Do Roman Catholics have to marry within a sanctuary?
The reason I ask: I was looking at the web-site http://www.spanishmonastery.com/, an 11th century Spanish monastery in Miami (it was purchased/deconstructed/crated by Hearst, kept in storage for many years, and sold after his death to developers in Miami who reconstructed it- by some counts it’s the oldest building in the nation). It’s very popular for weddings, but a disclaimer on their FAQ page reads
Does anybody know why this would be? Are there requirements that a place must meet for a Roman Catholic wedding to be held?
Not inflammatory, just curiosity: I don’t intend to debate the validity or logic but was just curious.
A Roman Catholic must get married in a church or chapel 99% of the time. The priest who did pre-cana (pre-marital preparation and counseling) for my husband and I said that other locations are only allowed with the consent of the local bishop. He gave the example of a celebrity who would be stalked by the press, thus disrupting the ceremony. I assume that a hospital room ceremony would also be allowed.
It may be that it was de-consecrated as a church, and once a place is deconsecrated, the RCC doesn’t want to muddy the waters by using it as a place where sacraments are administered.
Is deconsecration a process or just a pronouncement? (I’d wondered if this particular building’s history played a part in this or if Catholics could get married by a priest at, say, a lakeside or a convention center ballroom.)
Since matrimony is a sacrament, the church generally prefers that it be celebrated in the normal/usual/typical/ordinary* location for the celebration of sacraments. I doubt that the consecration** of the building has anything to do with the prohibition. Unconsecrated chapels (shared with other denominations, such as on a military base) are often used to celebrate weddings. More likely, since it is not in regular use as a Catholic parish building, it is off-limits to Catholic weddings. Catholics are expected to marry within the parish of the bride or groom, although there are exceptions for couples who live far away and want to use one of their parents’ parishes so that their friends and family may more easily attend the celebration.
It is a two-way street. Catholic churches are also not “rented out” for weddings to people from outside the church. (And if someone knows a priest in charge of a chapel who is making a tidy sum from doing a bit of “renting” on the side, write to his bishop. I am just laying out the general rules, not explaining the actions of every guy who decided to ignore or flout them.)
“Ordinary” has a specific ecclesiastical meaning in this context; it does not mean mundane.
**Deconsecrating a church is not a big deal. Some prayers are offered and the sacrarium is sealed, and that is the end of it. The land on which the parish church where I grew up had stood has been a parking lot for around forty years. (SW corner of Walnut at Third St. in Rochester, MI.)
Cool, thanks. It sounds like marrying outside of a church to a Catholic would be sort of like baptizing a baby at City Hall- just “something that you don’t do”.
Let’s just say it is possible. My late wife was raised Catholic. Her father operated the bus services for a Catholic high school for many years and the family became close to the Franciscan who ran the school.
When we married, we asked to have him perform the ceremony, instead of her parish priest. Furthermore, we wanted an outdoor wedding in some formal gardens that had recently been opened to the public, rather than her parish priest.
Oh, and we wanted to write our own ceremony, but have the church bless it.
Her father visited the bishop and somehow obtained permission to do all three. He’s gone now,and I never was able to make him tell me whether money changed hands or he threatened physical harm (he was a huge man, and quite muscular) or if he just said “This is as close to the church as you’re going to get them. Take what you can get.”
That was in 1972, and we were quite happily married for 24 years before she died.
In just a week and a half our daughter will be getting married, so my thoughts are on weddings…
My Catholic wife and I were married last year in her church. Though she’s laid back about most things religious, this is something she would not budge on. Not that I tried to budge her… much
Not at all, that particular place has its own peculiar disadvantages. But the “permission from the Bishop” is pretty easy to obtain; it’s only that in most cases you want to get married in “your” church. Bro and SiL got married in a church that’s the parish of neither, but it’s very popular for weddings; it’s the parish next to hers and most people from hers get married in this other one (bigger and, well, San Francisco is from the '70s and concrete ugly), so much so that when she went to ask the parish priest what documents would they need, one of his first questions was “are you doing it here, in the groom’s parish or in San Antón?” He had the form right there.
There was a period where the hiking club from my high school seemed to include a wedding or two a year; we were joking it should be called the wedding club instead. The mountain chosen would be one with a road going to the top: the people from the club (including bride and groom) would walk up; those who weren’t up to walking drove. I know one Mother of the Groom who still sighs she “wanted to have an excuse to buy a fancy dress, and then he goes and gets married on top of a mountain.” Then again, that club usually celebrates a Mass on top of whichever mountain they’re climbing (the school is called San Francisco Javier).