I borrowed one of my posts from "Truth, Goodness & Beauty":
Couples will say: “We’re married because we love each other.” But there is also an older and perhaps more meaningful expression: “We love each other because we’re married.” When my grandparents married they did not love each other: they did not know each other. Like many marriages in their part of the world in 1890, it was essentially an arranged marriage, solemnized with a ketubah (marriage contract) like the one above. Did they ever “fall in love” or grow to love each other? I don’t know. Were they happy? I have no idea. They had ten children, the youngest of whom was my father. They addressed each other formally – as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” – just like Dr. Meade and Mrs. Meade in Gone With the Wind. My grandmother died in 1938, and my grandfather, though he had not been ill, died less than two months later. I will go ahead and assume that they loved each other - because they were married.
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Some people think celibate clergy do not have the right to teach or counsel anyone about marriage since they are single. But I would rather go to a good doctor who had had years of training and who had seen my kind of illness hundreds if not thousands of times, in many different people, rather than demand to receive treatment from someone who had had the disease himself. Sometimes, in doing tribunal work, in reviewing case after case of failed marriages, patterns begin to appear, stories begin to sound very familiar, and the only surprise is that those who seek a declaration of nullity (not an “annulment” – a word which, as I've mentioned many times, doesn’t even appear in the Code of Canon Law) often seem to reveal aspects of their marriage to the tribunal which I suspect they would not even mention in confession.
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And so even as a single person, I can attest to the fact that, unfortunately, some of what prompts people to marry – not lacking due discretion of judgment but sometimes against their better judgment in many ways, and in very subtle ways – is fear, primarily fear of being alone. In the testimonies that every tribunal must review for its nullity cases, this is a theme heard over and over again. Many will say, “I was afraid being old alone or of dying alone,” not realizing that at least among women, seventy-five percent of us end up alone in our later years anyway (never married, widowed or divorced).
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I think I can assure everyone that as difficult as single life is at times, there are far worse things to face in life than waking up alone every morning, or spending Christmas or other holidays on one’s own. What’s worse? From all that I’ve gathered, this: waking up next to someone, once beloved, who has become a stranger, and dreading going home to see one’s family for the holidays, knowing it will take weeks to recover from the trauma and that the painful memories of what Uncle Helmut or your sister-in-law did or said will last for a lifetime, casting a pall on all subsequent family gatherings.
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But it is normal to want to love and be loved, in a definitive way and not merely as a passing romance. It is not good for us to be alone, as Someone we know and love once said. The fear of being alone is so profound, so primal, that it steers otherwise bright and capable people toward decisions they may come to regret. And on that day of regret, they want “out” – which is something secular society broadly promotes. But as Blessed Pope John Paul II taught us, human beings are not disposable (divorce), nor interchangeable (remarriage), nor are they to be made the objects of experimentation (living together or “trial marriage”).
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In a recent article in The Tablet (or what Fr. Z. calls The Bitter Pill) there is a plea for the Catholic Church to do what our Orthodox brethren do with the numerous failed marriages in our times. In many, but not all, Orthodox Churches (remember: no central authority, so no true consistency of doctrine or approach to this, only some loosely applied sense of oikonomia), a member of the faithful is allowed a first, sacramental marriage. If that fails, especially if the person in question is the innocent party, then a second, non-sacramental “marriage” is permitted, usually after some sort of “penitential” period. If the second one fails, then the person is permitted a third, non-sacramental “marriage” – but not a fourth one! Have to draw the line somewhere. Have to have some standards.
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As I hope any Catholic can see, this is completely unworkable for a number of reasons. In the first place, the first and only marriage, a sacrament, is still there. A valid matrimonial bond can only be dissolved by death and doesn’t “go away” no matter how much one wants it to, no matter how painful or cold the relationship, no matter which spouse abandoned the other, or no matter how badly one spouse treats the other (and I am not going to tackle the Pauline and Petrine privileges in this forum…). It is true that on occasion, severe problems in a marriage can be indicative of an antecedent incapacity to contract marriage or of an intention to enter into something other than marriage, but such cases are (or should be) quite rare. So this second non-sacramental “marriage”…would be what? Adultery or concubinage permitted by the Church? And if that is the view of the human person (and not wanting to cause an ecumenical kerfuffle here…), then would it not make more sense for the Orthodox to allow an initial non-sacramental “marriage” or whatever, and if that fails then another, and then eventually and finally – third time’s the charm? – admit the person to a full sacramental marriage now that he has it all figured out? Now that he has matured and has learned how to treat another human being?
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People often say of marriage, “I had no idea what I was getting into.” Of course not. People never know what they are getting into when they embark upon a new situation in life. It is the same with having children. Even if couples wait years for a child, and anticipate every aspect of childrearing, it is another matter altogether when the little one finally arrives. A couple I know had their first child in their thirties – they are both academics – and the little creature reduced them to utter helplessness within hours. The baby cried,screamed, round the clock. They could not let go of her or put her down for a moment. She was healthy; but she could not bear being out of her mother’s arms (or her father’s, as a tolerable substitute). The baby was not a good eater, nor did she sleep much, at least not at normal times. Formerly in control of all aspects of their lives, these two intellectuals were now at their wits’ end. And one cannot divorce the child or “send it back” and get another, better one – though I seem to recall this has been tried.
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Some say that Catholics should not, or even cannot, receive the Sacrament of Matrimony if they lack faith. But it is impossible to go the route of a faith litmus test for couples. Provided they are validly baptized, and it has been determined, as it must be ahead of time, that there are no impediments, and they have some minimal understanding and acceptance of marriage as permanent, faithful and ordered to the procreation of children (not needing to know the mechanics of everything, but just some general idea), the bar is set very low. Catholics cannot be prohibited from receiving the Sacrament of Matrimony, even if the people preparing the couple – the families, the parish staff – think things might not turn out well. Take the case of a spoiled teenager about to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. She is only going through with it because her mother is insisting on it, and her father has promised her a big party and a new car. The girl has no interest in the Catholic faith, can hardly wait to stop being dragged to Mass every Sunday with her parents, and has no intention of living as a practicing Catholic once she leaves for college. But if she presents herself along with her classmates to the bishop – and she’s just willful enough so that if she truly did not want the Sacrament she’d dig in her heels – then it is a validly, if not fruitfully, received Sacrament. The grace is there, will be there, if she ever has a change of heart.
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The new and prevailing theology of marriage is very beautiful, but I remain not entirely convinced of the wisdom or utility of turning it into canon law. The old “contract” model has given way to the new “covenant” model of marriage. I know a devout Catholic man who has engraved on the inside of his wedding band, “…as Christ loved the Church.” When I related that to another young Catholic married woman, she burst out laughing: “Really? I can’t even get my husband to pick up his socks!” And as beautiful as it is to see the marriage relationship as similar to that of God and His people or Christ and the Church, it is also important to remember that it does not exactly denote a relationship of equality.
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Speaking of contracts, for your perusal and edification, the link below has a slideshow of some of the lovely ketubot like the one at the top of the post, which are still used in the Jewish tradition, from a different sort of Tablet:
