succeeding Father Devlin was to institute new guidelines for marriage atSt. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church. In brief: No more cakewalks. To earn the privilege of entering into the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, engaged couples would meet three times with the pastor and register for a daylong engagement retreat, offered six times per year. Some balked. A few accused him of grandstanding. Others said: Who does he think he is?
He reminds them that his own sacrament, so similar in magnitude and permanence, required a college education and then a formal training of four years. What is a few meetings with the priest, what is a day of study and reflection in the face of a lifetime promise? If you begrudge yourselves this feeble requirement, then kindly find yourself another priest.
He says it more politely than that. But he’s not fooling around and they know it.
Hear, hear , say some. Dictator , say others. Vivienne says: I wish I’d done the engagement program. What a wonderful idea.
He uses an outline sent from the Chancery and redlines it like a movie director, adding a role-play here, a wish list there. List two goals for the next two years. Five goals for the next five. Ten for the next ten. Brides discover grooms who don’t want babies. Grooms discover brides who long to flee their hometown. They discuss these things in the cloistered privacy of the pastor’s office. Then, at the retreat, they undertake similar tasks in a friendly group, and listen to speakers brought in expressly for them: pediatric nurses, financial advisors, real-estate agents. Some couples decide not to marry after all, despite two hundred embossed invitations sitting in a box on an enraged mother’s dining-room table, a four-hundred-dollar deposit already cashed by the resort hotel, eight disgusted bridesmaids stuck with nonreturnable salmon-pink dresses.
They think he’s a stickler, or a killjoy; but really he’s a romantic, sending God’s lovers down the marital path with all due preparation, metaphorical rose petals floating in their wake.His custom is to have the engaged couple to dinner a few days before the wedding. His ostensible mission is to review the details of the ceremony, but really he wishes to have a happy couple at his table for the edification of Lizzy, who cannot remember her parents. See what happiness marriage brings? He serves lasagna and garlic bread and a single toast of champagne (Lizzy is allowed a taste, diluted with ginger ale) served in the crystal flutes that were his wedding gift to Bill and Elizabeth. Removing them from Elizabeth’s breakfront is Lizzy’s favorite task—she loves to turn the slim brass key in the old-fashioned keyhole—and he beams at her as she opens the glass doors.
“Mrs. Hanson says I shouldn’t drink champagne,” Lizzy informs him. Claire Gagnon and Will Cleary wait in the dining room, dressed for the occasion, Claire in a lightweight yellow dress, Will in a starched shirt and pants that are not jeans. With few exceptions (Sandra Leighton, who was forty-four years old with two kids and an annulment, arrived in a tube top and shorts) the couples he marries rise to this particular occasion, dinner with Father, feeling proud and (he believes) grateful to have prepared for their sacrament with such focus and alacrity. Some, like Sandra Leighton, are just humoring him. But that’s all right. He does his job, putting as much Holy into Matrimony as the couple can bear, and mostly the fruit of this labor ripens just in time.
“Tell Mrs. Hanson that I said it’s okay,” he says.
“I told her,” Lizzy says. “She did that thing with her mouth, you know the way she does.”
“I know the way she does,” he assures her, petting her head. She is seven years old, an intelligent child with hair the color of old pennies. A few drops of champagne to honor this couple’s joy before God won’t do her a bit of harm. She loves toasting— All joy, all love, all good wishes to you, in
He reminds them that his own sacrament, so similar in magnitude and permanence, required a college education and then a formal training of four years. What is a few meetings with the priest, what is a day of study and reflection in the face of a lifetime promise? If you begrudge yourselves this feeble requirement, then kindly find yourself another priest.
He says it more politely than that. But he’s not fooling around and they know it.
Hear, hear , say some. Dictator , say others. Vivienne says: I wish I’d done the engagement program. What a wonderful idea.
He uses an outline sent from the Chancery and redlines it like a movie director, adding a role-play here, a wish list there. List two goals for the next two years. Five goals for the next five. Ten for the next ten. Brides discover grooms who don’t want babies. Grooms discover brides who long to flee their hometown. They discuss these things in the cloistered privacy of the pastor’s office. Then, at the retreat, they undertake similar tasks in a friendly group, and listen to speakers brought in expressly for them: pediatric nurses, financial advisors, real-estate agents. Some couples decide not to marry after all, despite two hundred embossed invitations sitting in a box on an enraged mother’s dining-room table, a four-hundred-dollar deposit already cashed by the resort hotel, eight disgusted bridesmaids stuck with nonreturnable salmon-pink dresses.
They think he’s a stickler, or a killjoy; but really he’s a romantic, sending God’s lovers down the marital path with all due preparation, metaphorical rose petals floating in their wake.His custom is to have the engaged couple to dinner a few days before the wedding. His ostensible mission is to review the details of the ceremony, but really he wishes to have a happy couple at his table for the edification of Lizzy, who cannot remember her parents. See what happiness marriage brings? He serves lasagna and garlic bread and a single toast of champagne (Lizzy is allowed a taste, diluted with ginger ale) served in the crystal flutes that were his wedding gift to Bill and Elizabeth. Removing them from Elizabeth’s breakfront is Lizzy’s favorite task—she loves to turn the slim brass key in the old-fashioned keyhole—and he beams at her as she opens the glass doors.
“Mrs. Hanson says I shouldn’t drink champagne,” Lizzy informs him. Claire Gagnon and Will Cleary wait in the dining room, dressed for the occasion, Claire in a lightweight yellow dress, Will in a starched shirt and pants that are not jeans. With few exceptions (Sandra Leighton, who was forty-four years old with two kids and an annulment, arrived in a tube top and shorts) the couples he marries rise to this particular occasion, dinner with Father, feeling proud and (he believes) grateful to have prepared for their sacrament with such focus and alacrity. Some, like Sandra Leighton, are just humoring him. But that’s all right. He does his job, putting as much Holy into Matrimony as the couple can bear, and mostly the fruit of this labor ripens just in time.
“Tell Mrs. Hanson that I said it’s okay,” he says.
“I told her,” Lizzy says. “She did that thing with her mouth, you know the way she does.”
“I know the way she does,” he assures her, petting her head. She is seven years old, an intelligent child with hair the color of old pennies. A few drops of champagne to honor this couple’s joy before God won’t do her a bit of harm. She loves toasting— All joy, all love, all good wishes to you, in
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