Catholic Marriages in America Are on a Steep Decline

While the bitter old queens men in dresses - i.e., the Roman Catholic hierarchy - in America are still throwing tons of money at efforts to bar same sex marriages (I continue to suspect the National Organization for Marriage is a front group for the Catholic Church) and remain fixated on controlling women's wombs, they apparently have been ignoring what ought to be perceived as a far larger problem: the number of church weddings among straight Catholics has been plummeting,  Like many other young people, young Catholics are simply not having church weddings.  Part of it is the fact that younger Catholics are leaving the Church in droves even if the Church keeps them listed as "members" absent a formal withdrawal such as I undertook when I formally notified the Diocese of Richmond to strike me from the membership rolls.  Another part of the phenomenon is that the always rule obsessed Church throws many obstacles in the way of those seeking a church wedding.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the precipitous drop in church weddings:

Many elements of the archetypical American wedding echo the formality and traditions of the country’s largest single religious tradition, Roman Catholicism. But Catholic weddings themselves are becoming rarer and rarer. 

 In 1970, there were roughly 426,000 Catholic weddings, accounting for 20 percent of all marriages in the United States that year. Beginning in 1970, however, Catholic marriages went into decades of steady decline, until the turn of the new century—when that decline started to become precipitous: Between 2000 and 2012, Church weddings dropped by 40 percent, according to new data from the Official Catholic Directory. 

According to Catholic doctrine, marriage is a sacrament, or holy rite of passage, that can only be received if both husband and wife are baptized in the Church. In many cases, bishops can grant a special dispensation for interfaith couples, which allows them to be married in a church by a priest. But for faithful Catholics who want their marriage to be fully recognized by the Church, the options are either marrying a good Catholic girl or boy, or convincing their partner to convert.

Between 2000 and 2012, adult baptisms declined by nearly 50 percent, which, Gray said, probably has something to do with the declining rates of marriage.

 So why are couples choosing to get married outside of the Church? . . . . "More people are choosing to get married in country clubs and at the beach," said Gray.

Meanwhile, fewer Americans are getting married generally.  But while that's a factor in declining Catholic marriage rates, the deeper cause is the changing relationship between people and traditional institutions, Gray says. "It's not just churches, but all kinds of institutions have experienced detachments from the 'brick and mortar,'" he said. By “brick and mortar,” Gray means in-person religious communities: people physically coming together in churches to worship together. In general, Americans are becoming less affiliated with traditional religious institutions, not just the Catholic Church

Still, Gray said, "I do think what we're seeing is different among Millennials. They are seeing their social networks across the Internet rather than across geography. So much of parish life takes place in brick and mortar, and for Millennials, so much of their social life is not in brick and mortar.” Among Millennials, defined here as 18- to 33-year-olds, religious disaffiliation is higher than it has been for any generation

it’s also possible that beach weddings are an early sign of a generational shift among religious Americans, with more and more people finding meaning beyond the walls and words of a church. 

Of my children and nieces and nephews, all of who were raised Catholic, five have married.  None have had a Catholic wedding and only one was married by a minister.  Equally telling, only one remains a sometimes church goer.  The others have more or less walked away from Catholicism - as have many of their friends.  The irony, if anything, they are more moral in their standards and treatment of others than the "godly Christians" and "good Catholics" who make a show of churchgoing and condemning "sinners" while otherwise acting in a manner that make the Biblical Pharisees seem upstanding.