A Stunningly Bad Article

I recently read an article that appeared in the current (Aug/Sept 2006) issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review by Dr. David Carlin, professor of philosophy and sociology at the Community College of Rhode Island, that I thought was worthy of comment.

IT'S ONLINE HERE.

The article begins okay, like this:

I suppose all Catholics would agree that it would be totally inappropriate for a Catholic priest presiding over a wedding to conclude the ceremony by saying: "You have just entered into one of the most important of all human relationships -- but I would caution you not to think of it as being necessarily a permanent relationship. It is only as permanent as you would like to make it. If either of you would like to end your marriage tomorrow, you have a perfect right to do so. If you would like to remain married until death, you can do that too. It's all up to you. Don't feel constrained by the vows you have just taken. The vows are expressed in traditional language, and this respect for tradition is a lovely thing; but the vows don't really mean anything."

So far so good. All Catholics should agree that it would be totally inappropriate for a Catholic priest to say this at a wedding.

Unfortunately, the article then drives over a cliff:

Yet this is exactly what priests do say, at least by implication. 

What is the ground Dr. Carlin offers for this astonishing assertion?

In the United States, despite its famous separation of church and state, priests perform two wedding ceremonies at the same time, a religious ceremony and a civil ceremony. The laws of the Church give the priest the power to perform a sacramental marriage, while the laws of our states give Catholic priests (as well as clergypersons from other denominations) the power to perform a civil marriage.

Dr. Carlin here makes several mistakes, and he ought to know better, because one of them pertains to his own field of study: philosophy. It is simply false that priests "perform two wedding ceremonies at the same time." Unless the priest is bilocating or pausing every few seconds to read a line from two different texts for wedding ceremonies, it is clear that he is only participating in one ceremony. That is an ontological fact, and as someone trained in philosophy, Dr. Carlin ought to recognize this fact.

It is this initial mistake that causes the rest of his argument to go over the cliff, though that is not the only mistake he makes. Just in the paragraph quoted above, he also mistakenly says that the laws of the Church "give the priest the power to perform a sacramental marriage." Not only is it not the priest who performs a sacramental marriage (the laws of Christ empower the baptized couple itself to do that; the priest is just the Church's facilitator of the sacrament; he "assists" at the wedding but does not perform it). He also ignores the facts that priests also assist at valid but non-sacramental weddings (as when a baptized person marries an unbaptized person) and that deacons and even lay people can assist at Catholic weddings.

We're already off to a very rocky start, but the main problem that causes Dr. Carlin's article to go so disastrously wrong is that he does not have his head wrapped around the fact that there is, in reality, one marriage that is taking place when a priest assists at a Catholic wedding ceremony. The couple do not have two marriages with each other--one sacramental and one civil, or even one valid and one civil. This is a category mistake. They have one marriage that is being celebrated according to the Catholic form of marriage and, if we're lucky, also recognized by the state.

It's not that way everywhere. In some countries the state does not recognize marriages performed in the Catholic Church, and they require the couple to have a separate, civil ceremony. The effects of this civil ceremony, in terms of bringing about a valid marriage, are precisely nil under most circumstances. If either party is a Catholic then they are bound to observe the Catholic form of marriage unless very unusual circumstances obtain, and as a result the civil marriage ceremony that their government forces them to go through does absolutely nothing with respect to bringing a valid marriage into existence. In such circumstances, the civil ceremony results in a legal fiction whereby the civil law comes to regard the couple as married even though, in reality, they are not.

This results in enormous confusion in these societies because the situation sends the message to couples that they are already married and can act accordingly. It increases the temptations against chastity that couples experience before they are actually married in the religious ceremony, and if they are poorly catechized it can lead them to see the religious ceremony as an optional add-on that they can get around to if they feel like it. They will be especially prone to this idea if they grow up seeing couples who are only civilly married and if they have friends who have just never gotten around to having it done. There can even be temptations to indefinitely delay the religious ceremony specifically so that the couple can get divorced later in case it doesn't "work out" and then marry somebody else. In other words, it encourages couples to shack-up in civil "trial marriages" before they decide if they want to get married to each other for real.

Because marriage is a unitary thing--you're either married or you're not--it gravely harms society, the institution of marriage, and the family if the government refuses to recognize where actual marriages are taking place (in the religious ceremony) and insists on the couple going through an invalid civil ceremony that pretends to render them married when in fact it doesn't. Adding that fictitious overlay to the situation can only bring confusion and grave harm, both to the society at large and in particular to the individuals who are led into grave sin by the temptations and confusion that is created.

We are fortunate here in America that state law recognizes it when valid marriages are brought into existence in the Catholic Church. In our situation the civil law is in these cases in harmony with the reality of the situation, and that sends the right message to the couple: You are now married--for real.

That civil law also has provisions that are contrary to reality (e.g., that the couple can sever their bond by divorce and then marry someone else, when in reality they can't) is a sad thing--which itself is one of the reasons that the institution of marriage has been so weakened in our country. If civil law tells people that they're divorced with the right to remarry then many of them will tend to act that way and, under the influence of their passions, they will act in defiance of what their Church teaches.

Long experience has shown that people take their cues from civil law as well as Church law. That's one of the reasons that social acceptance of divorce is so common. It's one of the reasons that social acceptance of abortion is so common. And it's one of the reasons that social acceptance of homosexuality is so common. Before the law changed on these points, social acceptance of all of them was far smaller than it is now. The farther out of line civil law gets with reality, the more people are led astray from reality.

As a result, it is jaw-dropping that in his article Dr. Carlin urges that the situation should be pushed even further out of line with reality by having Catholic priests "abandon their practice of performing civil marriages" and instead have the dual religious/civil marriage system that has been so detrimental to some countries.

Dr. Carlin is not clear on whether he wants priests to do this on their own initiative or whether the wants the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops--with the proper Vatican approvals--to pass norms requiring priests to "abandon the practice of performing civil marriages," though he makes no call for the latter.

His ground for this is that he thinks it would more sharply underline the differences between the Catholic idea of marriage and the distorted one that civil society has.

I can have some degree of sympathy for this argument. There can come a point when it is better for the Church to refuse to participate in civil institutions, but experience has shown that the situation of the Church and its members is worsened when this happens with the institution of marriage, for the reasons cited above.

The better strategy, as long as the Church is going to require Catholics to observe the Catholic form of marriage (which it does precisely so that it can control the content of the marriage preparation and ensure the validity of the celebration of the sacrament itself), is to say "What we are doing in our churches is marriage--real marriage, the only kind of marriage that counts. If the state recognizes that fact, great. If not, that harms society and the good of souls."

If the state were requiring that the Church import into its marriage preparation or marriage ceremonies material that is at variance with the Catholic understanding of marriage--for example, if California required that for the state to recognize Catholic marriages that the priest must explain to the couple their options regarding divorce and remarriage without annulment--then I would agree that the Church would have no choice but to defy civil law and perform marriages without them being recognized by the state.

But California has not yet done that, and as long as that is the case, Dr. Carlin's statement that Catholic priests are implicitly preaching the secular idea of marriage to the couples at whose weddings they preside is simply false.

The priest--if he is doing his job as a priest--performs his duties in accord with the mind of the Church--not just omitting information about the secular view of marriage but specifically warning couples against it.

It is false and defamatory to accuse priests of fostering the secular idea of marriage if they are doing precisely the opposite.

Even if a particular priest is lax in his duties in this regard, it remains false that by presiding at a wedding ceremony according to the laws of the Church that a priest is simultaneously performing a second ceremony that is out of accord with Church teaching. As the evidence of our senses clearly attests, he is participating in one ceremony--a Catholic one--that the laws of the state happen to recognize as having legal force.

One final note: If Dr. Carlin's suggestion is that priests should refuse on their own initiative to perform their role regarding the civil recognition of Catholic marriages (e.g., signing wedding licenses brought to him by the couple) then Dr. Carlin is urging the priest to violate canon law. The faithful have a right to the sacraments (can. 843), including marriage, and canon law requires that "Except in a case of necessity, a person [e.g., a priest] is not to assist without the permission of the local ordinary at . . . a marriage which cannot be recognized or celebrated according to the norm of civil law" (can. 1071 §1, no. 2). So a pastor can't simply refuse to perform his duties regarding the civil recognition of the marriage on his own initiative. He'd have to get the bishop's permission.

I trust that the priests reading Dr. Carlin's stunningly bad article know that.

MORE FROM ED PETERS.

Comments

In our situation the civil law is in these cases in harmony with the reality of the situation, and that sends the right message to the couple: You are now married--for real.

More like, "A subsequent annulment may discover you weren't really married in the eyes of Church, though you are married in the eyes of the law."

[SDG]

Brilliant as usual, Jimmy.

It is true that there is a distinction between the sacrament of matrimony and the natural institution of marriage, but they cannot be treated as separate, independent events. Matrimony is marriage in the ordinary human sense, elevated to a sacrament. A matrimonial union is always a marriage in the ordinary human sense, and any true marriage of baptized persons is always a sacramental matrimonial union.

Unfortunately in our increasingly post-human culture the perennial human institution of marriage is increasingly being seen alternately as a purely religious convention or else as state sanction for "domestic partnership," with the attendant push for recognition of same-sex "marriage." Lurking behind this dichotomy is the same confusion at work in Dr. Carlin's article regarding the essential unity of Christian marriage, irrespective of the question of state recognition.

[Matt McDonald]

"A subsequent annulment may discover you weren't really married in the eyes of Church, though you are married in the eyes of the law."

Anon,

you hit the nail on the head. The true mixed message is the overwhelming approval rate of annulments in the US Church. The way most diocesan tribunals are operated it is presumed that an annulment will be granted if requested. All Catholics are aware of this, and so they can't enter marriage without knowing they have a good chance at an escape. This knowledge actually encourages an invalid marriage, even if an annulment is never sought.

We need to fix this problem (as the Holy See as repeatedly requested), it's causing tremendous damage.

[SDG]

The way most diocesan tribunals are operated it is presumed that an annulment will be granted if requested. All Catholics are aware of this

Clearly not, since (a) I am a Catholic and (b) I am not aware of this.

Nor do I have any idea how "all" Catholics, or even most Catholics, would have any basis for awareness regarding how "most diocesan tribunals" do or don't operate. Many Catholics have zero experience with any diocesan tribunal, and I'm guessing it would be a rare Catholic indeed who had much experience with more than one or two tribunals. So I can't think that very many Catholics know very much at all about how "most" diocesan tribunals operate.

How the tribunals actually operate is another question -- one which, like most Catholics, I'm not qualified to speak to. I wonder how qualified you are, Matt; certainly the incaution of your secondary assertion raises some question about the reliabibility of your primary assertion.

Be that as it may, even if 100 percent of all US petitions resulted in a finding of nullity, even that would not necessary prove that there was anything wrong with the tribunal process, until there was some way of establishing the actual rate of valid vs. invalid marriages in the US.

How do you know that the real scandal isn't in the tribunal process, but in the premarital preparation process, and that the tribunals are simply accurately finding that a whole lot of people are arriving at the altar without the requisite intention to contract a valid marriage? Perhaps that is the problem we have to fix.

[Brother Cadfael]

SDG,

How do you know that the real scandal isn't in the tribunal process, but in the premarital preparation process, and that the tribunals are simply accurately finding that a whole lot of people are arriving at the altar without the requisite intention to contract a valid marriage? Perhaps that is the problem we have to fix.

I hear you, and marriage prep is no better than confirmation prep at many parishes, if not worse. But my recollection is that Pope John Paul II pretty much rejected that notion in practice. I could be mistaken, but I think it is laid out in his annual speeches to the Roman Rota.

SDG,

http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=350

http://www.30giorni.it/us/articolo.asp?id=3837
The American Church counts for little more than 6% of the world Catholic population, but during 2002 over half – 57% – of cases for matrimonial annulment in the first instance brought worldwide opened in its diocesan tribunals: 30,835 out of 54,247

[SDG]

I repeat, those statistics by themselves mean NOTHING. It could be that cultural impediments to marriage really do result in more null marriages in America. It could be that they seek fewer marriages in Europe because they marry less to begin with, or divorce and remarry without bothering to get annulments.

Not that I quarrel with Brother Cadfael's point. I'm just saying.

[Brother Cadfael]

SDG,

In his
2000 Address to the Roman Rota, for instance, the great Pope John Paul II states positively that tribunals are mistaken when they presume that contracting parties in a secularized society pervaded by strong divorce currents do not adequately intend for their marriage to be indissoluble. Generally, mistaken opinions about the goodness of divorce, the permanence of marriage, or attitudes or opinions opposed to the principle of indissolubility do not vitiate marital consent and are not sufficient grounds for a tribunal to declare a nullity. Canonical tradition and rotal jurisprudence, he says, have always presumed that the parties possessed the requisite intent, and require proof of a positive act of the will or a formal refusal to celebrate a sacramental marriage to declare a nullity.

In theory, I think you are correct because no one can really prove, with respect to any particular declaration (much less all declarations) that a valid marriage was wrongly declared a nullity.

However, in practice, since the burden of proof (as I understand it -- I am not a canon law expert and have no first-hand experience with the annulment process) is on the party trying to annul the marriage and the presumption is strongly in favor of the validity of the marriage, a 100% declaration of nullity rate would be darn near irrefutable evidence that a tribunal is not doing its job.

[Karl]

I recently formally defected from the Catholic faith as a result of divorce, my experiences in the tribunal process and with the actual practices of the Catholic Church which forced me to leave as I have.

Mr Akin and his friend Ed Peters, although both are very educated men, do not walk in my shoes and do not know the terrible reality of how the Catholic Church administers its laws and how it pastorally destroys marriages. They and most like them refuse to deal with the factual experiences of those of us who have tasted the whip of the tribunal. Thus they are not part of the solution but are part, willingly, of the problem (injustice).

Suffice it to say that although I have the two Rotal decisions in favor of our Sacrament, uselessly in Latin, my wife and her lover now for almost seventeen years are and have been accepted as good Christians since before we were divorced. My wife's lover was welcomed into the Catholic fold as he slept with my wife, with full knowledge of the local ordinary and the priests. My wife was counseled into divorcing me and seeking nullity by Catholic priests without any input from me regarding the situation. This is what the Catholic Church practices widely although not exclusively. They were given Communion in public until I threatened the local ordinary in writing with a Canonical action.

The Catholic Church lives a lie regarding marriage. It speaks from both sides of one mouth. The carnage with marriage will continue, I think, for a long time to come unless Rome excommunicates those who divorce unjustly, which it has never done to my knowledge. Catholics need to have a restored respect for marriage and for justice as well. Both are lacking in the Catholic Church. That is my personal experience. It is not theoretical. It is factual.

[StubbleSpark]

It is indeed a personal experience and I am sorry for your hardships. But I would add 2 things to what you said:

1) You said this was "practiced widely" in the Church, but unless you have data you did not reveal in your above post, you cannot say such abuses are widespread. I would not characterize my own experience with the annulment process in similar terms, however taxing it was. At times the words "beautiful" and "caring" came to mind. But both of us were so Catholic we would not have left the Church no matter the outcome.

2) Which brings us to my second point. Though I can sympathize with your difficulties I heartily recommend that you not use this moment of weakness in the servants of Christ as a reason to leave the Church.

This is because it is not a valid reason. From the revolt at Korah in Numbers and Deuteronomy, to the prostitutes in the temple in 2 Kings 23, to the disbelief of the doubting Thomas -- the failure of the servants of Christ to live the faith is never countenanced by God as a valid reason for going solo (or sola).

Remember the Church is not "forcing" you to leave. This is a conscious choice made by the exercise of your free will and is thus act you will be accountable for. No one is making that choice for you.

[Tim J.]

Karl, where do you see marriage preserved and respected MOST in the Christian world? In spite of the failings of some of our leaders, the Catholic Church is still the last, best hope.

Don't let your bitterness carry you away from the Truth. You have been given a terrible cross to carry, and I can't really counsel you from experience on that. But if you will carry this cross FAITHFULLY - trusting in the providence of God - it will make you a saint.

I could admire such a saint. I could draw great inspiration from such humility and courage. The Church NEEDS examples like that. I know I do.

[Tim J.]

I will pray for you, Karl.

[Steve]

Karl,

Appeal your case to Rome. U.S. Tribunals hand out annulments like candy. And they rarely standup to appeal in Rome. It takes some time but I know people who are glad they did it. Their marriages were affirmed.

[Jared]

Karl: You have my prayers as well.

Also, don't forget that even Christ chose a "proto-bishop" whom He would later call the "Son of Perdition." Yet, He chose Judas nonetheless, allowing him to be among the Twelve and STILL He promised that "the Gates of Hell shall not prevail" against His Church.

[Mary Kay]

Karl, if I read your post correctly, you said that you have two Rotal decisions saying your marriage was valid and the local Catholic whoever has acted otherwise.

As painful as that situation sounds, please consider the wisdom in StubbleSpark's post. Just as the others in your situation will be accountable to God for their actions, so you will held accountable for yours.

The Crucifixion was not to remedy the common cold, but the deeply painful wounds. However painful your situation is now, Jesus has already been there. Don't make void in your life the effects of His Crucifixion. Hang in there, even with the difficulty.

So I guess you could call this a piece of unsolicited "tough love." Read the books of Hosea and Job and the lamentation psalms. If going to Mass seems too painful, pick up a copy of Shorter Christian Prayer and read Morning and Evening Prayer every day.

Find your back to the Church because as paradoxical as it sounds, that's where the healing will be. If the preponderance of families in a regular parish is too painful, see if there's a monastery or other religious community with Sunday Mass nearby.

As others have said above, you have the prayers of several people here.