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Fifth Sunday of Easter
6 May 2007
Dear Friends in Christ,
Last week in a press conference, the president of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference, Carlos Aguiar Retes, said better than I ever could something I have been pondering over for a long time. “Our culture leads us to say we’re Catholic, but our social environment leads us to live our lives as if we weren’t believers. This is what we call the life-faith divorce.” The history of American Catholicism is one in which Catholics were perceived as foreigners, as un-American, as strange. But now, as statistics on just about everything show, American Catholics behave just like any other Americans, as if they were not really Catholic. Far from being marginalized into a religious ghetto, Catholics in this country have been assimilated totally into the American way of doing things.
But one of the ways in which Catholics just aren’t like other people is marriage. A Catholic marries a Catholic in a Catholic church. The Church may give permission for a Catholic to marry outside the faith, or even for special reasons outside of a Catholic church, but only after assuring that the contracted marriage will be celebrated in a way consistent with Church teaching, and then only with great hesitation.
Many couples have ideas about weddings which come from the media. And those ideas are trash. Not only are they just tacky (like tying the knot while skydiving or snorkeling), but they are often simply for the sake of a good show. There are bridezillas who will risk excommunication from the Church if it means they can get married according to the fantasy they have created for themselves.
A Catholic is part of a hierarchical Church in communion with others besides themselves. Each parish and diocese has different regulations as to what can and cannot be done at a wedding because of circumstances which couples often do not envision. Fantasies are often not reasonable, and the Church does no service to couples by indulging in silliness when it comes to marriage. The mother of the bride may stomp her foot and curse and pitch a fit and the Catholic Church will continue on as she ever has.
Be Catholics. Be real Catholics. Don’t divorce faith from your life, and if you try, don’t expect me to go along with it. We can be good Americans without selling out to what is contrary to the Faith handed down to us from the apostles.
In Jesus and Mary,
Father Christopher