Weddings

Rev dear Rev: As wedding fever grips Paris, including even the normally shy and diffident and timorous Paris Hilton, what is the official position on weddings in the official corpus of the Church’s wedding rites, any signs of progress?

Official positions change a little with shavings of improved progressive doctrine being added to the public account, just as Jesus added the formula of his own to marriage doctrine of the OT, and as this was true in the time of Jesus so too then in the time of the canonist pope Alexander III. Since Alexander, there has been the insight that the solemnities and the exchange of vows are not sufficient to firm up the marriage bond and turn it into a metaphysical bond that endures for life in se, that something more is needed, for as long as life lasts in these mortal coils, stretching for a time even in theory into the next life in the teaching of St Paul and his pharisee friends, though this was changed and repudiated by the key bossman in the genre, Jesus namely, divine person and father of the world to come, as we say in the old Sacred Heart Litanies. But what does the official Jesus and church position say on weddings and their meaning? Canon 776 of the Eastern Codex, as distinct from canon 1055 of the Western Codex, invites us to contemplate the idea that the wedding bond, firmed up by laws as well as the intent of the Creator God, eiusque legibus instructum, is made and sealed on the wedding night of the solemnities, denoting the teaching of Alexander III and incorporating it, and that the couple achieve a metaphysical union and firmiter bond on that night, having exchanged consent and obtained a priestly blessing on the day in question beforehand. Nice. Such bonds are firmed up and concretised and cemented by the laws of the Churches according to that canon. Wedding as a communion of life and love over marriage bond as a procreation and education of children is the progress that has been made over the last 30 years. Takes time. Takes education. Schools - where are the tutors on marriage solemnities and the rights of young people to date and to engage and to marry, especially more so now since the civil government in London has decided to raise the age of weddings from 16 to 18, changing the old laws in place since 1885?