English archbishop: Marriage a 'public good'

LONDON -- The spiritual leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has praised traditional marriage as a "public good."

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster said it was "vitally important" for the "whole of society" to support marriage at a time when more British couples than ever were choosing to live together outside of marriage and to have children out of wedlock.

He said the British had acknowledged the importance of marriage by rejoicing over the April 29 marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in London's Westminster Abbey.

The "mighty public cheer" that rang out after the couple exchanged vows showed an "instinctive and profound public understanding of the nature and consequences of marriage itself," said Archbishop Nichols, who was a guest at the royal wedding.

"Marriage, as a permanent, exclusive commitment between this man and this woman was welcomed, applauded," the archbishop said in a homily at a Mass for married couples in Westminster Cathedral.

"There was rejoicing in what the newlyweds had just done," he said. "Marriage, then, is a public good.

"Marriage is not simply something done in church by a few. Marriage is not a private arrangement," he said.

"Rather marriage expresses our deepest longings and expectations for ourselves, for our children and for our society," he continued.

"Marriage is of our nature. It is not created by the church, but blessed by her. Christian marriage is a sacrament," he added. "In celebrating marriage, in defending marriage, the church seeks to promote that which is good for us human beings, for our human nature and for our society."

The archbishop's words were directed primarily at a personally invited congregation of 543 married couples from his diocese who had a combined total of 18,048 years of marriage.

They gathered June 11 to celebrate the milestone 10th, 25th, 30th, 40th, 50th or 60th or more anniversaries, to renew their vows and to receive a solemn blessing.

But by releasing a transcript to the media June 10 it was clear that Archbishop Nichols intended his message to be heard by a national and not exclusively Catholic audience.

His comments came just months after official figures revealed that the marriage rate in the United Kingdom was at its lowest since 1895, with just 21.3 men marrying per 1,000 unmarried adult men and 19.9 women marrying per 1,000 unmarried women.

Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Wedding sermon

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Let us pray.

Father in heaven, brighten our hearts and minds by the Spirit of Jesus, so that His living words might abide in us, and we in Him, that we may bear much fruit.  Amen.

The analogy Jesus draws between the vine and branches on the one hand, and Himself and His disciples on the other, only works because the order of creation anticipates the contours of redemption.  The analogy works only because it is literally true that a vine is in the branches and the branches are in the vine.  And that principle applies to the whole creation.  We find the same curved and curling shape everywhere we look.  Everywhere, things circle back to enclose what encloses them.

We are in the air and the air is in us.  We are surrounded by plants and animals yet we live only if those plants and animals enter us.  Song comes out from lungs and lips, but then the song envelops the singer.  The lilac scents our environment, yet it enters us too.  There is a continuous exchange between inside and out across the porous boundary of our skin and through the doorways of our senses.  Tree in branch and branch in tree, man in woman and woman in man, everything woven in a web of mutual abiding, everything a home for every other thing, all entwined as one knotted world, one flesh.

In a word, the world is a marriage, and that is true because everything is created by and in the image of a God who is an eternal conjugal communion: The Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, the Spirit in the Son and the Son in the Spirit, Father, Son, and Spirit always already arrived at the consummation of their infinite love and life.  What we are doing today chimes and rhymes with the deepest structures of the universe.  This wedding, like every wedding, gives a glimpse of the sub-sub-atomic realities invisible to the microscope, a gaze into galaxies beyond the reach of every telescope.  Here God whispers mysteries in our ears; here He treats us as friends not slaves and shows us the deep things of the world, which are the deep things of God.