Sunday, January 23, 2011

AP: "Pope: Marriage is not an absolute right"

Ripped from Yahoo!, the article partly reads as follows:

«VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI told priests Saturday to do a better job counseling would-be spouses to ensure their marriages last and said no one has an absolute right to a wedding.

Benedict made the comments in his annual speech to the Roman Rota, the Vatican tribunal that decides marriage annulments. An annulment is the process by which the church effectively declares that a marriage never took place.

Benedict acknowledged that the problems that would allow for a marriage to be annulled cannot always be identified beforehand. But he said better pre-marriage counseling, which the Catholic Church requires of the faithful, could help avoid a "vicious circle" of invalid marriages.»

One could say a number a things about the title of the article itself, and Joseph Ratzinger overall is at least half-correct here.

3 comments:

D.B. said...

Did he say no absolute right to a wedding or a marriage or both?

Which half do you think he is correct in?

Kwame E. said...

Obviously, some marriages or weddings are not morally correct, on Matthew 19.9 to cite one proof text. So if the kind of remarriage mentioned in that passage is not justifiable, then one can imagine that there are other instances in which one should neither attempt a marriage/marrying nor aid and abet such a marriage.

How about people who elope after knowing someone for a very short time? It’s questionable that someone should officiate such a marriage or wedding. Or how about people that want to marry, but do not believe in the sanctity of marriage as it were: people who just see marital vows as meaningless? It’s questionable that someone should officiate such a marriage or wedding. How about homosexuals that seek to marry their significant others? No such marriage can exist any more than square circles can, but to officiate the attempt at such a thing is again morally suspect given the moral questions of homosexuality itself.

And yes, I think we’ve even seen Protestants now proffer the idea that some marriages in this world are simply “invalid.” So marriage again is something to be taken seriously and not something that people take for granted, morally speaking.

D.B. said...

It makes sense. It is too bad folks don't take marriage more seriously.