A CofE Canon who I liked very much summarised it this way. “Churches solemnise, Registrars legalise but essentially people marry one another”.
Interestingly, people often use the term "marry" of the clergy"s role, and say the couple wed one another. Marriage occurs in nearly all cultures and I think all Christian faith traditions accepts that people who say they are married, or are legally married, are accepted as marriage.
Never having been part of a sacramental tradition I don't know if sacramental marriages (that didn't exist for the first millenium of Christianity) are viewed differently from non-sacramental marriages by sacramental traditions.
I understand that, in Australia, very few marriages occur in churches or are officiated by clergy. A result of the refusal to marry divorced people which prompted the provision of non-religious celebrants.
A cancer recurrence caused some relatives to marry. They had steadfastly rejected the idea for about 15 years, mostly because of expectations from certain relatives for a big “ do”, plus reservations about individual rights and freedoms. They had a simple Register Office ceremony with just two witnesses- for the protection of wife and child if husband were to die soon.
There is a delightful passage in "The Puppet Masters" by Heinlein in which a couple want to marry. As I remember, it,the clerk explains that if they want the term of the marriage to be six months or less, they don't want him; they want the vending machine down the hall. They state that they want a lifelong marriage. The clerk thinks the important question is who pays whom and how much. The woman tells him this is not a financial contract, and the clerk doesn't understand why they even want to get married. She agrees with him.
I think LC's original post on this thread was almost all that was needed.
Why? There are plenty of people who don't live in the situations she describes, and she specified "low-income refugees." The level of dependence of women and children on men depicted in that post makes my skin crawl.
I think for guys there's a terrible responsibility in patriarchy. We're expected to be completely financially independent and capable of supporting an entire family, possibly extended in the long run, on our own income. In an economy where you have to be damned lucky get one of those kinds of jobs before you're 30, committing to something like that takes a crazy kind of courage. I'd expect responsible men to be very cautious about any kind of commitment if we know ourselves well at that age.
A man who rushes into making that kind of promise in their early 20s is a fool, or comes from a family that he knows can subsidize his mistakes for a long time.
In the mid-20th-century US for white guys, this wasn't nuts. My parents got married in 1958 at 22, both of them just out of college, and for four years my mother earned enough to support both of them and pay for medical school for my dad; they never needed help from their parents, and my father's parents wouldn't have been able to offer any. When he graduated, with no student loan debt, my mother was pregnant with her first child (me, planned), and she never held a paying job again. I was able to retire at 60 on my portion of their estate after Mom died.
This set of circumstances only held for a relatively short period of time, and only for some men, but I think it became an ideal that's hard to let go of. It harkens back to the 19th-century notion of the "angel in the house" and the separate spheres men and women supposedly occupied, and ignores the reality that throughout history most women have worked one way or another to support their families.
Yes! And seeing some of the pushback, which I think is justified enough that I wasn't sure I wanted to re-enter, but...yeah.
I think for guys, there's a psychology that you're supposed to meet a bar that in reality very few people actually meet. And a lot of us get this social signal in our teens to twenties that we're second or third rate if we don't. And this, I think, explains a lot of messed up behavior from men around that age. Why commit when you can't see yourself as something worth committing too?
I think for some folks monasticism can seem appealing, but admittedly that life is a vocation that's a lot more than a deal where you trade in your sexuality for a lifetime of financial security within the confines of the religious life.
Geez, feels like I'm doing a case study on a lot of extremely screwed up men these days, and describing a lot of cancerous beliefs that I've pretty thoroughly excised from myself.
But yeah, this mythology, which a lot of us project onto "the 1950s" is something a lot of guys still feel is their entitlement, and they really don't want to adapt.
Tying it back to marriage, that's what they think marriage is supposed to mean. And it really screws them up when (as most do) they feel like they fail at it.
Trouble is that even in the 1950s, only very fortunate people ever pulled that off. And you'd have to even more fortunate to achieve it now.
If this is marriage, it's a very costly, inefficient, inflexible, and often downright abusive system in practice, and it has failed many people. And the problem is a lot of people are taught that they're the failures for trying to force themselves to accommodate a failed system.
Funny typing all that as a happily married progressive white guy with a lucrative house spouse. But it does make a certain sense to me.
I think LC's original post on this thread was almost all that was needed.
Why? There are plenty of people who don't live in the situations she describes, and she specified "low-income refugees." The level of dependence of women and children on men depicted in that post makes my skin crawl.
Being part of a couple often involves one partner sacrificing something for the collective good. There's the two-body problem, for example. One of you gets an offer of a good job somewhere else. Do you choose to move, and accept that the other partner might be underemployed? Do you choose for each partner to optimize their personal career trajectories, and give up living in the same place? Do you choose not to accept the offer because of the disruption it would cause your partner?
Are you going to have kids? How will you organize caring responsibility for the kids. Not just who looks after them day-to-day (which might be one of you, or might be daycare), but who is the primary person who leaves work or drops their other stuff when a kid is sick, or the school has a snow day, or whatever. Is it always the same person, do you take turns, or do you negotiate each time it happens?
Do you accept a job that will involve a lot of traveling away from home? If you have kids, you can't both do that, because somebody has to be home for the kids.
There are a lot of different cases where one partner is giving something up for the collective good. Often, both partners are giving things up for the collective good.
Seems to me that monasticism not only provides financial security, but social security (in the sense of meeting of one's socializing needs). In cenobitic monasticism you basically are thrown in with a lot (allotment) of ready friends.
Seems to me that monasticism not only provides financial security, but social security (in the sense of meeting of one's socializing needs). In cenobitic monasticism you basically are thrown in with a lot (allotment) of ready friends.
Providing you get on with them of course. They can be places where the exercise of charity and forgiveness is really important.
Cenobitic (or coenobitic) monasticism is a monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West the community belongs to a religious order, and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a religious rule, a collection of precepts. The older style of monasticism, to live as a hermit, is called eremitic.
Seems to me that monasticism not only provides financial security, but social security (in the sense of meeting of one's socializing needs). In cenobitic monasticism you basically are thrown in with a lot (allotment) of ready friends.
There are times in my life when it would've seemed like a pretty good deal. I mean, sex is great and all, but have you considered room and board for life in return for reasonable work and a life of devotion to prayer?
Maybe I'm cynical, but I wonder if this is why a lot of monks got a reputation for debasement over the centuries. If you're not ambitious, it does meet certain baselines. Might even serve a social role, per the old tradition that the second son becomes a priest.
I wonder if people are underestimationg the negative aspects of communal living, particularly in closed communities. Monasteries and convents are not always the havens of undisturbed tranquillity some seem to imagine. Minor irritations between members can quickly grow into major problems. And quirks of personality can become disruptive to the life of the community.
I wonder if people are underestimationg the negative aspects of communal living, particularly in closed communities. Monasteries and convents are not always the havens of undisturbed tranquillity some seem to imagine. Minor irritations between members can quickly grow into major problems. And quirks of personality can become disruptive to the life of the community.
Just for the record, @Gwai and I lived in an intentional community for a period of close to two years, and let it be clear that I am very directly aware of this, even among people I generally regard as friends.
I think people who think monasticism is a cozy alternative to adult life are grievously mistaken. If I were paid for such, I might consider a research paper on whether this was one cause for "corruption" in medieval monasteries. Sussing out a genuine vocation can be a tricky thing when the idea of regular room and board is very appealing.
I wonder if people are underestimationg the negative aspects of communal living, particularly in closed communities. Monasteries and convents are not always the havens of undisturbed tranquillity some seem to imagine. Minor irritations between members can quickly grow into major problems. And quirks of personality can become disruptive to the life of the community.
Just for the record, @Gwai and I lived in an intentional community for a period of close to two years, and let it be clear that I am very directly aware of this, even among people I generally regard as friends.
And left because of disagreements on the above in fact.
I wonder if people are underestimationg the negative aspects of communal living, particularly in closed communities. Monasteries and convents are not always the havens of undisturbed tranquillity some seem to imagine. Minor irritations between members can quickly grow into major problems. And quirks of personality can become disruptive to the life of the community.
I've repeatedly read and heard that one of the issues many people have is that they expect the dynamics within the monastery to stay relatively static, and that's not usually the case when people actually start devoting themselves to the monastic life.
I wonder if people are underestimationg the negative aspects of communal living, particularly in closed communities. Monasteries and convents are not always the havens of undisturbed tranquillity some seem to imagine. Minor irritations between members can quickly grow into major problems. And quirks of personality can become disruptive to the life of the community.
I've repeatedly read and heard that one of the issues many people have is that they expect the dynamics within the monastery to stay relatively static, and that's not usually the case when people actually start devoting themselves to the monastic life.
Seems like they're yearning for timelessness. That's really interesting.
I've been playing Sekiro and...the symbolism with how they set up the [fictional] Senpou monks is really poignant.
I wonder if people are underestimationg the negative aspects of communal living, particularly in closed communities. Monasteries and convents are not always the havens of undisturbed tranquillity some seem to imagine. Minor irritations between members can quickly grow into major problems. And quirks of personality can become disruptive to the life of the community.
I've repeatedly read and heard that one of the issues many people have is that they expect the dynamics within the monastery to stay relatively static, and that's not usually the case when people actually start devoting themselves to the monastic life.
Seems like they're yearning for timelessness. That's really interesting.
For the most part what was described seemed more like 'stability' or rather a stable background (because people rarely dwell on their own propensity to change), but equally I could see the appeal of some kind of timelessness in cases where one's previous life was marked by event/rupture.
Comments
Interestingly, people often use the term "marry" of the clergy"s role, and say the couple wed one another. Marriage occurs in nearly all cultures and I think all Christian faith traditions accepts that people who say they are married, or are legally married, are accepted as marriage.
Never having been part of a sacramental tradition I don't know if sacramental marriages (that didn't exist for the first millenium of Christianity) are viewed differently from non-sacramental marriages by sacramental traditions.
I understand that, in Australia, very few marriages occur in churches or are officiated by clergy. A result of the refusal to marry divorced people which prompted the provision of non-religious celebrants.
I have also had to sit with a bereaved “wife” whose partner’s sudden death with no will had rendered her own future extremely problematic.
Mr F and I got by on 'habit and repute' for about 20 years until that point where a partner's most attractive feature is their pension plan.
It certainly is an institution (as it has been called) that extends beyond religions where "sacrament" is meaningful.
Why? There are plenty of people who don't live in the situations she describes, and she specified "low-income refugees." The level of dependence of women and children on men depicted in that post makes my skin crawl.
Yes! And seeing some of the pushback, which I think is justified enough that I wasn't sure I wanted to re-enter, but...yeah.
I think for guys, there's a psychology that you're supposed to meet a bar that in reality very few people actually meet. And a lot of us get this social signal in our teens to twenties that we're second or third rate if we don't. And this, I think, explains a lot of messed up behavior from men around that age. Why commit when you can't see yourself as something worth committing too?
I think for some folks monasticism can seem appealing, but admittedly that life is a vocation that's a lot more than a deal where you trade in your sexuality for a lifetime of financial security within the confines of the religious life.
Geez, feels like I'm doing a case study on a lot of extremely screwed up men these days, and describing a lot of cancerous beliefs that I've pretty thoroughly excised from myself.
But yeah, this mythology, which a lot of us project onto "the 1950s" is something a lot of guys still feel is their entitlement, and they really don't want to adapt.
Tying it back to marriage, that's what they think marriage is supposed to mean. And it really screws them up when (as most do) they feel like they fail at it.
Trouble is that even in the 1950s, only very fortunate people ever pulled that off. And you'd have to even more fortunate to achieve it now.
If this is marriage, it's a very costly, inefficient, inflexible, and often downright abusive system in practice, and it has failed many people. And the problem is a lot of people are taught that they're the failures for trying to force themselves to accommodate a failed system.
Funny typing all that as a happily married progressive white guy with a lucrative house spouse. But it does make a certain sense to me.
Being part of a couple often involves one partner sacrificing something for the collective good. There's the two-body problem, for example. One of you gets an offer of a good job somewhere else. Do you choose to move, and accept that the other partner might be underemployed? Do you choose for each partner to optimize their personal career trajectories, and give up living in the same place? Do you choose not to accept the offer because of the disruption it would cause your partner?
Are you going to have kids? How will you organize caring responsibility for the kids. Not just who looks after them day-to-day (which might be one of you, or might be daycare), but who is the primary person who leaves work or drops their other stuff when a kid is sick, or the school has a snow day, or whatever. Is it always the same person, do you take turns, or do you negotiate each time it happens?
Do you accept a job that will involve a lot of traveling away from home? If you have kids, you can't both do that, because somebody has to be home for the kids.
There are a lot of different cases where one partner is giving something up for the collective good. Often, both partners are giving things up for the collective good.
I really appreciate you pithily you put that.
Seems to me that monasticism not only provides financial security, but social security (in the sense of meeting of one's socializing needs). In cenobitic monasticism you basically are thrown in with a lot (allotment) of ready friends.
Providing you get on with them of course. They can be places where the exercise of charity and forgiveness is really important.
Cenobitic (or coenobitic) monasticism is a monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West the community belongs to a religious order, and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a religious rule, a collection of precepts. The older style of monasticism, to live as a hermit, is called eremitic.
There are times in my life when it would've seemed like a pretty good deal. I mean, sex is great and all, but have you considered room and board for life in return for reasonable work and a life of devotion to prayer?
Maybe I'm cynical, but I wonder if this is why a lot of monks got a reputation for debasement over the centuries. If you're not ambitious, it does meet certain baselines. Might even serve a social role, per the old tradition that the second son becomes a priest.
Just for the record, @Gwai and I lived in an intentional community for a period of close to two years, and let it be clear that I am very directly aware of this, even among people I generally regard as friends.
I think people who think monasticism is a cozy alternative to adult life are grievously mistaken. If I were paid for such, I might consider a research paper on whether this was one cause for "corruption" in medieval monasteries. Sussing out a genuine vocation can be a tricky thing when the idea of regular room and board is very appealing.
And left because of disagreements on the above in fact.
I've repeatedly read and heard that one of the issues many people have is that they expect the dynamics within the monastery to stay relatively static, and that's not usually the case when people actually start devoting themselves to the monastic life.
Seems like they're yearning for timelessness. That's really interesting.
I've been playing Sekiro and...the symbolism with how they set up the [fictional] Senpou monks is really poignant.
For the most part what was described seemed more like 'stability' or rather a stable background (because people rarely dwell on their own propensity to change), but equally I could see the appeal of some kind of timelessness in cases where one's previous life was marked by event/rupture.