[A few friends have written that they miss my comments about contemporary issues. I understand that. But I would strongly suggest that we cannot deal effectively with today’s issues without a correct understanding of what TRULY happened yesterday. Please bear with me. The history of marriage is a good example. And that history is Christian history not just “Roman Catholic history.”]

 

During the first three centuries of Christianity, when Christians married, they did so according to the civil laws of the time, in a traditional family ceremony, and often without any special “church” blessing on their union. There was no liturgical ceremony for marriage, as we saw for Baptism and Eucharist.

The usual marriage custom was that, on the wedding day, the father handed over his daughter to the groom in her own family’s house. The bridal party then walked in procession to her new husband’s house for concluding ceremonies and a wedding feast. The principal part of the ceremony was the handing over of the bride, during which her right hand was placed in the groom’s and the draping of a garland of flowers over the couple to symbolize their happy union. There were no official words that had to be spoken and there was no ecclesiastical ceremony.

In the late fourth century, it became customary in some places in the Eastern Roman Empire for a priest or bishop to give his blessing to the newly wedded couple either during the wedding feast or before it. Priests or bishops were not in charge of, nor did they conduct the ceremony. Their presence was not necessary for the marriage to be valid.

Throughout the seventh century, Christians could still get married in a purely secular ceremony. By the eighth century, however, liturgical weddings had become quite common in the Eastern Empire, and they were usually performed in a church rather than in a home.

In the Western Empire, however, marriage developed along quite different lines.

The first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne (748 – 814 CE), initiated legal reforms in his empire, in both church and civil government. In 802 Charlemagne passed a law requiring all proposed marriages to be examined for legal restrictions, such as previous marriages or close family relationships, before the wedding could take place. Clandestine marriages were a problem, especially in matters of property ownership. Interestingly, Charlemagne himself had five wives in sequence, numerous concubines, and at least 20 children via his wives and concubines.

By the eleventh century, all marriages in Europe effectively came under the jurisdictional power of the church. It became customary to hold weddings near a church, often in front of the church, so that the newly married couple could go inside immediately afterward to obtain a priest’s blessing. But the priest did not officiate at the wedding. And…it was not until the twelfth century that a church wedding ceremony was conducted by the clergy. But marriage was still not considered a sacrament.

It was also in the eleventh century that celibacy became mandatory for priests in the west. Before that time many priests were married but they were encouraged not to have sexual intercourse with their wives. The last married Pope was Adrian II (pope from 867–872 CE), who was married to Stephania, with whom they had a daughter. There were two big reasons for the imposition of celibacy. First, there was a belief that the historical Jesus was a virgin and that therefore priests should be virgins. But there was a second important reason. Priests’ wives were starting to become too influential and threatened male clerical power in the institutional church.

At the urging of popes and councils, a kind of monastic austerity was gradually forced upon the clergy as a whole. Pope Benedict VIII in 1018 formally forbade priestly marriages. That prohibition was solemnly proclaimed by the First Lateran Council of 1123. The rule, however, was not easy to enforce.

In the thirteenth century, marriage was often viewed by church leaders as a remedy against the desires of the flesh. Many church authorities, like Albert the Great (1200 – 1280), the teacher of Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274), considered sexual desires themselves if not sinful at best dangerous. Thomas Aquinas stressed that virginity was preferable to marriage. In his Summa Theologiae (sometimes called Summa Theologica) he wrote, “By the example of Christ, who both chose a virgin for his mother and remained himself a virgin, and by the teaching of the Apostle [i.e. Paul] who counsels virginity as the greater good.”

By the early thirteenth century, however, marriage came to be viewed as one of the church’s seven official sacraments. This was confirmed by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1213, the Council of Florence in 1439, and was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent, meeting off and on from 1545 to 1563. Nevertheless, the bishops at Trent condemned the still ongoing practice of some priests getting married and strongly declared that Catholics had to believe that virginity and celibacy were superior to marriage.

Today many Catholic theologians and canon lawyers say it is better to let the legal regulation of marriage be a matter of civic control, without denying that church weddings are important communal celebrations or that Christian marriages are sacramental. And…marriages are sacramental because two baptized people make a commitment to each other. They are the “ministers of the sacrament.” The priest is an official witness. But what then about two baptized same-sex people who make a marriage commitment to each other? Is not their marriage also sacramental?

Times change. We acquire new knowledge and new insights about our human identity. In many respects we have better biblical and historical perspectives on the past. Our understandings evolve. Accepted patterns of human behavior do change.

My friend, who completed his doctorate in theology in Leuven in 1994, Todd Salzman and his colleague at Creighton University, Michael Lawler, have a new book coming out in May: Pope Francis, Marriage, and Same-Sex Civil Unions.Todd and Michael argue for the organic development of Catholic sexual teaching to recognize the morality and sacramentality of opposite-sex and same-sex marriage.

Contemporary pastoral ministry confronts a number of issues and concerns. Some have been resolved in other Christian traditions but remain problematic in the Catholic tradition, because many in church leadership have difficulty understanding that all church doctrines are time-bound and provisional.

The Greek word, agápē, is usually translated as “love” in the New Testament. It really means care or caring. When Jesus tells his followers to love one another, as we read for instance in John 13:34–35, he is telling them to care about each other and to take care of one another.

Jesus never said it mattered if someone was gay, lesbian, trans, or straight. Agápē is not a feeling word. It is an action word. Loving and committed people are bound together in agápē.

Jack