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Decline in Marriage Vocations
Blogged by James Preece on 10th January 2009
Roman Catholic church marriages fall by 24pc since 2000
The number of marriages in Roman Catholic churches in Britain has fallen by a quarter since the start of the decade to just 9,950 last year.
This is a 24 per cent fall on the figure for 2000, when there were 13,029 Catholic marriages across England and Wales.
[link]
If this situation continues we will probably end up with a situation where multiple parishes actually have to share married couples. Parishes could find themselves grouped and married couples may need to attend two or even three Masses on a Sunday morning.
One way to avoid such a situation would be to import married couples from Poland but local clergy are concerned that such couples "tend to be too dogmatic about the church’s moral rightness on just about everything" which is not how we do things here. A special course has been arranged as Ushaw so that couples from Poland can learn how to make a cup of tea.
Others are suggesting that the Church take this as an opportunity to encourage "unmarried spousal ministry" including the provision of "extraordinary spouses" who would take on the role of married couples at Masses with insufficient married couples. More traditional Catholics have expressed concern that it has become commonplace to refer to "extraordinary spouses" simply as "spouses of holy marriage" which may confuse the role of extraordinary spouses with that of the husband and wife.
Meanwhile liberal Catholics have called for the Pope to review the rules surrounding Catholic marriage pointing out that if women could marry and if married couples were allowed to have sex then the married couples shortage would be solved overnight.
Reader Comments
Ben Trovato said...
'Unmarried spousal ministry' - love it!
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dv said...
This is a nice parody, although I'm not totally sure why ;)
In most of the parishes I've regularly attended, there's usually been either 2 or more priests in action, possibly a couple of perm. (oh, the images!) Deacons, or at least one exceptionally cool priest.
Given that marriage is the most "primordial" sacrament, it's sad that it's not seen as a pretty exciting idea. But then, it's just more evidence of the Church sunk in the morass of modern culture.
On the other hand, my current parish is actually full of burgeoning families and always puts on a decent after-Mass slap up feed. In my humble experience, the Church's glass is half-full.
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Cober Joe said...
At 88, I wonder what they mean with website ? Can one join in a blog ? Atheist finally admitted, publicly, they think there's no God; it means, they don't know. We should thank them for admitting it, and for putting this most important question to the people: is there a God ? Study & reason can lead us to know that God exists.
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