Voice Editorial...May Issue

On Friday the 29th April the country will celebrate the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey. The day promises to be one of royal pageant, cheering crowds, and the usual media frenzy. The Catholic Voice of Lancaster wishes the couple a very happy day and may God bless our future King and Queen with a long and fruitful marriage.

Having said this, our country has a split personality about marriage. On the one hand priests and deacons of the diocese will tell you that couples are spending absolute fortunes on their weddings, especially on the reception and honeymoon. It’s also common to see news reports about primary schools arranging ‘pretend’ weddings for children as a part of their education for life, even with a pretend ‘marriage’ service in Church and a reception afterwards! And the shelves of local supermarkets carry glossy, expensive magazines for brides planning the perfect wedding. These are all expressions of the inherent awareness among our fellow citizens of the importance and beauty of a bride and groom exchanging vows of love.

On the other hand the State, and media, are continually downplaying, and criticising the institution of marriage. Everyone knows that the social benefit system rewards single parents, and penalises couples living together, married or otherwise.

Earlier this year the Office for National Statistics announced that the marital status of pregnant women will no longer be recorded as a separate statistic in Government family records. Instead, the government statistics will record the number of women who became pregnant while in a “legal partnership”. The UK State
has become increasingly allergic to ‘marriage’ since the Labour government’s decision in 2003 to excise any reference to ‘marriage’ in official documents because of bizarre fears that reference to marriage was homophobic.

The Catholic Church remains the only unwavering champion of the sacrament and institution of marriage, with her rejection of divorce out of obedience to Jesus’ teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and her defence of God’s intention for marriage between a husband and wife as the only relationship that allows
the healthy, fully human expression of sexual love. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it:

‘The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage. The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator.’ (CCC, 1603).

The Catholic Voice of Lancaster encourages our readers to celebrate the Royal Wedding as not only an important event in the life of our country but as an opportunity to celebrate the truth that God, not man, is the author of marriage, and that the vocation to marriage is uniquely written into the nature of the relationship between men and women.