Article 3: Marriage or marriages? And what for?
My wife and I were married twice on June 30th, 1973:
legally by the Oxford County Registrar so as to change
our legal status from that of two single individuals to
that of a married couple according to the laws of Great
Britain and Northen Ireland and sacramentally within
a Mass by exchanging our vows according to the rites
of the Roman Catholic Church in front of the Catholic
Chaplain of the University of Oxford.
I
While the marriage laws of the Catholic Church are
universal, the Civil ones vary from country to country
and from province to province within Canada. This
obviously complicates comparisons between these two
types of marriages. I will consider here the laws
pertaining to marriage existing in the Province of
Québec, laws found in its Code Civil.
As the officiating minister of religion is (normally)
an officer of the State,1
Christians who marry in a religious ceremony tend
to forget that they were also married according to
the Law of the land by a dutifully recognized
«civil servant».
Matrimonial laws existed during the early Roman
republic.2 These changed
to reflect the new mores first in the case of the Roman
Republic3
and then in the case of the Kingdom of
France4
which had inherited the later Roman Republic's laws.
These were again changed within Québec's Code Civil.
In our day and age, the rules of Civil and Catholic
marriages diverge considerably. This is recognized by
the Code Civil which states that no minister
of religion can be forced to marry people against
his religion.5
Among the divergences, divorce is permitted by the
State6 in the case
of its Civil marriage but not by the Church in the
case of any marriage it recognizes; a Civil marriage
between divorcees is permitted by the State but a
Catholic marriage between them is not permitted
by the Church; a Civil marriage between a non-Catholic
and a Catholic is permitted by the State while a Catholic
marriage between them can only take place if certain
conditions are met.
The Catholic Church only recognizes a marriage
solemnized according to its rites if at least one of
the spouses is Catholic while it recognizes any type
of marriage between non-Catholics. This, while the
State only recognizes Civil marriages, that is,
marriages that have been solemnized by someone so
authorized by the Minister responsible for civil status.
There are some common grounds between the Civil and
the Catholic marriages in the Province of Québec as they both:
(1) use the term «marriage»
(2) limit how close genetically the two spouses can
be7
(3) until now defined it as the union between a man and a
woman8
(4) insist that marriage is between two unwed
persons9
in front of witnesses10
after issue of a public notice some time ahead
of their intention to
wed.11
II
Québec society is now thinking of
defining Civil marriage, the only type of
marriage under the jurisdiction of the government,
as the union between two people, thus permitting two
individuals of the same sex to marry. This change is
required to satisfy the fundamental principle of
equality of all under the Law. No other change is
contemplated.12
The Magisterium of the Catholic Church,
Evangelicals, Muslims and Jews are up in arms against
such a change in the definition of Civil marriage.
They affirm that the State has no right to change the
meaning of the term «marriage» which they claim has
always been reserved to the union of one man and one woman.
These religious leaders' rebuke is odd as the
Qu'ran clearly permits a man to have three
wives and as Moses, Gedeon, David, Salomon and so
many others had wives galore and numerous
concubines to boot! So their claim about point (3)
contradicts their Holy Books!
We must remember that Israel's laws, civil,
criminal and religious, are all said in the Torah
to have originated from God himself. The Torah,
like the Qu'ran, does not establish a democracy
as is the Canadian Confederation but a true theocracy,
a régime where God is the Power on the throne,
just like in Iran.
Jesus on the other hand does not believe that the civil
and criminal laws found in the Torah are of God
as He clearly states that some were from
Moses13 rather
than God, disobeys
others14 or makes
one impossible to carry through by His opinion in the
case.15
In response to Moses' divorce law as found in the
Torah, Jesus' statement that marriage is the
union between a man and a woman, which after all
was the only type of legal union that existed in His society,
was made to point out that it should not be dissolved
at the whim of the husband. He was challenging the legal
right of husbands to dispose of their wives as any other
part of their property. He insisted, with the help of the
Torah itself, on the egalitarian character of
marriage and the primacy of that alliance over all
others, points which are definitely respected in the
present legal definition of Civil
marriage16 and even
in its proposed form. Of course one can also conclude
that for Jesus marriage was a lifelong commitment on
both parts, something that is not respected in the
present legal definition of a Civil marriage and is
maintained in the proposed form.
III
We must not forget that in Jesus' time, and
for most of the history of humankind, the reason why
a man took a wife was to have children by her; the
reason why a woman took a husband was to be protected
by him and the children he would «give» her. The couple
needed children so that they could help provide for them
as long as they were part of their family and later
in their old age as their married children. Of course,
sex also gave them some relief and in many cases a sought
after and needed pleasure, but that pleasure in itself
did not provide them with any security or any help in
facing the hostile world in which they lived.
Couples were thus expecting help from their children
as they grew older: these were to work for them as
long as they were single and also help them after. This
help from their married children could be forthcoming
only if the couple had taught them to do so by the way
they had treated their own older parents. Those who gave
their own children the bad example in that they avoided
helping their own old parents after leaving home would
not get the help they needed and so could not expect to
live to a ripe old
age.17
As couples of the same sex would be childless, they
could not count on any help later on. So marriage between
them was out of the question.
Today's society is completely different from the one
just described. To live to be old does not require
bearing children. So children are not seen in the same
light as in Jesus' time. This is why married couples
do not have as many children as before. Children are
now financial liabilities as well as a source of joy.
They cannot be expected to work for the family from an
early age but are at their parents' expense until they
leave home.
Children are not necessary to a couple's survival
through old age: money put aside, pension funds,
social policies guarantee that. On the contrary,
children are an impediment to the future welfare
of their parents as they eat up monies that could
have been put away for their future. Of course,
children are needed to provide for the elderly, but
in our society the ones who can pay more are better
looked after than the poorer ones, the ones who gave
society the manpower required to maintain these services.
All this is to say that the need to have children does
not exist for couples. Children are nearly a luxury to
those with an income (though still a source of revenue
to those on welfare). Those with a job cannot afford too
many even when they are ready to sacrifice a lot for
them as their education and upbringing are expensive.
So people today do not get married to bear lots of
children but for companionship, love, support. Sex is
not basically for procreation. Sex is a way to show
love and to give much needed relief from the tension
of modern life, a life where both have to work to make
«ends meet», that is, live with roughly the standard of
living of the majority.
In this different social environment, marriage between
people who cannot procreate through their union is not
to their detriment: they simply either do not bring up
children, like quite a few of today's heterosexual
couples, Catholic or not, or they bring up children
born outside their union.
IV
The Roman Catholic Magisterium has yet to come to
terms with this social change. It would love to
reverse it, to go back to Jesus' society. It is
very much like trying to go back to a preindustrial
society: an impossibility except if a gigantic
catastrophy eliminated most of the world's economic
and social infrastructures (as well as most of its
population). Longing for the past does not bring
it back.
The Magisterium's insistence that children must be
brought forth as before regardless of their cost
refuses to take into account the cruel fact that
children are now liabilities rather than assets; it
also forgets that young children used to die in large
numbers, as their parents either could not afford to
feed them all or had no need for some of them which
would suffer «benign neglect». The Church also forgets
that children had no rights until quite recently, so
their survival really depended on their parents. This
too has changed.
Children rights, the obligation to send them to school,
the laws preventing young children from working for their
families are all working against the raison d'être
of large families. And, by the way, was the Magisterium
for these laws and rights when they were enacted? was
the Magisterium for the abolishment of slavery and slave
labour? Was the Magisterium on the side of democracy when
it was implemented? Or has it always been the champion
of past régimes?
V
That the Roman Catholic Church's Magisterium insists
on sticking to the past is a major disaster for the
whole Church, as this makes the hierarchy out of touch
with the world in which the rank and file are living,
at least in the West. When the hierarchy tries to stop
the State from adjusting its laws to conform them to its
citizens' vision of what a marriage is and what it is for,
what fairness is and how it must be applied, it shows
itself to all as a bully trying to interfere in a field
outside its jurisdiction. The Province of Québec as well
as Canada have taken great care to respect Catholic
marriages; the hierarchy owes them the same respect
towards its Civil marriage.
The State answers to its citizens, whose opinions are
shaped by the world in which they live rather than by
the diktats of Pope, rabbi or mullah.
Canada is not a theocracy: the Magisterium can always
try to force its will on Catholic voters, but I can
confidently predict that it will be to no avail.
Solemnity of Saint John the Baptist and Fête
Nationale du Québec, June 24 th, 2004
1 For example: «In addition, every minister
of religion authorized to solemnize marriage by the
religious society to which he belongs is competent to do
so, provided that he is resident in Québec, that he carries
on the whole or part of his ministry in Québec, that the
existence, rites and ceremonies of his confession are of
a permanent nature and that he is authorized by the
minister responsible for civil status.» Code Civil, Art. 366
Paragraph 2 (The emphasis is mine)
2 «Under the old Roman Law, at a time when the
matrimonial union was still defined as a «consortium
omnis vitae» (Modestin, I Dig. de rit. nupt. 23-2),
the wife could neither retain nor acquire during the
marriage any property of her own. In fact, she was so
entirely under the power of the husband that she became
a member of the latter's family and the sister of her
children. There was only one patrimony and it belonged
solely and exclusively to the husband.»
Address of Mr. L. E. Beaulieu, K.C., LL.D. President
of the Canadian Bar Association, from the Minutes of
proceedings of the 24th annual meeting of the Canadian
Bar Association held at Quebec, August 1939, Ottawa
1940, pp. 59-69. The complete text of this address
is found
here.
3 «But during the last period of the Roman
Republic, divorce became so frequent that marriage was
no longer considered a life association; so much that,
as was said by a moralist, women in those days no longer
computed the years, as it was customary in the good old time,
by the names of the consuls, but by the names of their
successive husbands. Under these conditions the old system
whereby the husband became the sole master of the wife's
property, as well as that of his own, could no longer subsist.
It was replaced by a régime of complete separation of property,
so complete indeed that, so far as their mutual interests
were concerned, the consorts were really aliens.»
L. E. Beaulieu, opus citatus
4 «This legislation was considered as
conflicting with the Christian ideas respecting the mutual
confidence and co-operation which should govern the
matrimonial relations, and gradually a new system - the
community of property - was organized in various parts
of the Kingdom of France, and more particularly in and
around the heart of the country, that is to say, the
City and Viscounty of Paris.» Opus citatus
5 «No minister of religion may be compelled
to solemnize a marriage to which there is any impediment
according to his religion and to the discipline of the
society to which he belongs.» Code Civil, Art 367
6 «Marriage is dissolved by the death of either
spouse or by divorce.» Code Civil, Art. 516
7 «The officiant may not solemnize the marriage
unless: ... (4) neither spouse is, in relation to the other,
an ascendant, a descendant, a brother or a sister.»
Code Civil, Art. 373 Paragraph 2
8 «Marriage may be contracted only between
a man and a woman expressing openly their free and enlightened
consent.» Code Civil, Art. 365 Paragraph 2
(The emphasis is mine)
9 «The officiant may not solemnize the marriage
unless: ... (3) the intended spouses are free from any
previous marriage bound;» Code Civil, Art. 373 Paragraph 2
10 «In the presence of witnesses, the officiant...»
Code Civil, Art. 374
11 «Before the solemnization of a marriage,
publication shall be effected...» Code Civil, Art. 368 ss
12 which means that the degrees of kinship,
for instance, will not change, contrary to what some religious
leaders have wrongly implied.
13 «He saith unto them, Moses because of the
hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives:
but from the beginning it was not so.» (Matthew 19:8)
14 Jesus does not fast like His religious
Jewish contemporaries (Mark 2:18-20) and plucks ears of corn
on the sabbath and calls Himself «Lord ... of the sabbath»
(Mark 2:23-28)
15 as in the case of the woman caught in
the very act of adultery (John 8:3-11)
16 «The spouses have the same rights and
obligations in marriage. They owe each other respect, fidelity,
succour and assistance. They are bound to live together.»
Code Civil, Art. 392 (Articles 393 to 400 go into more details
on this.)
17 This is why we read: «Honour thy father
and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;
that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well
with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.»
Deut 5:16 (The emphasis is mine)
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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 6th, 2004
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