Splitting Hairs

My husband and I both have papers from Universal Ministries stating that by paying a small fee and filling out an online application, we now may perform any number of ceremonies like marriages or even baptisms.  This certificate, which also comes in pocket-size, is mostly symbolic and in no way means that either of us is particularly religious in any way.  The certificate’s powers allow us to perform weddings and we have; he has 2 (almost 3) and I have 1…not that I’m keeping score.  Anyway, we’ve both stood in front of a gathering of people and pronounced a couple married.  Recently though, someone told me that we “officiate,” we don’t actually marry people.  It took some prodding, but it seems the distinction this individual was trying to make is that because my husband and I are not ministers for any church this person accepts, we therefore only officiate legal unions like a justice of the peace.  Seems like splitting hairs to me.  Verb choice really?  That’s the distinction? A ceremony presided over by a JoP is somehow not really marrying the couple, it’s just officiating?  Apparently to be a marriage for this person, it must be blessed by church official like a priest since she indeed declares that she will be a Catholic until she dies.  I’m not sure I buy her argument that the ceremonies my husband I have performed are in any way less valid or true marriages.  Have you ever really investigated the history of marriage?  No?  Let me enlighten you on what I have found.

Guidelines about marriage began as a way to make sure humans kept having babies and passed property down bloodlines. Way back when we humans lived mostly nomadic and tribal style lives, marriage was really open and I do mean open to interpretation.  Not only did men actually go and essentially kidnap women for sex, in some tribes the males could be with whatever woman appealed to them and then the children from these unions belonged to the whole tribe.  Fascinating, yet primitive by our Western sensibilities I suppose.  Personally, being thwacked over the head and led away for mating, childbearing, and no real monogamous connection does not appeal.  I am a product of that whole feminism movement after all and I enjoy being able to rebuff or prosecute such advances.  Speaking of feminism, ancient Romans seemed to have the first equal status for males and females in marriage.  Interestingly, when women and men held equal rank in marriage, the birth rates declined!  The declining birth rate led Augustus to impose mandatory marriage laws.  So much for freedom and equality.  As societies moved to more agriculture based societies, the issue of property rights emerged as a concern and males wanted assurance that the kids born of their wives were actually theirs so that the possessions of the father went to his sons.  Enter the age of marriage as a contract. 

From this lovely idea of property rights, humans gained reinforcement to the idea of women as chattel.  Now instead of being open and available to all men, women were property of a man and marriages were often business dealings.  The love we now associate with marriage actually was relegated to the realm of prostitutes, male lovers, or concubines.  Marriage was business so if you wanted monkey business, seek it outside the marriage bed.  Early civilized societies had the practice of prearranged marriages complete with either the male’s family giving the bride’s family money for the woman, or the woman’s family giving the male’s family money and property for taking that pesky female off their hands.  Either way, it was business and the woman was not in control.  Marriage secured property rights for heirs and also for churches through the wills of the deceased family members.  As the churches gained more control over societies, religious influence also reached marriage.  Around the 12^th century marriages added blessings and prayers which then gave way to full on religious involvement in marriage ceremonies.  Despite this, some civilizations insisted on a secular union before a religious one because a religious union was simply not enough. Essentially, as humans progressed through the ages, the definition of marriage and how to define it varied considerably and changed based on the needs of the society.  This idea of government sanctioning marriage for legal reasons also helped shape America’s ideas of marriage.

In  Colonial America, because so many of the early European settlers escaped religious persecution elsewhere, colonies opted for civil, legal marriage rather than religious based ceremonies.  They looked to the idea of usus for their marriages which stated that living together for a year as husband and wife provided enough of a proof for marriage needed to be legally accepted.  If the wife stayed away three nights, the marriage was voided.  This idea should sound familiar since its modern version morphed into common law marriage.  Only Virginia Colony held on to religious over civil, but this too gave way eventually.  With a brief knowledge of the ancient origins through early American views on marriage, it appears that marriage frequently falls under the heading of legal contract, and that religious involvement was discretionary.  Therefore, I felt obligated to investigate specifically Catholic views on marriage to completely understand the point of distinction mentioned earlier in this article. 

In my digging for information I made rather startling discoveries regarding the Catholic Church’s involvement in marriage.  For example, in 866 Pope Nicholas I held that even if a marriage was consummated, if either party objected to the marriage, the marriage was then void.  Hmmm, veh-wee een-teresting.  By this belief, even if the two had sex, either the man or the woman could still oppose the union regardless of whether or not it was arranged by the families.  In the 13^th century the church took control of marriage as a ceremony, but still held that marriage “sprang from partners and neither the parents, nor priest, nor government could affect validity.”  Holy smoke!  If a marriage springs from the individuals’ consent, then the priest really was there as set dressing even though the church saw marriage as a sacrament.  By 1563, the sacrament of marriage appears in canonical law, but throughout the 1500’s, marriages without witnesses or priests were still common. Furthermore, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, marriage is a “legitimate union between husband and wife” with the term legitimate defined as being sanctioned by some kind of law: natural, evangelical, or legal.  Again, marriage through the ages changes even in the sometimes unyielding Catholic Church.  By including legal in the definition of legitimate, even a civil marriage between gay and lesbian partners would be recognized as a marriage.  The priest’s blessing supposedly elevates the marriage’s union as an offering of the marriage in “importance and sacredness,” but a marriage that satisfies “legitimate union” still qualifies as marriage.  Furthermore, “most people, including most Roman Catholics do not realize that the ministers of the sacrament are the spouses themselves.”  WHAT?  So the Roman Catholic Church still follows the age old tradition that simply declaring yourself married is enough?  Just so you know, the author of this article, Scott P. Richert, is a Catholic who along with his wife attends a traditional Latin mass and he holds an advanced degree from Catholic University of America.  By this teaching, the two people who want to get married, are married as long as they say vows to one another that say they intend to contract a marriage with one another.  That’s it.  Priest or “officiant” not needed unless you want that added bonus.  By this argument, my Catholic ‘til death person is right about us not performing marriages; but neither do priests.  They too are just “officiants.”  Even with that nugget of revelation, marriages that are legally recognized like the ones my husband and I perform=valid even under Catholic scrutiny. 

Therefore the only barrier to defining the unions and the act of performing those unions that my husband and I perform as marriage is the individual in question.  That is her issue to resolve if she indeed views our marriage rites as less than marriage.  For me and my husband, those ceremonies and the ones yet to come are marriages.  Period.  For that “Catholic until the day I die,” she can have her marriage.  She can call it marriage in whatever fashion she defines it along with her husband.  Those other couples though-- asked us to be a part of one of the most important days of their lives.  Clearly, those couples’ marriages satisfy any definition of marriage out there…and I refuse to diminish the status of those marriages or our role in celebrating them to anything less than the beautiful portrayal of love and devotion that they are.