I’m in the fitness center going through the motions that keep me mobile. Lift up! Push out! Stretch! Ride that bike! I look around and see younger men and women doing wonderful things with their bodies to keep themselves healthy and toned. That earnest fortyish woman in dark sweats running on a treadmill. She is not smiling. The guy, lithe and calm, likely as old as me, pedaling the bike to maintain his healthy physique. We’re regulars at the center. We recognize each other, sometimes with a nod, less often with any kind of conversation. Most of us feel energized by our exercises but we just want to finish, so no time for talking.
The woman in sweats breaks that custom and comes over to me as I puff and puff trying to pedal off 100 calories in fifteen minutes — a cookie’s worth of energy. She starts by saying “I know you are a priest and you can say yes or no to what I am going to ask of you.” “O.K. Try me,” I say. She looks me directly into my eyes and says: “My daughter is getting married the Saturday after Easter this year. “I’d like to surprise her by having you do her wedding.” I know she considers a priest a step above a layman with on-line clergy credentials. She can see me in my clericals and would like me to add some solemnity to the wedding.
I tell her, “Sure, if I can. What parish does she belong to?”
“We don’t belong to any church. I just think it would be nice and an honor for us if you would do this.”
I respond with: “I’m so sorry but I can’t marry anyone unless they are Catholic and have gone through the preparation period for marriage in the Catholic Church.” Her demeanor changes from earnestness to a confusing awareness. “Oh, I didn’t know I’m sorry.” That’s what she says but she is disappointed and hurt by my response. All she is able to hear is “NO.” Let me repeat that: ALL SHE IS ABLE TO HEAR IS NO.
“Do you want me to help you get in contact with your local Catholic Church?” She is already stepping back from me. “No, I don’t want to get involved with the Church. I just thought you could help us out.”
Here was an opportunity to assist someone who was asking for help from me and I am under constraints not to be able to help.
I know what she wants. I, too, can visualize myself in my priestly uniform standing on a platform in some hotel banquet room surrounded by beautiful flowers with the couple standing before me. Their friends are actually getting quiet, seeing a priest officiating, a representative of the Catholic Church, whose presence raises the level of the marriage to something approaching sacred. It’s something I would like to do, but it will never happen because the Church rules prohibit me from representing myself as a priest in this kind of secular formality. It might appear to some that I was performing some kind of phony sacrament.
I have witnessed many Catholic marriages in church and most of them are beautiful. I get the sense that the couple understands the sacrament of marriage. I have also witnessed marriages in the Catholic Church where the couple was putting on a show and had no commitment to the beauty of the service or perceived any idea of the sacrament of marriage. It was a Catholic family making a spectacle of the liturgy for the sake of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. I always feel used by these people, even though I do everything to make the ritual meaningful. However, this lady in the fitness center is actually asking if I could help make a wedding more meaningful by adding ritual. The concept of Catholic sacrament doesn’t enter into her thinking, only her desire to make her daughter’s wedding more meaningful. Her daughter wouldn’t be expecting a sacrament, either.
In this culture where secular Catholics abound and the “nones” are on the increase, why can’t we priests just provide what these people would like? They are not asking for sacramental marriage. They are asking for a holy service, one large step up from a secular or non-denominational wedding. It would be my job to continue ministering to the family and, perhaps, lead them to the deeper meaning that the Church could bring to their lives.
In my humble opinion (Am I ever humble?), the Church is failing people like the fitness lady by not accepting a step forward as an opportunity to embrace the moment as a grace from the Lord.
WHY CAN’T WE TAKE PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE AT AND THEN LEAD THEM TO THE DEEPER MEANING AND BLESSINGS OF THE CHURCH?
Good Catholics, including good bishops, will object that:
- Cultural Catholics will, then, avoid all the rigamarole of the church and opt for the simple presence and leadership of the priest at whatever venue they want to marry. No lengthy marriage instructions to go through. No fees for church or musicians. Freedom to compose promises or vows that make sense to those getting married.
- Traditional Catholics will be confused by the lack of sacramentality to the ceremony. No Mass, no liturgy at all.
- Traditional Catholics will object to the setting of a marriage witnessed by a priest who performs the wedding in a state park or hotel ballroom.
So, we are stuck in our regulations and laws. Didn’t Our Lord deal with the religious restrictions of his time by saying things like: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath?”(Mark 2:37) More on this later….