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The Prince, the Princess, and the Priest
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CBCP Monitor – Lifeguard by Nicolo F. Bernardo
RED CARPETS down the aisle for a long entourage. Church bells pealing as Wagner’s Bridal Chorus plays. Around the church are familiar faces while romance fills the air with the scents and sights of flowers. Beside the altar stands the dreamed prince charming, waiting for the hand of his princess in white.
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Ask any girl and this is how she would picture a happy ending of her singlehood for a lifetime saga of a lovestruck marriage—the hype of the month of June. Watch any classic telenovela or Disney story to see how weddings have been idealized by women since young. Having three sisters myself, I know that the wedding day is hoped to be the biggest boon for a girl. After all, it is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime rite. It is the day a lady gives herself to her man she has been saving herself for long.
But for more than two million Filipinas, this is not the case. The National Statistics Office records 2.2 million (!) cohabitating couples without the benefit of marriage.
Reasons for “living-in” vary. One is “trial marriage.” The partners “shack up” first to see if they could make a good match. The irony here is that marriage means lifetime love commitment, so can one really live like married without the commitment? Marriage can also be shaky, but it is the very terms of trial marriage that prevents the partners from fully giving themselves lest they lose much from the wishy-washy “try-out.” Since the union’s status is provisional or experimental, what progresses is a conditional love.
Most marriage counselors would advise a long engagement for a couple to know each other better, than complicating the relationship the way marriage goes minus the marital security. Facts and figures support this advice, not just tradition. If living-in really helps marriage, then why are there more divorces anywhere in the world as there are more living-ins? In cohabitation, it is the woman who may lose much in the end, dedicating her body to a guy as if she’s his wife, but without his assurances. She might bear kids “unwantedly” and off goes the guy. He can’t give a man’s word. She wants to be single and “free.” (Philosopher Hannah Arendt called it “lonely freedom.”)
For some live-in couples though—the cohabiting but marriageable couple— the situation is different. Many Filipinos cohabitate with an understanding that they married themselves to each other and only need to “formally” tie the knot. They personally pledged to God and to each other to keep the promise of wedlock. We may ask: why don’t these couples just marry off? The priest is free to give God’s blessing—in a
mass wedding perhaps?
Their reasons are not that simple and Jacob’s Well, a Couples for Christ ministry for irregular unions, reaches out to help these couples prepare for their ideal nuptials. The ministry was named after Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman around a well, who had had seven husbands.
From what I have known, some live-in couples are hindered by their own family’s, in-laws’, or culture’s expectations or settlements for a wedding and a marriage. The guy must sport a car and a house, a higher learning degree, a high-paying job, etc. before marrying. The wedding and the reception must please all the witnesses for better or for worse that a couple is pressured to pour their lifesavings for the wedding. If the couple is rich, the guests are even richer. Nakakasakal na kasal dahil sa kasalo.
The partners want the marital relationship but fears the responsibilities, which could get overwhelming given today’s material insecurities that increase and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. But as John Paul II in Love and Responsibility said, only one who can give tough love can demand it. The greater the love, the greater the responsibility. Here, marriage and family education, more than sex education, are needed through all stages of youth so the young could grow “maritally capacitated” (an antidote to rising annulments due to marital incapacity).
A mass wedding maybe offered to the partners. But as it goes, many think this could be mechanical—to be just “one of the crowd” for a collective registration like in a Moonie or lovapalooza spectacle. Many couples would wish their wedding to be a high moment for them alone. It is something that perhaps every guy thinks his “princess” deserves, spare the grand ball.
Yet a poor couple today could not afford the price of a decent, solo church wedding: about P10,000, plus the reception expenses. Many cohabitations and civil weddings arise not due to a disregard for church marriage, but for failure to keep up with an ideal church
marriage. Canonically speaking, it’s the sacrament that matters not the trappings. But can’t a church community look for better ways to accommodate these couples who only want their wedding to be as special, memorable, and eventful as possible?
So there goes another dream of many poor Filipinas. A priest in the altar who could afford to canonize a lifetime love affair in the most economical yet exceptional way he could. All generations of their children would know the tale of this priest, who like Jesus in the Wedding at Cana, would do a miracle for a union made in heaven.
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