Wedding Bell Blues…
Weddings - bah-humbug! (Kidding!)
The wedding season is upon us. I know some priests who hate to do weddings, there is so much they have to put up with it seems. People are very specific about how the Church and the ceremony absolutely must be - and the priest just better be on board with that. When I was young, one of our pastors would not allow pictures in the Church during Mass - that wouldn’t go well today with cell phones and video cameras. Weddings are a big production nowadays.
This is not my topic however. This summer, many of us will be invited to a relative’s wedding that is not Catholic. Some kids want to get married in a Country Club or a restaurant, and not by a priest. Other’s who have already been divorced, want to remarry the love of their life, but cannot have a Catholic wedding. What is a Catholic to do? I’ve always had the understanding Catholics should not participate in invalid marriage ceremonies.
A convenient truth.
For someone like me, who kinda, sorta, hates weddings, it can be a good way out of attending. If a baptized Catholic is getting married outside of the Church in a non-Catholic or irreligious ceremony, for me, as a Catholic, I have no obligation to attend. All the participants at a wedding are witnesses to a sacrament, if no sacrament takes place - well it’s like a “no-wedding” in as much as it is not a sacramental wedding.
For instance, if my God-Daughter were to get married in a Country Club, I believe it would be a sin for me to be part of it, since I would be condoning the fact she was marrying outside of the Church. (To be sure I wouldn’t be faithful to the baptismal promises I made in her regard as God-Father.) I couldn’t do so even out of love for her, nor to respect her “feelings”, it would be misplaced charity on my part - loving her to hell, as it were.
I know a Catholic attorney who painfully refused to attend her own daughter’s wedding because it was a civil ceremony. She acted thus on advice from her confessor. Is she a mean mom? Just the opposite, she loves her daughter and wants only what is best for her. Yes, she wants her to be happy - not just for now, but for eternity. Weddings, despite all the sentiment and grand extravagance, as well as the most fashionable dress, cake, flowers, etc. - weddings are simply not a fashion event. Rather, it is a solemn occasion in the lives of two people whose love brings them together sacramentally in Christ. Their union is to image the union of Christ with the Church, even the very life of the Blessed Trinity.
Playing the Catholic card.
Sometimes people can just use the “Catholic thing” for less than honorable reasons however. I know a fellow who would not go to his brother’s wedding because he was divorced and getting married again, outside the Church. Nothing wrong with that. It was a courageous witness to the faith.
Although, when it came time for his brother’s daughter to get married, and his niece opted for a non-Church, non-Catholic wedding, he and his entire family attended, as if nothing was wrong with it.
If that was wrong?
Was that hypocrisy? Was it setting a double standard? Did it scandalize anyone? Or maybe he got permission to attend the ceremony - which he hadn’t bothered to get for his brother’s wedding? How about the people who love to hate the Church and Catholics for all the hard rules? How does that affect them, already angry because they are not supposed to use the pill or condoms, and are expected to go to Mass on Sundays?
You see, I’m pretty sure a wedding is way more than one big party to show off to family and friends with a big reception. It really is a sacred occasion, a sacrament. The bride and groom and their family, as well as every Catholic who attends, are thereby witnessing the sacrament and therefore witnessing to the faith of the Church.
Whatever! But who would want to get married in a restaurant anyway? (Well, maybe if it was at a really posh one…)
[Editor's note: If anyone, priest or lay person determines this notion regarding a Catholic attending non-Catholic nuptials, contracted by baptised Catholics, as I have expressed it above, is in error, please correct me in the comments section. Thank you.]
