A Jewish fellow of my aquaintance is marrying a young lady from a very Roman Catholic Italian background who is very keen on a church wedding.
Now, I was always under the impression that the hardcore traditional Catholic churchmen were not too keen on this interfaith marriage thing.
Now, he informs me that there is a “special dispensation that only applies to Jews” who marry a catholic that allows them to marry without anyone having to convert.
This doesn’t apply to any other religious faith or even other Christian denominations.
This supposed dispensation allows for the wedding to take place in the church but allows certain elements of the ceremony to be bypassed (no eucharist for example).
Now, I’ve never heard of such a dispensation. I’ve always been told that it’s “convert or no church wedding no matter what” so I ask, can anyone confirm or deny this? Did I misunderstand or is he outright lying?
A Catholic may marry outside rthe Catholic faith with the only proviso being that the Catholic is supposed to promise to raise the kids Catholic and the non-Catholic (Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, animist, atheist, whoever) promising to not interfere with that effort.
There are some restrictions on the marriage ceremony that are based on the respective religions (or lack), but there is no absolute prohibition against the marriage. (George Burns was Jewish and Gracie Allen was Catholic, which should give some idea of how long such rules have been in effect–i.e., long before Vatican II.
I should add only that such a marriage – between a Catholic and any unbaptized person-- requires the permission of the local bishop. (Technically, such marriage is invalid because it suffers from an impediment, and such impediment may only be dispensed by the bishop). But this rule applies to any marriage involving an unbaptized person; it’s not specific to Jews nor exclusive of Jews.
My non-Catholic father married my Catholic mother in 1942. They got married in the Catholic church and no one had to convert (my father had to agree to allow the children to be raised Catholic, but that’s a different issue.)
There has always been a simple marraige ceremony for Catholic weddings. It’s basically an exchange of vows and takes maybe 10 minutes. There’s no Mass, no Eucharist. It’s normally used between Catholics and non-Catholics, or between Catholics who are in a hurry.
I’ve been to a good number of Catholic weddings, and while some didn’t include the Ministry of the Eucharist, I’ve never heard of one that didn’t include the equivalent of the first part of the Mass - prayers, readings from scripture, and a short homily. An even shorter ceremony may exist, but it definitely wasn’t popular where I grew up.
In general, if both partners are Catholic, a full Mass is strongly encouraged. If one is and one isn’t, it’s up to the couple and most will choose the abbreviated version. (Sort of dumb to have Communion when only one partner can take it, right?)
Those aren’t actually part of the wedding ceremony itself, though. The only public part of the wedding ceremony is the exchange of vows. Everything else is just there because people like to make a big deal of weddings.
We got married in France, he’s the RC I’m CofE. The Priest who prepared us said the only requirement was that both partners have an understanding of what a “Christian” marriage is. To that end we had to write a letter (to be kept on file) saying why we wanted to get married.
“I’m not going to tell you what to write” he said “but I strongly suggest you include these three things - that you both come willingly, that you believe marriage to be a life-long commitment and that you accept children as a natural consequence of marriage.”
At that time, among others, a Muslim /Christian couple was also being prepared, a couple with three kids, a Catholic / Atheist couple (altho’ they were advised to just have ‘a blessing’). Now you could be cynical and say that as church weddings have no legal value in France and that the church does require a ‘donation’ from the couple … or you could say that in a multi-ethnic urban setting he is just being pragmatic. We “imported” our own clerics - there was no problem with the vicar taking an active part in the service but it was stipulated that it was to be the priest who pronounced the actual marriage rite.
Then I know of another couple, a male French Catholic & a female English Protestant, whose local small town priest refuses to marry them.
As far as timing is concerned I think you folks are getting your terminology mixed up - as Chronos says the "Do you take"s and rings etc. takes only a few minutes however this “The Rite of Marriage” one of the stages (the single obligatory stage in fact) which makes up the whole “Marriage Ceremony”.
Pretty much how my wedding went when marrying my Catholic wife (now ex wife).
Her mother was pushing really hard for the Eucharist to be given (pretty much a full blown mass) but the priest resisted it. While he would have done it had we insisted he said it was not really a nice thing at a wedding to have half the attendees take sacrament while the other half sat there and watched. More to the point he said that the church does not “card” people coming up for the sacrament and that they really frown on giving it to non-catholics which could be a problem in a wedding situation (some not knowing might well try to line up as well).
That was all fine with us…we wanted to get on with the partying anyway.
What others have said is correct though. I had to sign a piece of paper promising to let any children be raised catholic (curious if they could actually enforce that but wasn’t an issue in my case) and I had to attend pre-Cana. Other than that the priests were cool and no issues. We even had a Presbyterian minister stand-in and perform some of the ceremony. Smiles all around.
My brother just got married a few weeks ago to a non-Catholic, and this was how their ceremony went. Took about 1/2 an hour.
Weirdly, although my husband and I are both Catholic, and wanted a full mass, we were kind of DIScouraged from having one, by our priest! He mentioned a couple of times that if a lot of our guests were not going to be Catholic, then we didn’t HAVE to have a mass. I think he was a little worried about 1) non-Catholics being bored to tears with an hour-plus ceremony, and 2) non-Catholics being confused & taking communion. We insisted on the mass, though, and we had one! With both sides of the family being Catholic, and living in a heavily Catholic area, most of the guests WERE Catholic, anyway, and the ones who weren’t I’m sure had been to a Catholic wedding a time or two, and knew what to expect!
Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been a problem for the vicar or anyone else to do the whole thing. According to the RCC, the priest is not the minister of the sacrament of marriage, but merely the presider. The couple being married are themselves the ministers of the sacrament to each other. So long as the bride and groom are doing their part, it shouldn’t particularly matter who’s presiding.
Originally we wanted to be married in a Presbyterian church because we liked the church itself better. This would only fly with the family though if the priest got to do the actual vows part of the ceremony. The Presbyterian church said no. They were happy to let a priest stand in and perform a good deal of the ceremony but since it was their church they insisted their minister give the vows. So we ended up in a catholic church.
Dunno if this was dogma or just pride but there FWIW.
I have never heard this before. At the weddings I have participated in, the concern was how to let non-Catholic attendees know that they are not supposed to partake in the Eucharist without offending them. The principle behind the Catholics-only policy is that Catholicism is the only denomination that believes in the “True Presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. The graveness of someone partaking in the sacrament who does not accept this doesn’t change because it is a wedding, I don’t think.
My experience is the same as Sarahfeena’s. I’ve been at several weddings in Catholic churches (one party Catholic; the other a non-Catholic Christian) where it’s been made quite clear that “Christians who are not in communion with Rome” are not allowed to receive communion. The fact that it’s a wedding rather than, say, the Sunday parish mass, is not relevant.
Not really. There are several Christian denominations that believe in the Divine Presence. Few of them insist on an Aristotelian/Scholastic adherence to the word Transubstantiation, but they very definitely believe in the Presence.
The RCC does object to people who do not believe in the Divine Presence partaking of the Eucharist, but the separate objection to the several groups who do share that belief (Orthodox, most of the Anglican Communion, some Lutherans, etc.) is that those groups are not united with the RCC and the RCC holds that communion is also a significant sign of unity. To the extent that unity does not exist, there cannot be a genuine sharing of the Eucharist. The RCC makes one point of distinguishing the validity of holy orders among several other groups, claiming that they cannot have the true Eucharist because their liturgical presidents do not have the authority in their ordinations through apostolic succession. As one may imagine, such unilateral declarations from the RCC about the validity of other groups’ ordinations does nothing to endear the RCC to members of those groups. Liturgical correctness aside, however, it is incorrect to claim that only the RCC holds the belief of the divine presence.