{UAH} When Weddings Lost Actual Meaning:

A Priest, a Feminist, and 18 Hijacked Weddings

In a recent article titled "18 Brides in a Year", feminist Jia Tolentino recounts her experience attending eighteen weddings in just twelve months. Describing the weddings as "junk patriarchal traditions," she asks "why can't we burn [weddings] down and build for ourselves something better?" But has Jia experienced the genuine essence of weddings or just their cultured distortion? Today on the blog, Fr. Michael Cummins writes a personal letter to Jia sympathizing with her concerns but challenging her to seek out the true thing.


Dear Jia Tolentino,

I have a confession to make. I also am becoming less and less enamored of weddings and I do not like what society is making of them.

I hate that weddings have become "big business". I hate to see couples (or their families) have to spend exorbitant amounts of money on what they have been sold as the "perfect wedding." I also must admit that I take (probably sinful) pleasure in doing my best throughout the marriage preparation process to remind the couple that the wedding business is in fact a business and that they have every right not to buy what they are being sold but I realize that the pressure that they face is intense.

I hate that weddings have become trivialized to the point of seemingly not really standing for much anymore. Whether it's the media hype surrounding some type of celebrity getting married for the third or fourth time, whether it's the wedding ceremony being reduced to a platform to push a social agenda, whether it's a couple coming to a church for a wedding not necessarily because it is what they believe but because the church is pretty or it is important to grandma that it be a church wedding – each scenario is a trivialization and a missing of the mark on what the Christian wedding ceremony and marriage is truly about.

I agree that historically the Christian wedding has been hijacked for various and sundry purposes ranging from patriarchal scenarios to political alliances to keeping up appearances but I do not believe that today's hijackers are any more kind or gentle, they are just different - new players, same story. The wedding continues to be hijacked in favor of lesser and often ignoble purposes.

My choice of wording may not be as direct and colorful as yours but I also share some of your misgivings but I think it important to distinguish the faux or hijacked wedding from the real deal. This hope that despite sometimes seemingly overwhelming superficial trappings and concerns there remains underneath a fundamental core virtue alive and at work in the wedding union is what keeps me trudging up to the altar to do my part and when this virtue is seen and lived it is truly beautiful to behold. I think this is the beauty you make mention of in sharing about the last wedding you attended in 2013 – a wedding not hijacked but simple, authentic and truthful. That which is good and true often amazes us in its beauty.

Despite our culture's insistence to the contrary; honest, authentic and freely entered into commitment does not inhibit freedom rather it fulfills freedom. We love to say that we are free. Well, what have we done with our freedom? Really, be honest, what have we done? Freedom is not an end. Rather, it is a means to an end. What are we to do with the freedom we have received? If our life is to go somewhere, if it is not to become overgrown and caved in on itself, then its energies must be given some direction and some focus beyond self. Commitment (often a public commitment) provides this direction and focus. Is it easy? No. No true commitment ever is. If it were easy it would not mean anything. Commitment takes true work and it takes self-denial – two virtues often in short supply. Not everyone lives up to the commitments they make. Sadly, this is true but that is not the fault of commitment rather it is human weakness at play.

To play off of a famous quote by G.K. Chesterton: "it is not that Christian marriage has been tried and found wanting rather it is that it has been found difficult and not tried. But when it is tried, lived and authentic - it is a beauty to behold!"

Jia, I share and echo some of your misgivings but I would caution and counsel you not to confuse the faux wedding/marriage for the real deal. This is what I have to do and it is what keeps me returning to the altar to do my part - sometimes with joy and peace for the couple, sometimes with a prayer in my heart.


Fr. Michael Cummins is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Knoxville, TN. He serves as Vocation Director for the diocese and Chaplain to the Catholic Center at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN. Fr. Michael is a member of the Community of Sant'Egidio.

 

Paul Mugerwa