This last weekend, I attended the wedding of a cousin of mine in Erie, Pennsylvania. As with so many members of my generation, this cousin abandoned the Presbyterian faith of his childhood after leaving home and now he has no formal religious faith to speak of. As far as I can tell he has no animosity towards religion, except maybe the aspects of religion that he would consider intolerant, but out of sensitivity to the breadth of people attending his nuptials, he requested that the Unitarian minister not reference God at all during the ceremony. (Atheism, of course, is itself a religious commitment, not a neutral position, but it is common in society today to believe, like my cousin, that “no God” is the most respectful and tolerant choice for mixed society.)
Of course, this “no God” request put me in an odd position. In addition to the fact that my entire life is dedicated to God, so an explicitly atheistic ceremony goes against everything I stand for, my cousin’s fiancé is a baptized Catholic, meaning that the Church does not recognize their civil marriage as an actual marriage because it was not celebrated in a Catholic Church.1 And yet, I love this cousin and love his fiancé and fully support their desire to spend the rest of their lives together. I think theirs is a beautiful relationship that I want to encourage. So, to compromise, I put on a tie for the first time in four years and attended the ceremony as “the cousin” but not “the priest.”
By their own standards and the standards of most young adults today, it was a beautiful ceremony. The bride was radiant and the groom regal. Every bit of the ritual was deeply personalized, showing off all of the things that the couple loved about each other and that their friends and family loved about them. From a purely natural perspective, the way these two interact with each other shows every sign of a successful, healthy, respectful, life-long relationship. If the goal was to celebrate marriage in general and their relationship specifically, they earned a perfect score.
And yet, the Catholic marriage ritual looks completely different. The marriage portion itself almost seems like an afterthought, taking up maybe 20% of the entire ceremony. Instead, a Catholic wedding focuses on the readings from the word of God and the supreme offering of Christ in the Eucharist, with the vows sandwiched in between. So I spent my time in Erie reflecting on this difference, and my takeaway was this: my cousin has put the extreme good of marriage and relationship at the center of his life, and everything he does will follow from that. But Christians put the supreme good of God at the center of their lives, and everything else including marriage and family will follow from that. My cousin has chosen a firm foundation for his life, and I wish him well. But I also pray that, someday, he may find the rock-solid foundation which is a relationship with God, and that he may strengthen his marriage even more by putting God at the center where He belongs.
Fr. Moore 