What is marriage??
Marriage exists as a custom of legal principle in pretty much every human society. It’s an essential part of the social fabric that provides for the upbringing of children and the passing of wealth from one generation to another.
So there is nothing specifically Christian or even religious about marriage in itself. In earlier societies where there was no distinction between the religious and civil domains, it would have made no sense to ask if marriage was religious or non-religious. In Jewish tradition it remains true that religious law and civil law are one and the same, particularly when it comes to marriage. In early Christian tradition marriage was not seen as part of civil law – which would have meant Roman (i.e. pagan) law. But as soon as Christianity became the State religion, Church law and state law became mixed. In Christian Europe, through the Middle Ages, marriage was recognized under Church jurisdiction, but also was the key element of the law that determined property rights, and how they we handed on from father to son (noting that women were – in law – just one of many types of property). Hence all the trouble with Henry VIII and the Church…
There remains to this day, in both Europe and the US, a confusion and often conflict as to whether marriage is really the province of religion or the state. And if there are really two “marriages”, the state one and a religious one, then how do they connect together.
So where does this leave the Sacrament of Marriage?
As a sacrament, marriage is not a legal contract, it is the recognition that the event of two people binding their lives together (“to have and to hold”) can viewed from sacred perspective, and is one of those occasions when we experience the intersection of the divine, the community, and the individual (or, in this case, two individuals). Just as we make sacraments from birthing and washing, from eating, from being sick, from saying sorry and making up, we see the sacred in the choice of two people to share their lives expressed in front of the community under the eyes of God.
A marriage, seen as a sacrament does not only create a relationship between two individuals, and between those individuals and the society, it creates a special three-way relationship between the two people and God.
So far, so simple…
The problem:
Some Pharisees approached him, and tested him, saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?”
He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
They said to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss her?”
He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.”
His disciples said to him, “If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”
He answered, “Not all can accept this word, but only those to whom that is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it.” (Matthew, 19:3-12)
This passage has probably caused as much grief as any in Scripture. Exactly how it has been interpreted has varied over the ages, with different degrees of emphasis on the legal angle (noting again Henry VIII as a famous example of the desire to hold a prior marriage unlawful, when it suited). Since the Reformation the Catholic Church (and others) adopted an increasingly rigid approach that totally excluded the possibility of divorce.
As in so much the Second Vatican Council brought both an updating of the Church’s understanding and an attempt to return to a more basic or simpler understanding of the Gospel. It shifted the focus from marriage as a contract and a legal framework, to focus on the relationship between two people. Much of the clutter of Catholic sensibility around sexuality, as a necessary evil and something to be avoided if at all possible (coming originally from Augustine…), was at least reduced by an emphasis on marital love rather than biology.
Regarding the permanence of marriage, the position has become more nuanced, allowing for the fairly widespread use of “annulment” as a mechanism to declare that a “canonically valid marriage” never existed between the parties. In practice this is an evolving area of Church practice, and different priests and different bishops may take quite different positions, at least in public, on the principals involved. However what has clearly changed in the vast majority of cases in that the automatic condemnation and exclusion associated with a failed marriage has been replaced with an attitude that is more aligned with Jesus’s general attitudes and teaching.
Holy Orders
Ordination is the sacrament that marks the choice of a person to devote himself to the priestly ministry – as a priest, bishop, or deacon. This is different from the commitment made by those entering the Religious Orders as monks, nuns and friars – that life choice is marked by taking vows (typically of poverty, chastity and obedience). For men it is possible to be ordained and also to be a member of a Religious Order, but they are not necessarily linked.
All these roles and life styles have evolved greatly throughout the history of the Church. The current expectation of an exclusively celibate, male, priesthood is not necessarily something that will continue into the future. The Catholic Church has for a long time recognized different traditions in some of the Eastern Rites, and has recently accepted that ordained Anglican (Episcopalian) priests may be recognized as Catholic priests while still being married – so there are already married Catholic priests, if not yet female ones! While the Catholic Church never changes quickly, the situation regarding recognition of different ministries and the linkage to different lifestyles certainly continues to evolve.