The “meaning of marriage” problem, again

Last updated on: July 8, 2015 at 6:46 pm by Jane the Actuary

The “meaning of marriage” problem, again 2015-07-08T18:46:56-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Still thinking about marriage, especially in light of some of the comments in my earlier post about divorce and annulments. So bear with me if this repeats some ideas from prior posts as I try to assemble things once again.

On the one hand, you’ve got the sacramental marriage: a permanent bond, open to children*, and sexually exclusive. (* Which implies both a willingness to accept any children that might come along, and the ability, based on the sexual complementarity of the male/female pairing if not the fertility of the specific individuals.)

On the other hand, you’ve got the legal structure of marriage: a next-of-kin status with certain financial ties.

Two very different conceptions of marriage, though of course, sacramental marriage includes next-of-kin-ness, and the majority of married couples in the United States experience their marriage as something in-between: most notably, they may not view their bond as permanent but as, at any rate, a rather serious commitment, and very few, in 2015 at any rate, believe that your spouse is the person you come home to after sexual exploration elsewhere.

And that’s the core of the trouble.

If, back at the time that the Massachusetts Supreme Court announced its decision that marriage (or at least the “benefits of marriage”, per Wikipedia) must be provided to all takers on equal terms, the Massachusetts legislature had simply decided not to be in the business of recognizing a legal status of “marriage” at all, but had declared that, henceforth, the legal name of that next-of-kin and financial connectedness status shall be, say, a “kin-union”?

Oh, it’d be a mess, for sure, when it comes to the pair’s legal status when they cross state lines. And it wouldn’t really solve the issue, for instance, of whether you can compel a baker to make a cake for Adam and Steve when they celebrate their secular kin-union or their Episcopalian marriage. But it would make it clear that a “marriage” is something deeper than a mere kin-union, and yet something that varies by religion or subculture, in the same way as confirmation does.

And — staying with the bigger issue of marriage, divorce, and re-marriage (per yesterday’s post):

With respect to society in general, is it at all possible to move the needle on the number of people willing to commit to a “sacramental” marriage (regardless of whether they’d speak in those terms)? Or, if not, should we encourage kin-union type marriage (that is, not a different legal status — that doesn’t exist — but a way of accepting entering into a marriage before the kids are born, if not before they’re conceived), as better than no marriage at all?

And with respect to those wishing to be married in the Catholic church, does the individual parish have the responsibility to assess whether a couple is truly making a sacramental vow? Or would this do more harm than good, if it chases couples away entirely? And if a couple is well-intentioned, but enters marriage with reservations about a lifetime commitment, can they grow into sacramentality?

When it comes down to it, though, I’d really like to come up with some label other than the clumsy “sacramental marriage” to at least allow us to talk about these two types of pairings.

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