In my previous post, I posted the homily I gave today, focusing on the first two parables in today's Gospel reading. But up until late last night, that was not the homily I had planned to give today. This one I'm posting below the break is the one I had worked on (more to the point, struggled with and fought) for quite a few hours this week. It's based, not on the parables of Jesus in the Gospel reading, but on the prayer of King Solomon from today's first reading (readings are here).
Before I went to bed last night, I put the finishing touches on this one, practiced giving it, and printed it so it would be all ready to bring with me to the early mass this morning. But I never loved it. And I woke up at about 5:30 this morning with the conviction that, if I had enough time, I would redo it. I had to drop one of my children off at work at 6 am. That gave me about 50 minutes to draft a new homily. That is not the recommended way to create a homily! But I had been ruminating on the readings for days - more than a week - so I wasn't really starting ice-cold. So the new homily just came pouring out through my fingers on the keyboard onto the laptop screen. I was able to type it out, edit it and print it within a 45 minute window. I'm quite sure I had divine help getting that done. Then I put on some church clothes and headed to church, arriving in time for 7:30 am mass. I didn't have time to practice it beforehand, which is not optimal. But I think it worked out okay. I gave it again at the 9:30 am mass and I think it was a little stronger that time.
Here is the one I didn't give. I'd welcome any comments. My own take is: it is more like a post here at NewGathering than a homily. I'm glad I changed my mind.
I want to talk today about King Solomon’s prayer in our first reading. God loved Solomon’s prayer. Why? Because this new king began his monarchy, not by demanding mighty armies or piles of wealth or platoons of concubines, but by humbly turning to God and asking for wisdom. In his biggest moment, he turned to God for help. Do you think there could be a lesson there for us?
Do you ever think of the church as a repository of wisdom? It is. One of the things about our church that I really love is that the church has been accumulating wisdom for 2,000 years now, starting with the Hebrew scriptures and the words and deeds of Jesus, who is Wisdom Personified. And the church offers us the memory and the writings of particularly wise and holy saints, whom we call Doctors of the Church – or perhaps Teachers of the Church would be an even better title for them. These Teachers or Doctors of the Church have graced us with spiritual wisdom, unpacking what it means to follow Jesus and have him in our life. The church has preserved a vast patrimony of wisdom and offers it to us.
Yet I think that, at times, we tend to neglect it. We don’t always partake of the church’s wisdom as we should. And that’s a shame. Because God is the source of wisdom. When we neglect wisdom, there is a real sense that we’re neglecting God.
You may have the perception that the church's wisdom is locked away somewhere, such that you have to be a serious scholar to access it and understand it. While it's true that the church's wisdom is a fitting topic for serious scholarship, much of it is accessible to folks like us. Wisdom seasons our common prayers and liturgical texts.
To offer a brief illustration, consider the second half of the Hail Mary prayer: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Do you see the wisdom in asking God's Mother to pray for us at that moment?
I’m going to offer an example of the church's wisdom which may be a bit neglected. It may even be disrespected by the wider culture – including some Catholics. What am I referring to? The celebration of the sacrament of holy matrimony. That is to say, Catholic weddings.
The church has been experiencing, observing, discussing, writing about, making laws concerning and debating weddings and marriages for many hundreds of years. The church can teach the world a lot of wise and wonderful things about marriage, if only the world would be willing to listen with an open mind.
But perhaps you’d agree with me that the world doesn’t seem to have a very open mind about the Catholic church’s views of matrimony these days. We know this is true, because Catholic weddings become fewer and fewer each year. Since 1970, the number of weddings in the Catholic church has declined by about 75%. During that same time period, the number of American Catholics has increased by about a third. Something seems out of whack with those opposing trends.
Now, you may be thinking that maybe it’s not the people who want to get married that need to listen to the wisdom of the church; maybe the church needs to listen more to the wisdom of the people. I would reply that nobody is more open-minded than I am about the church taking a fresh look at its pastoral practices. Maybe there are some things we can do better to meet people where they are.
But I’m also going to insist, speaking as one who has been through his own Catholic wedding and has worked with a number of engaged couples over the years, that the church offers a lot of wisdom to couples who wish to be married, if they are open to a Catholic wedding.
Why don’t more couples get married in the Catholic church? Among the reasons I've heard is this one: we don’t want to get married in a church. We want to get married somewhere else – where we want our wedding to be, not where the church insists it be.
You may have heard that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married recently in Madison Square Garden in New York, with Adam Sandler, of all people, officiating. It was a huge news story earlier this month.
I’ve seen reports that their wedding vows were written by the couple themselves and were extremely lengthy – it took each of them about 20 minutes to recite their vow to the other. To the best I'm able to discover, the texts of those vows hasn't been released to the public; the couple took elaborate steps to keep their wedding celebration private, including embargoing the cell phones of their 1,000 guests. But it seems guests have characterized the vows as being filled with personal anecdotes, emotions and a fair amount of silliness. According to various reports, everyone in attendance was highly entertained by them. Swift reportedly sang some of her vow.
But. Do you see how different that wedding is from the prayer of Solomon? Solomon, in the biggest moment of his life, turned to God, and asked God to help him. According to reports from attendees of the Swift-Kelce wedding, the affair was completely secular.
And none of us denies that is their right. But. Had Swift and Kelce been able to get married by the Catholic church, the wedding wouldn’t have taken place in Madison Square Garden. It would have been in a church like this one, or perhaps even St. Patrick’s Cathedral. You may think, Well, that’s not very nice of the church, forbidding couples from getting married wherever they wish. In reply, I would ask you to consider the wisdom of the church in this matter. The church wants us to get married in a church building for some very wise reasons, including that this is God’s house. Think once more of Solomon, turning to God in his big moment. We want wedding couples to do the same on their big day. God so wants to be involved in the couple’s life that he invites them to his house to profess their bonds of love and fidelity to one another.
Okay. I’m taking the curmudgeon hat off, and tipping it in Swift's and Kelce's direction. Best wishes to Travis and Taylor. I have nothing but respect for them. Both come across as serious, mature, disciplined and level-headed, not to mention surpremely talented in their chosen professions. I wish them nothing but the best in their married life together. Truly.
But for ourselves and our families, please consider the practice of getting married an actual Catholic church, complete with the church’s vows. It’s a little old-fashioned, but that’s because the church figured out, a very long time ago, how wise it is to turn to God during the biggest moments of our lives.
Our church is a storehouse of wisdom. It’s for us to partake of it. The Prayer of Solomon suggests that wisdom starts with turning to God in the biggest moments of our lives.
I've only ever been to one wedding that wasn't in a church. It was for a coworker whose wedding was in a reception venue. Which seemed fine to me, since she and her husband weren't members of any church and didn't profess any religious belief. The officiant was her sister who got some kind of certification off the internet. It seemed like the wedding they chose was at least honest. But I am glad that both our sons and their brides had Catholic weddings. It just seemed a little, I don't know, more solemn.
ReplyDeleteI've been to plenty of weddings in churches, in which the marriage didn't work out in the long term. Which is always sad. My husband has officiated at four weddings. Two of them ended in divorce, which made him sad, and reluctant to agree to do any more of them. But I suppose priests get used to that happening sometimes.
About Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding, I wish them happiness. But boy did I get sick of hearing about it. And Madison Square Gardens? I wished they would have just had it on a beach somewhere.
A side note, if Catholics would like more weddings to take place in the church, maybe they need to think about some of the hoops couples have to jump through to make that happen.
About the OT reading from this weekend, and wisdom readings in general, I struggle with them a bit. Solomon asked for wisdom, and was granted it. But he ended up doing some things that were not very wise. So in the end it's what you do with what you have.
ReplyDeleteI have always liked Wisdom 3:1-6, 9. It's used at funerals frequently. We used it for both my parents' funerals; it is comforting. But the Book of Wisdom does rattle on and on. I wondered if Wisdom was shorthand for the Holy Spirit, but apparently it is not, since the Trinity was not a concept in the OT
I’ve been to many Catholic weddings in churches, a few Protestant weddings in churches, a wedding on a cliff overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, three weddings in vineyards, Jewish weddings in hotel ballrooms, a couple of weddings in parks. In one of those the officiant was the bride’s father who obtained a license online. The officiant at the wedding overlooking the Chesapeake also had an online license. He owned an art gallery. The officiants at the three vineyard weddings were lay people. I think one was a judge.. One wedding at home with a woman judge officiating (my niece). One wedding overlooking the water in Maine had a woman minister who was married to a close friend of the bride, a woman. The most fun wedding was in a beautiful park on a perfect fall day. The bride was Catholic and the groom was Jewish. They were married beneath a chuppah and had two officiants - a Jewish cantor and a Catholic priest. After the ceremony everyone changed clothes while caterers cooked a barbecue and the guests played softball. The bride grew up down the street and is a lovely, kind, generous woman, now about 50. She was the shock divorce. A year or so ago she divorced her husband and is now engaged to another woman that we haven’t met. Most of the marriages have lasted for years or decades. A couple of divorces in the Catholic weddings-in-church couples, a couple of divorces in the marriages officiated by judges, hired ministers, or a friend or family member. Two of the long lasting marriages are mixed - Catholic or other Christian and Jewish. I don’t think the location really matters, or the officiant, if the commitment is genuine. I generally tune out celebrity weddings so didn’t pay much attention to the Taylor Swift wedding. But it was homepage news on both the WaPo homepage and the NYT so I was aware of it. I didn’t know the groom but my husband told me he’s a football player.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you about the hoops. The one son who was married in a Catholic Church and his fiancée went through so many hoops I couldn’t believe it. I married my Protestant husband in a Catholic Church, but if we had been forced to go through all those hoops we might have gone to his parents Congregational church instead. We had one meeting with the pastor and three sessions with the associate priest and were married three months after getting engaged, although we had been dating for almost three years at that point. The pastor officiated and invited my husband to take communion. This was 1972. The young priest left the Catholic priesthood a few years later and got married in the Episcopal church. I have no idea if it lasted.
We were married in 1972 too. We didn't have a Mass since my husband wasn't Catholic at that time, and none of his relatives were. His Protestant pastor did one of the readings. I think we had three meetings with the priest prior. He was on vacation at the time of the wedding, so a guest priest officiated. The first time we met him was at the rehearsal. Fortunately he was a nice guy.
DeleteIt’s interesting that you didn’t have a nuptial mass because your husband was Protestant at the time. And in the same year, we not only had a nuptial mass but the pastor invited my husband to take communion. Was the “ no mass”: rule dependent on the diocese? Or was it your choice to not have a mass because of his Protestant family? My eldest sister got married in 1960 to a Catholic. But one of her friends from her catholic college married a Protestant and wasn’t allowed to have a church wedding - just vows with two witnesses in the rectory.
DeleteThere wasn't a rule against a Mass for a mixed marriage by that time. It was our choice not to have one. For a bunch of reasons, the main one was that K couldn't have received Communion. The other reasons being that his relatives weren't Catholic, and neither were most of my relatives on my mother's side. So about three fourths of the people there were not Catholic. And they weren't Episcopalian, most were Baptist and Presbyterian, and would have likely thought a Mass was popish nonsense. So a lot of walking on eggshells.
DeleteWhen my parents got married in 1950 (also a mixed marriage) they were married in church, but had to stand outside the Communion rail. When my paternal grandparents married in 1927 they were married in the sacristy. At that time you had to have a dispensation for a mixed marriage. The reason the priest gave for the dispensation was "advanced age of the bride". My grandma was 29. Under the category of "funny-not-funny", the priest told her he didn't have a problem giving the dispensation. He liked grandpa and thought he was a nice guy. He said, " And besides, you might not get another chance!"
Deletelol! I love the story about the priest telling your grandmother that she was so old that marrying a Protestant might be her last chance. Your grandparents marriage lasted I assume. My parents were married about 1932 or 1933–both Catholics. The marriage was a disaster, finally ending in divorce after many years of separation.
DeleteAs a former composition teacher and parent of a kid with a failed marriage under his belt:
ReplyDeleteYour thesis is that the Church is the repository of wisdom, particularly abt marriage. But you spend most of your time talking about how sad it is that people don't get married in the Church, which would surprise no one since you're clergy. And you spend a lot of time on criticizing the Swift-Kelce wedding--the officiant, setting, vows, etc.--guaranteed to make anybody under 30 write you off as a judge-y has-been.
Instead, you could strengthen your thesis and offer a more positive message to your young parishioners by telling them about the Church's wisdom about marriage that they might benefit from.
You also assume that people don't marry in the Church because they want to get married in some other setting. That doesn't strike me as the main reason people don't get married in the Church (others alluded to hoops above), but possibly that's truly been something you hear a lot as clergy.
Yeah, those are all reasons I crumpled this up and went in a different direction. Especially getting on the wrong side of the Swifties - that doesn't bear thinking about!
DeleteI get the disgust that clergy might feel over celebrity weddings that young people might want to emulate. Singing vows, Jesus save me.
DeleteIn my view a civil marriage should be required prior to any other wedding. It should be in a courthouse in front of a family court judge who gives couples a short lecture about what the marriage contract entails by law and what divorce does to broken families.
I look at marriage from the outside as a nonparticipant and looking at trends. I prefer the weddings being anchored in ancient tradition and ritual. My opinion is that weddings have gotten more bullshitty since they’ve moved out of churches. Destination weddings? Making invitees plunk down a thousand in transportation and hotel fees and take a honeymoon along with the couple? I was a ring bearer at two of my cousins’ weddings in the 50’s. Married in local parishes. One reception was in a fire hall. Marriages eventually “failed” but they produced 10 kids between the two of them so the human species didn’t fail, go extinct. My cousin whose 89th birthday celebration I just attended was one of them. She divorced the first guy (dead now) and buried two more. She has around ten great-grandchildren. A lot of sadness, a lot of joy. The first was a violent wife beater. The priest advised her to stick it out but she did what she had to do to survive. Choose life.
DeleteI had a great time sharing old stories with my cousin in front of her many offspring. She went to West Catholic Girls’ High School in the 50’s. Dick Clark’s Bandstand was still in Philly at the time. I asked her if she ever attended but she didn’t. Being a good Catholic girl, she didn’t because the sisters said any girl attending Bandstand in uniform would be tossed out. But other girls DID and WEREN’T. We had a lot of laughs. It was a great trip.
DeleteJean—“ In my view a civil marriage should be required prior to any other wedding. It should be in a courthouse”.
DeleteIn most Western European countries couples are officially married by a judge or magistrate of some kind. Our youngest son’s marriage was at the courthouse. They did not have a religious ceremony at all. The civil ceremony may or may not be followed by a church wedding. In Italy, those married in Catholic Churches aren’t required to have the civil marriage, but everyone else is. Italy is still nominally Catholic and Catholic marriages are legal without the need to go to the courthouse before heading for the church
We have forgotten that church weddings until the 19th century were merely the culmination of a fair amount of legal wrangling. Groom's family negotiated the best possible dowry in land, livestock, money, or percentage of biz; bride's family negotiated what she would be able to walk away with free and clear if groom turned out to be a dud.
DeleteBasically, the divorce or separation settlement was worked out at the same time the marriage was contracted.
All well and good to make vows before God, but from the earliest Middle Ages, there was a sheriff who could back up the legal contract and make sure the wife and kids got their fair share.
It was a good system, imo.
Stanley, a wedding invitation is simply that - an invitation. If it’s a destination wedding then simply decline the invitation. Nobody “ makes” invited guests spend thousands to attend a wedding. In previous eras most young adults stayed close to home and married there. But over the years large numbers of young adults moved a long way from home, as I did. We married in Maryland, not California. Most of my friends and family in Calif didn’t make it and I completely understood. I didn’t go to their weddings in California either. When my eldest son and his wife married the wedding was in Jamaica, her home country. She didn’t move to the US until she was 15. They told their friends in the US that they would completely understand if they couldn’t make it to Jamaica, but they ended up with about 70 guests, including her family and friends still living in Jamaica. Was it a destination wedding? No, because Jamaica was her emotional home. Our youngest son’s wedding in Poland wasn’t a destination wedding either. Her grandparents still lived in the town where her mother grew up and were too old to travel. So they got married in Poland.
DeleteBut, I do think weddings have gotten ridiculous at times. According to what I read in the advice columns in the WaPo, weddings often now have absurd dress codes to align with the “theme” and color scheme of the wedding. So an invitation might say sunset formal., or luxury western or something. Apparently this is so the photos on Instagram will harmonize! My RSVP - handwritten not a check online- would begin with “ Mr and Mrs XXXX regret that they cannot accept your kind invitation for…”. On high quality stationery and sent snail mail. 😁
Re Jean's comment - yes, throughout history marriage was not a holy thing. It was not a sacrament, it was a business deal between families. The bride and groom did not choose their spouses, but were forced to marry the person that their parents selected.
DeleteIn the early centuries of christianity some women emulated the men who had started religious orders by starting them for women also. At that time women were the property of men - first their fathers, then their husbands. Men could legally divorce their wives and keep the kids, but women could not divorce their husbands and could not keep the kids unless the father wanted to be rid of supporting them. The women were often left without support. If they didn’t have independent wealth or a family who would take them in some turned to begging or prostitution to survive. The women had no rights..After some women started religious orders, other women at least had a choice besides becoming the possession of a man she didn't even know, birthing children for him, and sometimes essentially working as a household slave,. The advent of women’s religious orders gave them another option - they didn’t have to marry to survive, but could join other women in a religious order.
Marriage laws varied quite a lot over time and by region during the Middle Ages. It was not a sacrament until the 12th Century, and even then common law marriage under the local statutes was the norm for those below the upper classes.
Delete"In most Western European countries couples are officially married by a judge or magistrate of some kind. "
DeleteThis was also the case for my brother and sister-in-law, who is from Brazil. They had a church wedding afterward.
When I was ordained to the diaconate, the cardinal gave me a faculty (basically, an authorization under church law) to be the minister at Catholic weddings. Concurrently, the State of Illinois authorized me to officiate at weddings, so any weddings at which I preside are recognized as valid by the state. There is no special treatment for clergy in this; I understand virtually all clergy of all denominations have the same authorization, as long as they are in good standing with their denomination. Or at least, that is how the law works in Illinois. I understand the other states have similar provisions.
Btw, I've read that this American practice was a big change from what prevailed in England at the time we broke away and became independent; in England at the time, the state only recognized the validity of weddings if Anglican clergy presided. I understand exceptions were carved out for Jews and Quakers, but not Catholics. And even common law marriages were illegal during this period. Or so saith Google Gemini.
It works the same in Michigan. We had a civil marriage, and I was witness for a few friends who were married in judges' chambers. The service emphasizes the fact that marriage is a legally binding contract under state law that obligates parties to certain responsibilities. It's quite sobering.
Delete"The service emphasizes the fact that marriage is a legally binding contract under state law that obligates parties to certain responsibilities. It's quite sobering."
DeleteThat is bracing to hear.
I really am curmudgeonly about weddings these days, both church and non-church. It's not the church part I object to; it's some of the stuff I mentioned in the post, such as couples writing their own vows and importing their own officiants who literally were ordained in 24 hours by paying a $5 fee. It's not that these things are intrinsically bad; but in real life, at least from what I've observed, they're usually not great, and what is in the official books, whether it's the Catholic liturgy or whatever order of ceremony the judge uses in chambers, seems much better.
I also think we're off the rails with the expenses that couples go to (and, as Anne mentioned, that they impose on others). The wedding day shouldn't be an enormous party to celebrate the culmination of some romantic journey; it's the start of something difficult and worthwhile. A marriage requires sobriety, resolve, courage and effort. Most young couples can't afford to throw a giant party for 250 of their closest friends (but excluding the friends' children!) at the nicest hotel in town, and neither can most parents. Yet couples do it all the time. It's insane.
Regarding children not being invited: I also think we've lost the plot regarding the family's role. A marriage really does involve an alliance of two families, whether the two families wish it or not. The day is not "all about the couple" (or, even "all about the bride"). If you want to have a big wedding, and you can afford a big wedding - fine. But make it a family event. Invite the kids! Let them experience wedding celebrations (and keep those celebrations family-friendly). Let them see first-hand how happy two young adults are to be marrying one another.
Everybody's got ideas, I guess, about how other people should get married and what it should mean to them. None of my suggestions are going to make a dent in the divorce rates.
DeleteI sure as heck would not attend a wedding where they told me what to wear. I would not have missed for anything Dave's Uncle Ron at our wedding in his canary yellow suit and turquoise Hawaiian shirt wandering around the buffet asking people if they liked his outfit. Never saw a man so proud of his duds before or since.
Re expensive weddings: I've noticed a pattern where Dad ditches first family for a new wife, then offers to pay for staggeringly expensive weddings for daughters from his first marriage to assuage guilt over being an absent father. We're now into two or three generations of divorce in families, and weddings get pretty fraught.
DeleteJim, why are you so opposed to couples writing their own vows? It’s pretty common and I’ve never found anything objectionable about it. It’s also a reminder that even in a Catholic Church with a deacon or priest presiding, the officiant is only a witness.
DeleteThe only wedding I’ve gone to where the presider was licensed on the internet was the marriage of a cousin’s daughter. The parents were atheists and did not raise their kids in a church.The bride’s dad, a Scotsman, was a professor at University and he presided. They chose having him be licensed than over hiring someone else who was licensed over the internet. The wedding had been moved up from original plans, simplified , and with a small guest list of family and only very close friends, because my husband’s cousin, Ann, the mother of the bride, was dying of colon cancer and was in very bad shape. The bride’s brother had married a month previously, in Scotland where he was a Professor at Univ of Edinburgh. . Ann was too weak to fly to Scotland and watched that wedding ceremony online. Younger sister simplified her wedding plans and moved the date up because she wanted to have her mom present at her wedding. It was a small wedding , very simple as far as the reception went. All of Ann’s cousins were at the wedding in Indiana, traveling from many states — more to see Ann than to go to the wedding. It was a lovely, joyful celebration, outdoors , in a beautiful garden, with very personal words from the presider/father of the bride, and from big brother who came from Scotland with his bride. Very moving vows written by the bride and groom.. Short and sweet and loving. Wonderful loving words also about their parents. A happy celebration even though Ann was very weak. Of course nobody expected the tragedy that occurred a few days later. Big brother and his bride, married only one month, returned to Scotland. As he was biking to the university on his first day back, he pulled alongside a lorry whose driver didn’t see him. As both turned the corner, Ian was trapped under the truck and killed. I was told by Ann’s sister, with whom we had been close during the years, that Ann didn’t speak after learning of her sons death, two days after a wonderful celebration, joyful in spite of everyone knowing that ban would die very soon. . She died a few days after her son..
Everyone knew that Ann had only weeks or days to live. The small, very personal wedding ceremony was perfect. The tragedy was a shock almost beyond believing. We saw the bride from that wedding several years later, with her dad, husband, and children - just by chance- they were vacationing in Florida at same place we were. After that the bride, Ann’s daughter, and I became Facebook friends. She and her husband live in Newfoundland and we had hoped to take a road trip there at some point. It won’t happen. But through FB I have seen how the couple and their three children seemed to have thrived, still together after 18 years of a marriage that started under very difficult circumstances. Every year she honors her brother , who was one of the two people I’ve known in my life that seemed purely good, without a mean or petty bone in their bodies. This couple didn’t get married in a church, or even in a courthouse with a prescribed order of ceremony. No tradition. It was all their own, and more holy I think than any other wedding I’ve ever witnessed.
If the sacrament is performed by the couple, then it seems to me that anybody should be able to preside. I dimly recall that the Church teaches that certain forms and rubrics must be followed for the sacrament to be recognized if one of the couple is Catholic. We had a civil marriage, but the Church Ladies said it was acceptable and we didn't have to repeat it when we went thru RCIA, though they said we should. I didn't see how that was necessary. We've invited God into our marriage hundreds of times with a prayer that usually begins, "Jesus Christ, so help me ..."
DeleteLOL - my wife prays that prayer frequently!
Delete" I dimly recall that the Church teaches that certain forms and rubrics must be followed for the sacrament to be recognized if one of the couple is Catholic."
Right - the basic rule is, a Catholic must be married in a Catholic church, using the Catholic ritual, with a priest or deacon, and before two witnesses. If the Catholic is marrying a non-Catholic, the bishop can issue a dispensation of canonical form to allow the marriage to take place outside of a Catholic church.
If the Catholic spouse doesn't get the dispensation and goes ahead with the wedding anyway outside of the church, then the marriage is considered invalid in the eyes of the church, i.e. the couple isn't really married.
I'm a little foggy as to whether either you or your husband were Catholic when you married, but if neither of you were Catholic at that time, then by default the church considers your marriage to be valid. And if both of you were non-Catholic and also baptized (by a denomination the church considers to have valid baptism), then your marriage also would be considered sacramental.
Not a canon law expert, but I believe this is all correct.
Btw, I've read that this business that Catholics must marry in the Catholic church for the marriage to be considered valid (real) was a pretty late development - I think it's only a few hundred years old.
I had a friend years ago whose son married a Protestant in a civil ceremony after his wife died. He tried to convince them to have the marriage convalidated in the church, but they had no interest in doing so. Later, when they had a baby, it was to be baptized in a Methodist church. He was a widower when his son married but had remarried a twice divorced Catholic in the church. She had gotten two annulments . Wife #2 told him that he shouldn’t go to his first grandchild’s baptism because it was in a Methodist church. He agonized over this and even called a bishop he had known for years, ever since the bishop was a young priest. Why does the church make people agonize over these things, make them feel guilty? His second wife ( he was her third husband) told him that if he went to the baptism it would be a sin because he would cause “ scandal”. So he called the bishop friend, who, thankfully, told him to go to the Methodist baptism.
DeleteThe friend’s wife died, not his son’s wife. I also wonder how someone could get a second annulment.
Delete" Why does the church make people agonize over these things, make them feel guilty?"
DeleteI guess, if by "the church" you mean "the institutional church", then in your anecdote, it wasn't the church that was imparting guilt; it was this 2nd wife who seemingly had marked church-lady tendencies. The bishop, the public face of the institution, seemed to offer guilt-freeing guidance.
Why would the 2nd wife say what she said? I don't know, except there is still some sort of a residue of pre-Vatican II folk-Catholic belief, the content of which seems to lean heavily into sin and guilt, making the rounds out there. But I don't think anyone has figured out how to rein in the church ladies. And they also are "the church", or at least members of the church.
Neither of us were Catholics when we married, so are "safe" from having lived in sin for the last 42 years, except for the three weeks before the wedding when our leases were up at our respective apts and we moved into the new place together.
DeleteJim, yes, it wasn’t the church I suppose but the fanatic second wife. I don’t know if he ever even asked his pastor about it.
DeleteBut when he first told me he was remarrying, a woman from his parish, he mentioned she had been married and divorced but had an annulment. I didn’t think much about that. But in a later conversation he mentioned two previous marriages and annulments. That surprised me. The church forbids remarriage after divorce to be in good standing, but seems ok with multiple annulments. That seems just a bit hypocritical. Just as Boris Johnson’s third marriage in the church seemed a bit hypocritical. Any lingering respect I had for the church’s righteous marriage rules disappeared with these examples of two third marriages.
Thinking back to those long ago conversations with my Catholic work colleague ( we were technically alums of the same university it turned out, so he talked a lot of Catholic talk with me as well as reminiscing about college days in LA) thinking back 25 years, I think he actually said that wife #2 had been divorced twice but only had one annulment because her first marriage had been in the church but her second was a civil ceremony and that her second husband hadn’t been Catholic. I have a vague memory about church annulment rules being different in civil marriages if one spouse isn’t Catholic and one is, and no annulment required if both were not Catholic at the time of the civil marriage, as Jean mentioned. But I thought annulment was required even for a civil marriage if one spouse was Catholic at the time of the civil marriage. I figure anyone can mistake with a starry eyed first marriage, but two divorces in a row raised some red flags for me. He was engaged to #2 less than a year after his wife died, much to the dismay of their four children. I gathered that the family relationships were pretty strained even before #2 wife was telling him not to go to his grandchild’s baptism. We were all in our 50 s back then. My friend and wife #2 moved away from DC area years ago. But I assume that they are still married. They would be in their 80s by now. Christmas cards petered out years ago.
DeleteThe Orthodox handle all this much better than Catholics I think. Jack would know. No tribunals.
Little rules give the little minds of the Church Ladies something to hold over people's heads, I guess. I don't hear Catholics proclaiming that their Protestant friends aren't married in the eyes of the Church anymore. So progress there.
DeleteI asked AI about the marriage rules. I don’t know if it’s a correct summary though
Deletethe Catholic Church requires an annulment for every previous valid or potentially valid marriage before a person can marry in the Church. If a person has been married twice and both marriages ended in divorce, both the first marriage and the second marriage must go through the church tribunal process and receive annulments.Why Both Marriages Need ReviewFirst Marriage: Because it was a formal marriage in the Catholic Church, it is presumed valid and binding until proven otherwise through a formal decree of nullity.Second Marriage: Even though it was a civil marriage and one spouse was not Catholic, the Church still considers every prior marriage a binding bond that must be investigated.The "Prior Bond" Rule: If a Catholic marries civilly without permission (failing to follow "canonical form"), that second marriage is typically invalid in the eyes of the Church, but a church tribunal must still officially declare it null (often via a simpler process called a lack of form case) before that person is free to marry again.
Hi Anne - yes, the AI summary seems correct to me. If the prospective spouse had been married twice previously, then both previous marriages would be examined to determine whether, as the church considers these things, either was still valid. If marriage #1 had already been looked at and given an annulment prior to marriage #2, then it wouldn't need to be looked at again prior to marriage #3.
DeleteJim, in both homilies you seem to be going in two different directions.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you set up a very high ideal, "all in" and "wisdom" which might discourage us as the stuff of saints. Then you give us some examples of those ideals being fulfilled not in some far-off times and far-way places by saints but by ordinary people that we experience in our lives. These however might encourage us to think that we are actually not that bad and turn off the challenges to be "all in" and "wise."
Missing is most of the mediocrity of human life that is well captured by the reading from Jeremiah in today's liturgy. God instructs Jeremiah to buy a fine linen loincloth, wear it, then burying it, then dig it up much later by which time it is rotten and smelling. God says that his relationship to us as a close as that of the loincloth.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072726.cfm
Catholicism is not just about (ideals) and (saints in our lives) it is also about sinners, the mediocrity of our marriages and parish life all woven together (yet God is still with us as close as a loincloth). The trick of the homily is to affirm both the holy ideals and holy persons in our lives while not ignoring all the mediocrity that is present in them and continuing to love ourselves and others as God loves us.
I'd argue that the "stuff of the saints" absolutely was what you call "mediocrity"--social norms, day-to-day drudgery, friction with family and neghbors--and how to maintain a sense of the divine despite it.
DeleteJack, one time I heard a priest start a homily by referring to that Jeremiah reading (it was a daily Mass reading of the day). He quipped, "Sometimes the sacred authors of Scripture don't give us homilists much to work with!"
DeleteJack thank you - I appreciate that feedback.
DeleteFor myself, I think a person who is serious about tending to his relationship with God, faithful to his spouse, devoted to his family, trying to do the right thing at work, and doing volunteer work in the food pantry or by bringing communion to the hospital, is pretty "all in".
It is true, I suppose, that none of that sounds very heroic, and the heroic ones are the ones who get awarded sainthood by the institutional church. But the saints can still inspire those of us who aren't made of the stuff of heroes.
Jim, I've know people who are made of the stuff of heroes, but they will never be recognized by the institutional church. They are lay people, married people, and even vowed religious who don't do something dramatic like start a religious order or levitate. . And of course, some who aren't Catholic.
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