Earlier this month, I had the privilege of helping to prepare several engaged couples for marriage. Spending two Saturdays with the young couples, I was reminded once again of the beauty of the sacrament of matrimony - a beauty which is often forgotten today.
Statistics show that the number of Catholic marriages has sharply declined in recent decades: According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 426,309 Catholic weddings were celebrated in the United States in 1970, but only 131,827 Catholic weddings were celebrated in 2020. That's a decline of almost 70%, even though the number of self-identified Catholics in the United States has increased from 54.1 million to 72.4 million over the same time period.
This is due in part to the fact that young people today are less likely to get married at all. Pope Francis expressed his concern about this several years ago at a Wednesday Audience:
This matter of young people not wanting to marry is one of the emerging concerns of today: why aren’t young people getting married? Why is it that they frequently prefer cohabitation and “limited responsibility”? Why is that many — even among the baptized — have little trust in marriage and in the family? If we want young people to be able to find the right road to follow, it is important to try to understand this. Why do they have no trust in the family?
As Pope Francis acknowledges, finances are part of the problem - It's more challenging for young people to be financially self-sufficient today than it was fifty years ago, and weddings themselves have become very expensive. Pope Francis goes on to suggest that young people today also have a fear of failure:
The family tops all the indices of wellbeing among young people; but, fearing mistakes, many do not want to even consider it; even being Christians, they do not consider the sacrament of matrimony, the single and unrepeatable sign of the covenant, which becomes a testimony of faith. Perhaps this very fear of failure is the greatest obstacle to receiving the Word of Christ, which promises his grace to the conjugal union and to the family.
Since I've graduated from the category of "young people," I'll leave it to those who are younger than I am to decide whether the Holy Father is correct in his diagnosis.
Part of the decline in Catholic weddings, however, is due to an increase in the number of Catholics who choose to get married outside of the Church in civil ceremonies. It could once be presumed that those who were Catholic would get married in a Catholic Church, but it is quite common today for baptized Catholics to get married outdoors, in country clubs, or in other venues, without the presence of a Catholic priest or deacon. Why does this matter? According to canon law, which is binding on all baptized Catholics:
Can. 1108 §1. Only those marriages are valid which are contracted before the local ordinary [e.g., the bishop], pastor, or a priest or deacon delegated by either of them, who assist, and before two witnesses...
In other words, a baptized Catholic cannot simply enter into a valid marriage without having a Catholic wedding. (Some rare exceptions to this principle are outlined in canon law.) This may look like an arbitrary rule, but it seems to me that it serves two functions: 1) It challenges Catholics to remain connected to Jesus and his Church, and 2) it emphasizes that a Catholic vision of the sacrament of matrimony is very different than the secular vision of marriage. If we believe that the Church has a God-given authority in our lives, rooted in Sacred Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ, then we can't simply ignore the marriage laws of the Church.
If you are a baptized Catholic and have been married outside of the Church, I encourage you to speak to your local priest about having a "convalidation," which is an exchange of vows before a Catholic priest or deacon in order to enter into a valid sacramental marriage. If you are planning to get married in the near future, I encourage you to talk to your pastor about getting married in the Catholic Church, rather than settling for a civil ceremony. As Pope Francis has said:
Dear brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to invite Jesus to your wedding feast, to invite Him to our home, that He may be with us and safeguard the family. And we mustn’t be afraid to also invite his Mother Mary! When Christians marry “in the Lord”, they are transformed into an effective sign of God’s love. Christians do not marry for themselves alone: they marry in the Lord for the good of the entire community, society as a whole.