Eh, fair enough. I’m not at all sure how someone can get to 62 without realizing that the RCC considers premarital cohabitation a sin.
But we’re considerably afield. To get (loosely) back to the OP, I can think of no reason that your friend’s priest should have been forced to perform a religious rite against the doctrines of his faith.
They still enjoy the same tax exemptions any other nonprofit organizations do.
I believe he thought that such notions were hopelessly outdated (as I do).
Wouldn’t that mean marriage, let alone Catholic marriage, would itself be outdated?
Why expect an ancient ritual of an ancient religion to be “up to date?”
I meant the notion that living together was ‘really bad’.
Same point.
I have written to him to ask what the priest said.
How so?
Um, because it is?
It’s weird to say “hey, the idea that living together is a sin is so outdated! Now, please marry me according to this ancient ritual in your very very old religion.”
False. About 60% of people who get married, today, lived together first. That is not ‘almost everyone’.
Living together before marriage may also increase the risk of subsequent divorce, though that’s somewhat debated and I don’t really want to take a stand one way or the other.
If you don’t take the same view of marriage that the Catholic Church does (that marriage is indissoluble except by the death of one partner, that it’s oriented towards procreation and childrearing, etcetera) then you shouldn’t be seeking marriage in a Catholic Church.
That’s the participants’ discretion. Nobody is forcing them to get married according to the dictates of a very old religion.
I know it’s framed as a question, but this is more like a poll. Pretty worthless.
That’s my point too. Why get mad about it because it’s “old-fashioned” when you want to do an old-fashioned thing in the first place?
So, if you think one old idea is no longer useful, you must, perforce, believe all old ideas are no longer useful?
No, I said it’s kind of silly to complain about one idea as being old-fashioned but insist on preserving others. How is a Catholic marriage useful? Especially if you don’t even think it’s a problem to just live together anyway?
How is that different from what I just said?
Well, in addition to all the ways that any marriage is useful, I suspect a Catholic marriage would be of particular use to Catholics who feel that it’s important to solemnize their relationship in the eyes of their God. I’m not clear on how an individual Catholic’s view on the appropriateness of living together beforehand enters into it.
I don’t know.
That’s just it - why would one think it’s important to solemnize their relationship in the eyes of their God immediately after living together without doing so? A change of heart? And then why be shocked that a preist wouldn’t go along with it?
Oookay.
Because some people see living together as an intermediary step before getting married. Some of these people happen to be Catholics.
Is this genuinely something you didn’t know?
Of course I know it.
What I don’t understand is why they care so much about getting a Catholic wedding after spending time flouting Catholic beliefs regarding marriage and sex. You don’t see the incongruity? You don’t see why a priest might balk at someone expecting to get what they want out of the church but without living up to its demands?
No, I don’t see the incongruity. Presumably, they see a lot of value in much of the Catholic conception of marriage. Except for the part about not living together before hand.
Again, just because you reject one old idea, doesn’t mean you must reject all old ideas.