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Catholic Marriage or Bourgeois Marriage
This article was originally
published in Caelum Et Terra, Spring 1994,
volume 4 no 2, and is used here with the author’s permission.
To obtain permission to republish
this article, contact the author by clicking on the link above.
Sometime
around the year 1970 I remember reading in that reliable index of the middle American
mind, Readers' Digest, a story about an engaged couple who, for some
reason that I do not remember, were unable to get married right away. The female half of this couple was
discussing their plight with a friend, an older woman as I remember, and the
young woman told her something like this.
"I want him right now, all of him." (Actually she was not referring primarily to sex.) Her
older, but not wiser, companion replied something like this, "Well, why
not? Go ahead; one day it's wrong and
the next day it isn't." And in
these words is very well summed up the entire bourgeois American attitude
toward marriage and sex - one day sex is wrong and the next it isn't. Marriage is merely a piece of paper granting
from society the right to engage in sex.
Now
certainly I must be either a Carthusian buried for years in some mountain
hermitage or recently returned from outer space not to realize that for most
people today such a license is no longer seen as a necessary prelude to sex. Far from it. But I suggest that part of the reason for the sexual revolution
of the 60s and 70s is that the image of marriage that was implicitly held up
before American eyes was precisely this bourgeois image - an image of marriage
that neither appealed to our emotions nor satisfied our reason. If this was all there was to marriage, why
not embrace free love?
The
essence of what I am calling bourgeois marriage is this: People fall in love and want to live with
each other and have sex, but this is not nice to do unless society
approves. Society makes you get a
license and go through a wedding ceremony and then it's okay. If you don't get along you can get a divorce
and then you can't have sex until you get married again, and then it's okay
again, but if you're not married it's not nice. This, I submit, was more or less the popular attitude toward
marriage in the United States through even the early 1970s, and in certain
circles perhaps it still is. What
people rightly found dissatisfying in such a notion was that there was really
no reason at all for marriage. Since
marriage was not considered a binding lifetime commitment, what difference was
there between a married couple and an unmarried couple? The only difference was the piece of paper -
the marriage license - and the subsequent ceremony. Whether that ceremony was
religious or merely civic made little difference, because both were socially
acceptable. Marriage was simply a
convention which presumably appealed to the older generation as a way to
control and limit youth's access to sex.
One day you had the license, the day before you didn't - how could there
possibly be any great difference between the two? One can see the point. If
what is important about marriage is being in love and making some kind of
private commitment to each other, then, indeed, there is no reason to
"wait until marriage," because the couple already has done everything
important, everything necessary to cement their relationship. The public ceremony seems to be simply
unnecessary baggage - a mere conventional obligation which is done only to
obtain society's approval.
Now
there is a certain amount of truth in this feeling, the feeling that the couple
themselves establish the relationship, not their parents, or the Church or
anyone else. First, a little background
about the reason for the marriage ceremony will show why it is important and
why it is necessary for the community's well-being, not a mere convention
imposed for the sake of parents and other elders.
Marriage
according to the natural law is a contract between a man and a woman
establishing a lifelong covenant, and, like all contracts, it is made by the
parties themselves. The man and the
woman establish the contract. Even in
Christian marriage, the man and the woman confer the sacrament on each
other. The priest does not marry them;
they marry themselves. So the dictates
of the natural law, and even the requirements of the sacrament itself, are
fulfilled if a couple exchanges their vows to each other - privately it may be,
on a park bench, in the backseat of a car, in bed! Now though the natural law is fulfilled by such vows pronounced in
good faith, it is obvious that there is room for huge abuses if such a
system were the regular way we contracted our marriages. In the Middle Ages the Church had to contend
against exactly such an arrangement.
Although the Church required couples to be married in a religious
ceremony, she nevertheless considered these private marriages, known as
clandestine marriages, to be valid, although illicit. Thus a couple who exchanged their vows on a moonlit night on an
empty beach, assuming they meant what they said, were really married, though
they had sinned against a law of the Church in the manner of making the
contract. But they were still married,
just as much as if they had exchanged their vows before the pope in St.
Peter's. But as an earlier writer
noted,
But
though these marriages, which were called "clandestine," were
valid, they were attended with many
evils and abuses. It was
comparatively
easy for a man to repudiate his obligations, and
desert his wife and children; it was
difficult to establish with
certainty the validity of these
contracts, since there was no
competent person present to make
enquiries regarding the freedom
of the parties to marry and the
absence of diriment impediments.
Even apart from cases of intentional deception,
one can imagine many a couple waking up the next morning and regretting what
had been done in the heat of passion, and then how easily the "I never
said it" or the "I never meant it" would come to their
lips. So to solve this problem the
Council of Trent (in the 16th century) made a law that for Catholics
marriage (except for some very unusual circumstances) had to be contracted
before the parish priest and witnesses - otherwise the contract would be
null. Not only was it a sin to attempt
a clandestine marriage; now it was no longer a marriage at all.
From
this we can see two equally important reasons for the ceremony. In the first place, it safeguards society by
making it clear who is married to whom, and in the second it safeguards the
individuals by making hasty choices less likely, bringing home the seriousness
of what one is about to do, as well as asking the blessings of Almighty God as
they begin their life together. So for
Catholics, Trent settled the matter rather well, by not just outlawing
clandestine marriages, but by making them impossible. But what about non-Catholics?
Protestant churches, without thinking the matter through clearly (the
Bible says nothing about how to initiate a marriage), simply followed the
Catholic Church in establishing wedding ceremonies as the norm. And from this Protestant practice the
popular American mind was formed on the subject. But the reason for this norm was never made clear to most
people. Neither the fact that by the
natural law simple exchange of consent suffices for a marriage, nor the
fact that there are ample reasons to justify making public ceremonies the rule,
was understood by the average American.
And so the rule of "waiting until marriage," like most rules
of true (as well as pseudo) morality in the United States became merely a
convention, justified only by the fact that society said it must be so. Like the conventions that women shave their
legs and men their faces, pre-marital abstinence was simply another way that
proper people behaved. And when in the 1960s young people began questioning the
conventions of American life, there was no one around to say, Look, you're
right, you the couple do establish the marriage covenant, but for important
reasons (which can be enumerated), it is necessary for the good of the
community to have a public ceremony before the marriage (and hence the
right to sexual relations) begins. Here
were actual reasons to observe pre-marital chastity. And even if these reasons might not satisfy all the critics, at
least they were real and solid arguments. In
addition to becoming something purely conventional, the wedding ceremony had
become surrounded with so many conventions and rules of etiquette as to what a
socially proper wedding was, that it was little wonder that those who were
trying (mostly in vain) to sort out what was natural and what merely
conventional in our culture were unable to recognize the fact that marriage is
natural and a public ceremony necessary to protect the community, because
marriage had become overlaid with so many bourgeois conventions and false
requirements. Moreover, the popular
American mind had already told the couple that the really important part of
their relationship was their private and individualistic falling in love. Little or nothing was ever said about the
important social function that marriage has, and the consequent interest that
the community has in insuring that marriage is protected. Although the 60s professed to value
community highly, in matters of sex and love it not only continued but
exacerbated the American tendency to see only one's private good and private
interests.
Now
I admit that the community's legitimate interest in marriage and sex is not a
very romantic way of approaching the subject.
And, if nothing else, Americans are very romantic. On the whole, we will excuse adultery,
divorce, desertion of children, if only it can be portrayed romantically enough. I remember a movie I saw years ago, about a
woman who was having an affair with a rich man. Since she hadn't seen him in several months, she took up with
another fellow, and the script depicted their relationship as very romantic.
Meanwhile, the rich man had divorced his wife in order to marry the woman, but
when he returned for her, he found his place taken. The movie did not portray the original adulterous relationship
very romantically (nor did it condemn it either) and it certainly did not portray
the rich couple's marriage at all.
Promises, trust, a stable family - all that meant nothing to the movie
writers, let alone any notion that society at large had any right to a say-so
about our friendly foursome. Yet, if
one reflects for a minute about the purposes of sex and of the family, it
should be easy to see that they are very much bound up with the purposes of
society at large. The human race cannot
be continued without sex, and it cannot be continued in a healthy manner
without the family. Despite our obvious
and legitimate personal interests in both sex and the family, we would do well
to remember that, whatever personal fulfillment we gain in either, we are at
the same time fulfilling some very important needs of the community. In fact, I would say that God has made the
fulfillment of those community needs the means whereby we complete part of our
own personalities in marriage and the family, and one of the means whereby we
can make ourselves less selfish and more fit for Heaven. But if it were not for its community
purposes, such a thing as sex simply would not exist. Angels do not need to reproduce, and doubtless in some other way
God has provided for them to complete their personalities. Sex and marriage exist to continually
recreate the human race, the state, the Church - God in his graciousness has
also made them a method for great satisfaction on a personal level. But since the inherent end of sex and
marriage, the built-in end, as it were, pertains to the community, it is by
that end that our sex and our marriages must be judged. This is why, for example, contraception is
always wrong, no matter how much we imagine that on a personal level it might
enhance a relationship. We have no
right to rob either sex or marriage of its orientation toward the community.
None
of this should be alarming to a Catholic.
After all, we are supposed to value community more than our
individualistic Protestant brethren.
But as Catholics dwelling in America, do we have much of that Catholic
ideal in our sex and marriages? In the
60s it was the style to shun fancy, socially correct weddings. Lately I have heard of couples who will
postpone their wedding for months, even a year, in order to be able to rent the
right hall and have a big, fancy reception.
Of course they have no intention of postponing the sex part of their
relationship. Since that is seen as
purely personal, it can begin any time they want, and since the wedding
celebration also is seen as purely personal, that can be set any time they can
manage to schedule the socially correct accompaniments. But if a couple understands the need to put
off sex and their joint life until they are truly married, then they might not
care so much about whether they are able to secure the right hall for their
reception.
I
suppose it is unreasonable to expect every young couple in love to be thinking
primarily about the important social purposes of marriage. But because this is so, laws, rules and even
social conventions become doubly important for the health of the community. The
convention that unmarried couples should not live together helped protect the
community as long as it was in force.
But if the community cannot explain the reason for the convention, does
not even know if there is a reason, then it cannot expect it to endure. Like the two women with whose conversation I
began this article, a society that does not have good reasons why it does what
it does will soon conclude that its practices mean nothing. After all, "one day it's wrong and the
next day it isn't."
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