"Couple mix Christian and pagan rituals" the teaser headline called out to me at the bottom of the page A1 of the November 2 edition of the Washington Post. Promising a look at a couple "celebrat[ing] the rites of marriage in a most unorthodox fashion," I turned to the Style section front page to read more.
But what followed in Ellen McCarthy's "For heathens' sake" only confirmed when it comes to religion, particularly orthodox Christianity, the media just don't get it.
McCarthy's feature made abundantly clear to any orthodox Christian reader than the cermony she witnessed was 100 percent pagan. The only tenuous claim to Christian influence in the ceremony presided over by a "black-robed high priest and priestess" was the use of the "Christian" ritual of the "unity candle" and the fact that the bride, raised Catholic, has not "formally dedicated herself to the [pagan] religion but now refers to herself as a Catholic witch."
To be fair to McCarthy, she was not making explicit claims about the compatibility of Christianity and paganism, but by failing to include a critical note from a Catholic priest, for example, the implication to the average reader would be that the newlywed couple in question have found a way to to reconcile their paganism with Catholicism. Of course no effort was taken to explore from the Christian perspective whether there can be such a commingling, or if the notion of being a "Catholic witch" is patently absurd.
What's more, by boiling down the Christian-ness of a wedding ceremony to ritual, McCarthy forsakes the conception in Christian thought as a picture of Christ and His Church and in Catholic sacramental theology as a sacrament itself.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (emphases mine)
1601 "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."
1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.
[...]
1621 In the Latin Rite the celebration of marriage between two Catholic faithful normally takes place during Holy Mass, because of the connection of all the sacraments with the Paschal mystery of Christ. In the Eucharist the memorial of the New Covenant is realized, the New Covenant in which Christ has united himself for ever to the Church, his beloved bride for whom he gave himself up. It is therefore fitting that the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives by uniting it to the offering of Christ for his Church made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and by receiving the Eucharist so that, communicating in the same Body and the same Blood of Christ, they may form but "one body" in Christ.
The bottom line: Christian thought on marriage is far deeper than rituals which can be ripped out of their context in non-ecclesiastical weddings.
As for the aforementioned Christian "unity candle," that itself is a relatively new "ritual" which is foreign to the Catholic Rite of Marriage, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explains in a paper on "An Analysis of Diocesan Marriage Preparation Policies" (emphasis mine):
Additional Symbolic Rituals
Unity Candle
Although lighting a “unity candle” is not part of the Rite of Marriage it has become very popular as an additional ritual. Most policies do not prohibit this custom but many suggest that it be done at the reception since the Rite of Marriage already has abundant symbols of unity. Cincinnati’s Celebrating Marriage booklet has a pastoral explanation for this. If the unity candle is used, the couple should light their individual candles from the paschal candle, the individual candles should not be extinguished, and the candle should not be placed on the altar. The Sioux City policy reinterprets the unity candle as the “Christ candle.” Liturgists continue to discuss the use and conflicting meanings of the unity candle.
As a storyteller relaying the tale of an "unorthodox" wedding ceremony held on Halloween, McCarthy succeeds. But religious readers have sufficient cause to complain that her story lacked any skepticism about the compatibility and/or interchangeable nature of the wildly different pictures of marriage afforded by paganism and Christianity.
