Catholic Marriages in Rhode Island
March 26, 2011, 9:53 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
I grew up in Rhode Island–one of the most Catholic states in the nation. So this story was surprising to me. What lessons should we take from it? One lesson, it seems to me, is from the end of the article. Priests who are welcoming people with kids who want to regularize their marriage with a church wedding seem to be pretty effective in bringing people back to the church.
A little kindness goes a long way. Good job, Fr. Paquette!
I don’t mean to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but how do you solemnly swear to be true, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, until death do you part, and then come out with this gem:
“I didn’t want to find out about his little quirks after we got married.”
Beautiful. If that’s what priests are running into, asking couples to wait 6 months is not only not unreasonable, it’s absolutely necessary.
BTW, it appears Fr. Paquette goes by Fr. Joe.
Mark, I’m not sure I understand. how is asking them to wait six months going to help with the issue you’re identifying? How do you teach people to be flexible, and considerate?
Some people say that part of the problem is affluence–kids are used to having their own rooms–their own space. They don’t like to to room with others in college. Well, one thing marriage does get you is a life-long roommate.
Does anyone know whether the Church requires the same marriage preparation for those who are marrying for a second time (either widowers or those whose marriages have been annulled–yeah, I know technically the first one wasn’t a real marriage).
A colleague, a successful family lawyer in her mid 30s, and her husband (first-time marrieds) recently went through the nine months of marriage prep. She is a very devout and warm-hearted woman, and as someone who works with the fallout of failed marriages and dysfunctional families every day, I thought her taken on marriage preparation was interesting.
She felt the NFP training and discussions about what a Catholic marriage means were helpful. But she said she felt that working with their “mentor couple”–an older married couple who were supposed to model a Catholic marriage–not so much.
“BTW, it appears Fr. Paquette goes by Fr. Joe”
It is his Christian name.
It’s a fine line to walk, but what’s the point? To cast the net as widely as possible or to make sure the fish you do catch are within functional parameters?
Both the Church and the state of certain souls would seem to benefit from more persuasion and less posturing.
You can’t MAKE people get married in the Church–obviously. So one possibility is to say, okay, we’re only going to take people who go through nine months of marriage prep, get married in a building, agree to use NFP instead of contraception, aren’t cohabiting when they’re being married, etc. That is the Church’s approach today.
It may be the right one. Do we have any data about whether all the pre-Cana hoops actually reduce marital discord/divorce?
But at the same time, it seems clear that many people aren’t going to jump through those hoops.
Then, you may have a second bite at the apple when they have kids–you can help them regularize their relationship. It seems to me that more attention should be given to this option, given realities. Is there a “post-Cana” program, so to speak. It seems to me to be a bit crazy to put a couple who have been married (albeit non-sacramentally) for several years through the same pre=Cana program as those getting married for the first time.
The church contributes to Catholics not practicing their religion by insisting on the seven sacraments while doing little to build up each parish into a community. It is like Catholic schools. The schools gave the priest a free pass, that is, to do little in building up the community. It is organized hypocrisy. You rarely hear from most of the Catholics except when they are married or at the funeral ceremony.
The church of the Sacraments has been an abysmal failure. It focuses on the minimum while missing the gospel. The problem is not marrying in church. It is having no church to marry in. If you understand church in its true meaning to be a gathering of followers of Jesus. I submit that we are like “clashing symbols” when we focus on sacraments rather than the church. The focus is too much on magic rather than the spirit.
By the way, Cathy, you may know that Rhode Island has long been considered the most corrupt State in the nation.
Cathleen–
I think a waiting period can help in 2 ways: I have heard of situations where a priest would only marry a co-habitating couple if they would live “separately”, even if under the same roof, until they are married, and that this has helped them gain an “other-directed” perspective to their relationship. Also, and I don’t mean to get all Abraham and Isaac on you here, but a couple that wouldn’t agree to this relatively small inconvenience most likely is not sufficiently motivated to get married in the Church. The waiting period can serve as a weeding out process. I think any couple that sees the pre-Cana program as nothing more than hoops to be jumped through is not currently disposed to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
Your second bite at the apple suggestion is spot on, and I can’t imagine any priest not seeing it as a chance for pastoral headway to be made.
“A little kindness goes a long way. Good job, Fr. Paquette!”
Cathleen – I agree one million percent. Priests who turn people away from a sacrament because said people aren’t virtuous enough should do *a lot* of reflecting on the Woman at the Well story that we’ll hear in church this weekend. Such policies drive me to distraction. They do an incredible amount of pastoral damage. FWIW – my own approach is, if someone comes to me to get married, I will do everything I can to find a way for them to get married in the church.
Re: “post-Cana” and “second bite at the apple” – the Chicago Archdiocese has tried a post-wedding program, sorta like mystagogy for the recently married, but they’ve had a very difficult time getting couples to participate. In my expereince, the “second bite at the apple” comes when the young couple brings their children for baptism. That’s a great time to offer the couple the option to have their marriage blessed by the church.
As I understand it, most of the Pre-Cana hoops have no sacramental status, or direct canonical mandate. Many can be waived. They are only worthwhile to the extent they are useful. So I think we need data–do they help? Do we have any divorce data?
Obviously, many people are quite content to weed themselves out, at least in RI.
“I don’t mean to get all Abraham and Isaac on you here, but a couple that wouldn’t agree to this relatively small inconvenience most likely is not sufficiently motivated to get married in the Church.”
Maybe. But by the same token, a Church that would insist on hoops without any direct correlation to strengthening marriages may itself not be sufficiently motivated to marry people.
Bill’s comments on community are well-taken. Schools, in fact, may actually deter young people from engaging in community. Young adults certainly aren’t going to lurk at their old high schools to connect with the Church. And if parishes are unwilling or unable to provide a holy and wholesome outreach to young adults, then really: what is the institution saying?
Many years ago when we took a rather shorter Pre-Cana course than I gather is now required, I found it neither inspiring nor even informative. The people running the course did give out a free paperback that, strangely, tried to explain the rhythm method, twice. In one chapter they got it right, but in the other, got it backwards. A typo, perhaps, but what a typo.
Cathleen . most dioceses have marriage preparation diocesan policy mandates. Not exactly canon law. The steep drop is nationwide not just RI. Yes, prep helps .. check Craighton U Omaha Ne.
Jim P has it right..And John Paul II [no liberal softie] said to take the couples where they are and move them along to the sacrament. . The ‘new’ clerical breed say ‘they had better be where I think they should be, and of course they are not, so step back while I slam the rectory door’. Some bishops say Let’s mandate NFP.. teaching the couples how to examine the viscosity of vaginal mucus.. that’s the ticket!
‘Meanwhile as the drop in sacramental marriages are falling like a stone, so Let’s spend money on DVDs and lobbying to stop same sex unions in the basement of city hall’ ” that’s where the action is..
{Fmr. family life director watching the family life offices being closed/defunded all over the country]
The signs of institutional implosion are everywhere, alas.
My impression is that there’s a wide variation in the quality of pre-Cana courses/approaches–is there a standardized curriculum or ways the Church tracks what young couples are taught?
A young couple I know told me they’d hoped the classes would help them with communication skills, teach some conflict management, other lessons grounded in a Catholic theology of marriage. Instead, they found their pre-Cana course to be almost exclusively focused on NFP and frustratingly light on quality discussion/explanation of Catholic marriage as a Sacrament. Sadly, the unitive function was denuded of its mystery and meaning when week after week the talk was pretty much of nothing but mucus. They finished the course, but with the same attitude people complete traffic school. And no, they aren’t bothering with NFP (which btw, their teachers said could be used as a way to avoid conception; don’t think they missed the hypocricy in that lesson).
I second Cathleen’s notion–it’d be good to see data on the effectiveness of pre-Cana preparations.
One of the most rewarding activities my wife and I engaged in as Catholics was the marriage prep courses that focussed on communication and other issues, including finances. These are important things to do well.
I couldn’t find answer an answer to Cathleen’s question–does Pre-Cana help–but here are a couple of items I thought were interesting:
Prince William and Kate Middleton will be going through pre-Cana prior to their C of E with the ABC. The Jewish writer who reports this describes going through pre-Cana with her first husband, a Catholic. I wish there were more comments to the piece; those are quite interesting.
http://thestir.cafemom.com/love_sex/117206/does_precana_work_prince_william#comments
Short piece about the evolution of pre-marital counseling programs and challenges they pose for all concerned:
http://www.marriagepreparation.com/Marriage_preparation_InLivingLight.htm
I also learned that many marriage counselors identify the birth of the first child as the single greatest stressor and test of a marriage. If that’s true, then parishes that see the advent of children as a venue for bringing people into the Church might be on to something, as Cathleen’s article points out.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pre- and post-natal program for married couples, a place where they can learn more about those stressors and find support for working them out in a Christ-centered way?
The best marriage program the Church ever had was CFM {Christian Family Movement] Lay led {by the Crowleys of Chicago and who were on the Papal Birth control commission] .. of the 20 couples in our group in the 50s and 60s none ever divorced. In 1968, our pastor , incensed that the Crowleys of CFM were in favor of allowing the pill, condemned CFM from the pulpit saying” as far as I’m concerned CFM stands for the Communist Front Movement.
The institutional implosion William FitzGerald sees, started about that month in 1968. It’s accelerating not unlike the tsunami we see on TV.
Catholics did without “Catholic weddings” for a good thousand years. I don’t know why people who want to get married in the 21st century have to jump through hoops.
I don’t think Jesus envisioned his followers performing ceremonies for “sacramental” marriages. When Jesus made his pronouncements on marriage and divorce, the institution of marriage was quite different from what it is today. I have quoted this a number of times, but I will quote it again. John L. McKenzie, in Dictionary of the Bible says:
As I noted above, the Church did without “Catholic weddings” for a good thousand years. Although priests sometimes blessed weddings, for centuries after the time of Jesus, weddings were civil. If I am not mistaken, it wasn’t until the Council of Trent that there was an official decree that priests officiate at weddings.
For “o me of little faith,” it severely strains credulity to claim the Jesus instituted the sacrament of marriage. And it particularly strains credulity if the argument that “Jesus raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament” by attending the wedding feast at Cana.
If marriage as entered into in first-century Palestine, as described by McKenzie above, was indissoluble with no religious official performing a ceremony, then it seems to me a good case can be made that a civil marriage today is just as much of a marriage before God as a marriage performed by a priest.
Of course, I suppose this is heresy. :P
Marriage is the lynchpin of Catholic ideology, a normative vision of society. This vision is not to be confused with Christianity whether as its perfection or its negation.
My partner and I have waited 39 years (this coming May) – is that long enough for you? During that time we have been practicing, church-going, church-supporting Catholics. And we haven’t had any kids out of wedlock, either.
When can we get married?
POPE: DON’T IGNORE FAMILIES IN DIFFICULTY OR IRREGULARITY
http://www.agi.it/english-version/italy/elenco-notizie/201103201158-pol-ren1026-pope_don_t_ignore_families_in_difficulty_or_irregularity
11:58 20 MAR 2011
(AGI) Vatican – The Pope said that parishes must pay “particular care and attention to families in difficulty or irregularity.” In his homily delivered today during his pastoral visit to the new parish in the Infernetto district, on the southern outskirts of Rome, Benedict XVI exhorted: “Do not leave them alone, but be close to them with love, helping them to understand God’s true plan for marriage and the family.” He said that in a place such as Infernetto, with so many young couples what is needed is, “a pastoral family that is open and friendly to new families, so that the parish is increasingly a ‘family of families’, sharing with them the joys and the inevitable early difficulties.”
As far as Pre-Cana conferences are concerned, I think overall they are very well run. At least in New York. The emphasis is on communication and mutual love. They are well organized either on a two full day retreat or a multi evening schedule. The point is they should run the rest of the parish that way
Ya know, on second thought I just don’t think we’re up to this:
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/23/bride-orders-giant-wedding-cake-shaped-shaped-like-herself/
Jimmy Mac –
What I really, really, really don’t understand is how anybody can say loving unions such as yours can be a threat to anything. I’m still waiting for somebody — anybody — to give me a reason — any reason at all. Noooo, all I hear is “they’re a threat to marriage!” Sheesh.
“…my own approach is, if someone comes to me to get married, I will do everything I can to find a way for them to get married in the church.”
Jim–
But what if your enthusiasm is not reciprocated? What if you get the sense that the couple are only interested doing the minimum necessary to get a Church wedding? Is it better to do everything you can and hope for the best, or do you advise them that they’re not ready yet?
Pre-Cana should be viewed as an opportunity for the couple to gain a better understanding of Catholic marriage and each other — and that should be it. A young member of my extended family went through pre-Cana with his fiancee and the people running the program told the priest that they either weren’t ready for marriage or not suitable for each other, and they were ultimately refused a Catholic ceremony in the parish where their entire family had been attending for better than a decade. The priest made sure to tell them that he would intervene to prevent any other parish in the diocese from marrying them. So they got married outside the church, and more than 10 years later are still married and have two young children. What could possibly be gained by such a coercive approach?
As for the parish place waiting times — I am a little more sympathetic to this depending on the church, because of the tendency for certain churches to be used solely for wedding ceremonies (e.g., pretty church, near the campus of a college). However, I think the better practice would be for the priest to advertise a set of rules (as in, when he officiates, he will use standard Catholic service and there will be no self-written vows) in advance and get written agreement and veto power over the more baroque marital planning efforts. In other words, don’t use a proxy for adherence that burdens many good people when you can get the real thing.
Mark, every person who requests marriage in a Catholic church is at least an opportunity to raise the level of their faith. There are lots of situations where the couple is definitely doing the bare minimum, and that is annoying, I am sure, to many priests who already don’t have enough time for other things that truly need to be done. There are two considerations — one is what happens to the couple’s even minimal allegiance to the Church when they are turned away from being married in the Church, as my friends were, and the second is whether pre-Cana is really being conducted in a way that draws people to the Church. What if the very first encounter between the couple and the priest/pre-Cana program starts with the “top 10 bad reasons to get married in a Catholic Church,” beginning with, “because my mom and dad want me to,” as a way of starting to understand that being married in the Church is supposed to MEAN something? I believe that much of the failure here is self-inflicted.
“But what if your enthusiasm is not reciprocated? What if you get the sense that the couple are only interested doing the minimum necessary to get a Church wedding? Is it better to do everything you can and hope for the best, or do you advise them that they’re not ready yet?”
Interesting question.
A (young and hard-nosed) priest at a nearby parish I sometimes attend gave a sermon about that very thing one day. The couple were being pressured by family for a church wedding and were unenthusiastic about their pre-Cana program. The priest said he married them anyway, and never expected to see them after the service, and said he wished he had rejected them for marriage.
However, he said that the couple actually DID start attending Mass in the husband’s parish, and when he supplied there one Sunday was happy to see them there. They greeted him warmly and thanked him for his guidance during their preparation.
His point was that you never know what kind of fruit your efforts will bear, and that “even a priest” isn’t always omniscient in your judgment.
“…what happens to the couple’s even minimal allegiance to the Church when they are turned away from being married in the Church”
Barbara–
That is a valid concern. Even if they are only going through the motions initially, it often blossoms into more once they have children, get them baptized, start going to Church more regularly, meet other parishioners through their kids and become more involved in the parish. You don’t want to foreclose that possibility by burning bridges.
At the same time, I think young couples often do not appreciate, I know I didn’t, that the wedding day is not simply the one day when the world conforms to their wishes–in a very deep sense they are consenting to conform to society’s, and the Church’s. I did not have any interest in writing my own vows (though, curiously, my ever helpful wife seemed more than happy to write mine for me), but I do remember thinking that the hymns we wanted should not be subject to Church approval–the Church should just be happy it made our invitation A-list. Pretty immature, I can see now.
Barbara –
Your friends experience is really alarming. Those pre-Cana people assumed a power which only a well trained therapist or confessor should (possibly) have. It would be one thing for the pre-Cana people to warn the couple that in their opinion the couple needs to wait. It’s quite another to act like judges in a juvenile court. Creeping authoritarianism, I call it.
Lots of importtant points here .
Barbara is quite right of course about Pr e Cana.
It strikes me that the problem of declining Catholic marriage numbers has roots in two issues:1) the changing face of marriage – people getting married older and with some very set views on how they see things.
an 2) some of them are at odds with policy makers whose views then pervade parish life in many circumstances.
Ed Gleason was right to mention Patty Crowley and CFM (how long ago did the estimable Bruskewitz call her an “old pervert?”) Contraception and divorce issues as well as the ebbing credibility of the hierarchy on the sex abuse isse will color a number of folks views of disinteest in Church blessing of their wedding.
I think most bring many of the values we would like to see espoused in matrimony: real loving fidelity and loving care for children. (That could even apply to same sex couples.)
But even then sometimes the best intentioned couples don’t make it.
I think Bill M. is on track when he says we’ve got to make the Gospel first to have the sacraments make sense and I don’t see that happening on any big scale currently.
One of my sisters elected against a Catholic church wedding because at the time she could not state that she would raise her children Catholic. (There were no children as yet and she was struggling with some painful family issues.) Since then, she decided to bring her three boys up in the Jewish faith. The issue of what you promise for your children when you seek marriage in the Church is considerable.
Ann, when I learned what happened I thought about writing the bishop (living as I do in the same diocese) but the groom’s father told me that his son felt so humiliated and shocked that he didn’t even want his dad to follow up with one of the other parish priests, and I felt like I needed to respect their privacy, as well as, I didn’t know enough details to explain fully what happened. The pre-Cana program was run by some kind of therapist, but I found it hard to imagine what one of these two could possibly have said to elicit that kind of reaction. It was also the case that the two were not raised totally in the U.S., but in one of the many solidly Catholic developing nations — and I wondered if there was a kind of cultural myopia at work on the part of the therapist. Caution, counseling, even coaching — all warranted — but this seemed more like coercion at the time. It also didn’t work.
Noooo, all I hear is “they’re a threat to marriage!”
Every time some Catholic spouts off with that line I’d love to know if (s)he has been divorced/annulled and (re)married.
“Is it better to do everything you can and hope for the best, or do you advise them that they’re not ready yet?”
Hi, Mark, “hope for the best” isn’t the best way to put it – I’d phrase it as “having faith in the grace of the sacrament.”
There are some very specific impediments to marriage (in addition to previous marriages, of course), and if any of those are present, then we should advise the couple to not get married.
If I have concerns, then I bring them up with the couple.
When in doubt, I favor the grace of the sacrament. That’s my approach, YMMV.
Regarding hoops to jump through: in our parish, assuming that there is no annulment to deal with (that’s when the real hoop-jumping comes in), here is what we would ask of a couple:
* A pre-marriage preparation program (we don’t call it pre-Cana, but it’s the same idea). They have a number of options: we offer it in our parish (run by a wonderful lay couple), and the archdiocese has programs throughout the year, including some for people who have already been married. For those who are getting married for the first time, one of the options is a one-day program – basically all day on a Saturday. A lot of my couples choose that one. On one hand, I’m sure it’s a pain for the couple – every hoop is a pain – but in my view it’s necessary, because the larger society’s views and attitudes about weddings and marriage are not in sync with the church’s views, and seem to be diverging more widely as time goes on. This is *the chance* for couples to learn what the church teaches about marriage. Most young Catholics don’t go to Catholic schools anymore and so missed the crummy Christian Marriage class that I snoozed through in high school, and quite a few marriages these days are between Catholics and non-Catholics.
* As part of that preparation program, the couple takes a standardized test (except we’re not supposed to call it a test) called FOCCUS. As several commenters have noted, it deals with important marital issues: sex, finances, attitudes about having children, and other marital stressors. I’m strongly in favor of it, because it’s *AMAZING* what people don’t talk about before rushing off to get married. But it does require at least two additional sessions: one to take the test, and another one to review the results of the test with the facilitator. It’s not pass/fail (you can’t flunk the test), but if the test results highlight a wide divergence in attitudes and values between the couple, it’s a *huge* red flag, and should/must be discussed by those in charge of preparing the couple. (Cathleen, I’m told that there is research that validates the efficacy of FOCCUS and similar premarital inventories, but I’m not able to point you to specifics right now – sorry).
* I meet three times with the couple: once to get to know them, fill out some initial paperwork, and give them homework (get their baptismal certificates, marriage license, et al to me; and start looking through the wedding liturgy planner booklet and thinking about what their wedding should look like); once to check in with them to make sure they’re still on track; and once to plan the liturgy.
* We charge the couple a fee – less if they’re parishioners, more if they’re not parishioners. All of the parish expenses (from hiring the musicians to turning on the lights and the heat) are covered by the fee. I’m presuming they’re going to pay some sort of fee whether they have the wedding in church or elsewhere.
* We have a rehearsal the day before the wedding. It’s necessary (if not sufficient) for the ceremony, and of course it’s a tremendous party afterward for the bridal party.
All in all, there are some hoops, but it’s a small subset of the hoops that a modern young couple jumps through, and none if it, in my mind, is extraneous.
Sorry, in the interest of completeness, I should add another bullet point to the preceding: the couple also meets with the music director to plan the music for the wedding.
Thumbs up on the FOCUS and overall approach outlined above.
I know of a young couple who got married outside the RCC because she was pregnant (at 16), boyfriend was 19 and a dock worker, and the assistant pastor — a PhD sociologist at nearby school — refused to approve their marriage in the church.
They’ll be celebrating 43 years together next month, and neither has stepped inside a Catholic Church since then. The “boy” later earned MBA, the “girl” got her GED, and they’re grandparents.
Someone over on Vox Nova reports that the length of the wedding preparation program in his diocese is twelve months. It is his opinion that requiring engaged couples to wait a year to get married is inhuman.
Former Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy (RI – D) is engaged to be married. He lives in New Jersey now.
“it’s *AMAZING* what people don’t talk about before rushing off to get married”
Jim P. –
This reminds me of the famous letter to Ann Landers from a young woman who was sleeping with her boyfriend. Ann herself was also amazed. The question: “Dear Ann Landers, My boyfriend and I are having sex. Do you think I know him well enough at this point to ask him to help pay for the birth control pills?”
Ann,
Not that this is exactly relevant, but I was walking up Madison Avenue the other day on my lunch hour, and there was a guy SCREAMING into his cell phone: “I told you you shouldn’t have sex with people you don’t care about!!!”
There was a comedian some years ago who did a routine consisting of loudly saying things into his cell phone in public, and one of them was, “Well, put some ointment on it!” I think the guy I heard topped that. I overheard a man in Barnes & Noble on his cell phone telling a woman why it was over between them and why he didn’t love her any more (or some such very private comment about why their relationship was over) as he was walking around browsing.
David, now that would be a very fun contest. I was in line at a Starbucks in the San Francisco airport at 11:00 pm when a woman was screaming into her cellphone something to the effect of, “my therapist warned me how toxic you were but this is over the line even for you,” and generally decompensating right in front of us, just as she was ordering her drink.
It seems like something that could only happen in California.
“it’s *AMAZING* what people don’t talk about before rushing off to get married”
That’s probably true, and without in any way criticizing programs that encourage couples to talk about stuff, I think marriage still holds plenty of surprises. What you SAY you’d do under certain circumstances and what you DO when they arrive (am thinking particularly of when the baby comes along) are very different things.
As noted above, I think the Church would do everyone a big favor if it offered some sort of FOCCUS test for those with babies on the way.
My recently married friend and her husband took the FOCCUS test. The administrating couple put them in separate rooms so they couldn’t read each other’s body language.
They were utterly terrified their answers would be too far off and they’d be rejected for a Church wedding. Turns out they passed with flying colors.
My wife and I were a team couple on Engaged Encounter weekends for many years. The weekend’s format gave the engaged couples time to talk. Being away from families and wedding planning seemed to help them discuss the realities of upcoming married life, after hearing our stories from our lives.
Some couples decided they weren’t compatible (we did get a few complaints that we scared them out of marrying, but we didn’t try to scare people, we just gave them a view of marriage from the inside and a chance to talk about how they might deal with situations we described).
Barbara,
I love it! I don’t know how it would work in California, but in New York, everyone present would pretend that nothing was happening.
“… we didn’t try to scare people …”
Some people need to be scared, though I think wedding planning is a test in itself.
Raber and I got married relatively late in life, and tried to keep the wedding hooplah to a bare minimum. We purposely didn’t tell our families until a month before the wedding, when most of the plans had been made (JoP, an Episcopalian, who used the words in the BCP, in the university chapel with coffee and cake to follow).
Raber’s family were fundamentalists who didn’t drink alcohol or dance, and they added a lot of silent, grim disapproval.
My family are non-believers, and they brought more disapproval along with a carload of booze, flowers, food, and a boom box.
Every moment of that month up to the wedding–and especially the wedding day itself–was an utter nightmare. I keep the pictures in an album in the back of of the closet.
But I figured if we could get through that, we could get through anything.
Jean, in my oh so humble opinion (having had a humble wedding), the kind of wedding planning that wedding industrial complex provides is the wrong kind of test. You go through it being the center of attention making all kinds of choices about ultimately useless things (hmmm, do we go with wedding favors that are playing cards or eyeglass tissues?) and then, bam, “your special day” is over and you have to navigate a newly created world where happiness cannot be purchased.
More fundamentally, it takes your eye off the ball of what is really important within a marriage, making self-assessment difficult, and then gives you a vested interest in your wedding day that makes such assessment virtually unthinkable. And that’s all before you factor in starting out married life with wedding debt.
Barbara – , I want to hire you (at your “special parish discount” rate :-)) to talk to all of our engaged couples. I couldn’t agree more with everything you just wrote.
“it’s *AMAZING* what people don’t talk about before rushing off to get married”
OTOH:
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-gay-marriage-stay-20110328,0,3793066.story
Barbara, you make good points, of course, but I wasn’t talking about industrial-strength wedding planning so much as trying to plan a wedding around a familial minefield.
Watching what unfolded the month before our wedding helped us understand some things about each other that might not have been revealed otherwise.
Bishop Tobin has responded.
http://thericatholic.com/news/detail.html?sub_id=3973
“I feel a bit like the sparrow these days, bombarded as I am with the daily reports about the decline and fall of the Catholic Church. “The sky is falling,” reports seem to confirm.
“Catholic weddings drop 71 percent in R.I.” announces one local headline, with the story not bothering at all to document a similar decline in weddings in other denominations and across the nation.“
“We’re as bad as everyone else!!” Way to set the bar, there, Bishop T.
“One does what one can”–that’s not entirely apparent. Certainly not in Philadelphia…