if you decide to have one. I'd rather have the hypocrisy than the whatever because I think hypocrisy does less damage in the long run than whatevers. Obviously, a lot of people here disagree.
I have no beef with "upgrading" marriage to a partnership of equals, and I have no problem seeing marriage as a sacred institution in which you have certain obligations, moral and legal.
DeleteI just don't think that the idea of marriage as a sacrament that cannot be dissolved does that.
Perhaps the Church needs to offer "divorce prep" in addition to marriage prep. I know, sounds counter intuitive. But, really, it helps to have someone ask, "Does your hate for your spouse trump your love for your kids?"
Jean - I think that's a really good idea!
DeleteAnne C: many thanks for your kind words about my (now) 46 year relationship, the last 3 being legally married, with my now husband. A minor technicality: the officiant was an Episcopal priest who was, at one time, a Catholic priest. As he pointed out, Catholic theology posits that he is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Ergo, we were married by a (Catholic) priest albeit not in the eyes of said church … not that that carries any weight in our eyes.
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