Bishop Angel Rubio Castro of Segovia in Spain is trying to put a stop to non-believing cultural Catholic from being married in the Church as a matter of course. The Bishop has issued a manual for priests asking them to walk the fine line “without falling into a rigorist attitude or routine benevolence.” Tough job that.
Of course formation, cathechesis, and an explanation of marital duties to each other and God come first. However, to protect the sacrament, sometimes priests will have to say no. No, you are not prepared. No, I don’t believe you intend what the Church intends. No, I do not believe you are sincere about your duties. No.
That must be a very tough thing for a faithful priest to do. It will likely be much tougher when the priest down the street does not take his responsibilities seriously and agrees to the marriage no questions asked. After all, don’t people have a right to the sacraments?
We are all so much about rights these days. We have rights, fundamental rights, God given rights that generations of human beings never even knew existed. Made up rights that serve to grant license where one liberty was once sought. Of course, we now have rights to marry anyone we choose, gender and the good of society are of no concern. We have rights to healthcare, we have rights to privacy, and we even have a right to kill the inconvenient simply because they are.
When it comes to the Church, many “Catholics” never step foot in a Church unless it is to claim a right. I right to be married, a right to baptism for children, a right even to communion all with the implicit understanding that the Church has nothing to say about it. Between them and God after all and they are paying customers.
Of course, the God has rights and the Church has rights too. With those rights come responsibilities to safeguard the sacraments from abuse. This means occasionally saying no. I don’t envy any priest in the situation, but that no may be the most important thing some of these people ever hear from their priest of their Church. Perhaps if enough people hear no, after the typical fit of anger due indignant denial of fictitious rights, might begin to wonder what is so precious that these people are trying to protect? Saying yes to everyone clearly has diminished respect for the sacraments, perhaps saying no more often is one step back to that respect which we owe.
October 7, 2008 at 6:14 am
brick by brick…
October 7, 2008 at 6:26 am
As a small, outside voice….
I spent over a year trying to find a priest to marry my husband and I.
I couldn’t get a call back.
None of the fathers I tried to contact– and we were informed very clearly that we MUST call the line, not talk to folks after Mass or in the office– ever answered the phone, or called back.
I know I don’t have a right to be married in the Church. My husband is not Catholic, and it took much persuasion to get him to agree to let any children we have be raised in the faith.
To add to it, my little sister’s baby boy was nearly denied baptism, because someone lost the paperwork for his godparents– they’d been to the class, they’d been godparents to three others in the Parish, but they couldn’t find the papers for the training weekend *this time* so they didn’t believe these 20+ year active members of the parish were *really* Catholics. Since the folks that came for the Baptism had to travel over a day to get there, the day was *only* saved because a sister in law was able to go wake up the priest in her parish and fax the confirmation papers of the godparents over.
…Reading back, this doesn’t really have a broad point, unless you count that “paper work sucks.”
Still…I have to wonder, how many others have been turned aside, because they *didn’t* have families as obsessive as mine?
October 7, 2008 at 9:59 am
The Church has the right moreover the duty to safeguard the dignity and solemnity of the Sacraments and saying No to cafeteria “Catholics” is a right thing to do.
October 7, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Say “no” occasionally? If Saint Thomas Aquinas were around today, I’m pretty sure all his parishioners would be single. At this desperate point, Priests need to say no about 90% of the time in a typical parish, until people start waking up.
~cmpt
October 7, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Foxfier – I could be wrong, but it sounds like you didn’t get any “call-backs” because you were going about it through the wrong channels. I believe marriage dispensations must first come from the bishop, and not the parish priest.
October 7, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Deusdonat-
It never got to the point where they knew we’d need a dispensation.
October 8, 2008 at 12:24 am
Here’s the problem folks, canonical form. So long as there is a requirement in canon law for Catholics to marry according to canonical form it is difficult to refuse to marry them. It is not like other sacraments. It makes sense to say to a non-practising Catholic that they can’t have their children baptised or make first communion. But with marriage they have no option. If they don’t get married in church their marriage is invalid (unlike protestants or non-christians whose marriages would be regarded by the Church as valid).
October 8, 2008 at 1:40 am
I believe marriage dispensations must first come from the bishop, and not the parish priest.
What normally happens is that the couple approaches the parish priest and he gets the dispensation from the bishop. I’ve never heard of anyone approaching the bishop directly.
By the way, Catholics do have a right to the Sacraments – a real right, not a fictitious one – and that includes the Sacrament of Matrimony. So yes, one does have the right to be married in the Church as long as one is properly disposed.
Please do not make the mistake of classifying Catholics’ rights to the Sacraments along with phony civil rights like voting and sodomy. We have a right to the Sacraments because we have an obligation to receive them. That is where true rights come from – obligations. We need them for our salvation.
October 8, 2008 at 5:33 am
I don’t know if it is canonically acceptable to deny people of a sacrament on the ground that they are not prepared enough. Holy Communion is one thing, but you can’t really say that “I can’t marry you because I don’t think that you are prepared enough”. Let us remember that for almost a thousand years, Church marriage is the only marriage that existed in Western societies. I don’t think we can rescind that to make it only for the “chosen”.
Marriage in general has a better chance of sanctifying the couple than it does having the opposite effect. Whether or not the couple will stay together has little to do with formation. I remember reading in Crisis magazine a few years back an article about conservative Catholic divorce; people who are “well formed” in the Faith but who end up having failed marriages anyway. We all could give a few examples of this type of situation. The bottom line: marriages used to last because people needed to be married to survive harsh conditions: mutual support was no joke back then. Now that there are no societal and economic pressures to stay together, the marriage bond will continue to be weak. No amount of preparation will solve that.
Besides, the only way you can commit a sacrilege of the sacrament of marriage is if you marry your cousin or marry when you are too drunk to know what you are doing. A marriage is valid until proven otherwise.
October 8, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I don’t know if it is canonically acceptable to deny people of a sacrament on the ground that they are not prepared enough.
I think one can delay it but deny it? No way.
Now that there are no societal and economic pressures to stay together, the marriage bond will continue to be weak.
Especially if people continue to have only 1-2 children.
Besides, the only way you can commit a sacrilege of the sacrament of marriage is if you marry your cousin or marry when you are too drunk to know what you are doing.
Isn’t receiving a Sacrament in a state of mortal sin a sacrilege? Excluding baptism, penance, and extreme unction of course.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13321a.htm
Of course sacrilegiously receiving the Sacrament of Matrimony does not render it invalid.
October 8, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I always think of Willy Wonka in situations like this.
“She can’t have one.”
“Who says I can’t?!?”
“The man in the funny hat…”
When it comes to Eucharist especially, there’s the oft-repeated (because oft-forgotten) caveat, that receiving in a state of mortal sin is sacrilege and a condemnation upon us. Therefore to refuse Communion in that circumstance is an act of mercy and chastisement, designed to preserve our souls from harm and encourage repentance and reunion with the body of Christ and Christ Himself.
Singing “Don’t care how, I want it NOW!” really just highlights how far one can miss the point regarding the Eucharist.
October 8, 2008 at 7:14 pm
When it comes to Eucharist especially, there’s the oft-repeated (because oft-forgotten) caveat, that receiving in a state of mortal sin is sacrilege and a condemnation upon us. Therefore to refuse Communion in that circumstance is an act of mercy and chastisement, designed to preserve our souls from harm and encourage repentance and reunion with the body of Christ and Christ Himself.
That is true but a priest does not have the right to refuse someone whose sin is not public.