On Marriage

With NY passing a marriage equality law, and various bishops and cardinals speaking against it, I thought I’d do a piece on the Catholic idea of the sacrament of marriage and then give a few examples of married popes.

For those who don’t know, a sacrament is how you get holy. Okay okay it’s basically a rite of the Church, said to be instituted by Christ, where the recipient receives special grace. There are seven sacraments and a good Catholic should receive at least 5, preferably 6, and in some special circumstances 7. Receiving them all only happens when someone is married and then becomes a widow or widower and takes Holy Orders, vowing to be a priest/brother or nun, respectively. I’ve also heard that sometimes a nun and a priest meet, fall in love, and leave their orders and get married (actually I’ve only heard of this happening once, but hey it did happen).

A person cannot be married and receive holy orders, or vice versa, at the same time. Occasionally a married priest from the Anglican Church can convert and if he’s married bring his wife, but a Catholic priest cannot marry and a married man cannot be a priest. A deacon may have a wife, although there’s no instance where a religious woman can have a husband.

As I mentioned earlier, marriage in the Catholic Church is considered a sacrament, or a holy rite where grace is bestowed on the man and woman getting married. Catholics also believe that God not only instituted marriage, but is also part of the marriage partnership because God created Adam and Eve out of love and designed them to love each other; marriage is the expression of that love (Stanford, 118-9)*. Marriage has a large place in the Catholic tradition as well: The covenant between God and the people of Israel in the Hebrew Scriptures is described as a nuptial bond; in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ first miracle is at the wedding feast at Cana, the famous turning water into wine (John 2:1-11); and nuns are described as the brides of Christ (commentary on this point at a later date). According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, marriage is preferred to remaining single. It is the antidote to 'self-absorption, egoism, pursuit of one's own pleasure, and [an opportunity] to open oneself to the other, to mutual aid and to self-giving.'** Also, it’s the proper context for sex and raising children (hence the belief that sex outside of marriage or for any other purpose than procreating is a sin).

Not all Catholics agree with the definition of marriage in the Catechism. In his introduction, Peter Stanford says, "...approaches to sex and sexuality have become more nuanced and accepting of the reality of people's lives. Marriage remains an ideal, for instance, but is no longer seen simply as the correct forum for sexual activity but also as a covenant of life and love between two heterosexual adults" (13)*. The point he’s trying to make, I believe, is that marriage is no longer viewed as a way to fix people’s sexual transgressions, making the act of sex less sinful because it’s with one person and children are produced. There’s an old idea that the Catholic Church wants people to get married and have lots of babies to repopulate the world with more Catholics (hence why contraception is banned). Stanford thinks that view is outdated and indeed more recent writings talk of marriage in positive terms – as a union that involves love, companionship, etc. Today there is more of a hope than a requirement that if a Catholic person marries a non-Catholic, he/she will promise to have the children raised and baptized as Catholic (Stanford, 118-9)*. The part that stuck out for me in his quote was his use of the term heterosexual. He does not just say two adults or a man and a woman, but two heterosexual adults. Could he make his point more clear?

Given the Church’s views on homosexuality (the acts of which are akin to homicide, oppressing widows and orphans, and basically enslaving people), it makes theological sense that marriage as a sacrament in the Catholic Church is only between a man and a woman. It does not make sense to me though why church leaders are mixing something holy and very Catholic with the secular. The Catechism states, “Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes” (1603)**. I’m glad the Church hasn’t gone on a campaign to call what most people say is marriage (the affording of legal and civil rights to couples) something else because it would be a big waste of time. Given that it isn’t going t change the term, however, I don’t see the Church’s need to go against a specific use of the phrase, as it is doing now during the marriage equality debates. The Church prides itself on being separate from the secular world, even to the point where only Catholics, and only those in good moral standing, can participate in the sacraments. So why take this idea of holy matrimony and try to apply it to the secular world?

In 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said that state recognition of homosexual relationships was “the legislation of evil" (72)*. Recently some NY bishops have expressed their concerns because of the state passing marriage equality. I wonder if they were also concerned when other, less holy forms of marriage came into existence: people getting drunk in Vegas and needing two witnesses to be married, or marriage in the civil court without a priest or other religious leader present. And since the Church believes marriage is a holy union between two consenting adults, where is all the indignation about the thousands of young girls around the world who are forced into child marriages?

Doing a history of marriage would take way too long, but I want to point out that besides marriage being considered a sacrament, certain families, even popes, have used marriage to gain political means. In fact, this usage is still prominent today. So when someone says that marriage is a holy union between a man and a woman and tries to apply it not just to Catholics but to everyone, he is forgetting about all the places in the world where women are traded (sold?) with dowries, oftentimes when they are very young and possibly against their wills. If the bride- and husband-to-be’s desires are even considered. Granted, at this point in time, to get married in a Catholic church both parties have to be consenting, which I guess is a small consolation.

In The Borgias (my go-to inspiration) Alexander VI weds his children for political reasons. He sets up his daughter with a much older, ugly, and mean man to ensure that another family is on his side. He even tells his son to kill someone to collect ransom to make sure he has enough money for his daughter’s dowry. When the husband’s family does not do what the pope wants, however, Alexander orchestrates it so he can annul the marriage. In the coming seasons, I expect to see Lucrezia married off to someone else. Similarly, Alexander arranges a marriage for his youngest son, who is 12 or some really way too young age. The wife Alexander picks, a duchess of some unheard of Italian town, aptly says that it is her fate to marry whomever she is told.

While Showtime may have taken some creative license, the historical Borgia pope, like many others, used Catholic sacramental marriage to his own ends. In Saints and Sinners, Eamon Duffy says, “As pope, [Alexander VI] systematically used his children’s dynastic marriages to form alliances with a succession of princes” (189) x. Although Alexander himself was not married, a few other popes were.

You might be wondering how it came to be that some popes were married. Aren’t Catholic priests supposed to be celibate? Well, now they are, but that might not have always been the case.

The Roman Catholic Church traces its papal roots back to St. Peter, the “rock” Christ’s church is founded on. He is considered the First Pope. He also had a wife and family that he refused to give up when leading the early church. Peter, like Jesus, was Jewish, and in that time and place it was rare for a Jewish man not to marry and have children. Why, then, would bishops and church leaders after Peter not do the same?

Peter’s not the only example. In the early church, celibacy was a practice for monks, brothers, hermits etc., not necessarily a requirement of the priesthood. In the Middle Ages, the asceticism of monastic life was adopted as a norm. This change was due in part to another sacrament: Reconciliation.

Before there were private confessions, reconciliation and absolution were public. A bishop would absolve a large crowd at once; each person there was expected to be sorry for his or her sins. When private confessions because popular, there wasn't at first a uniform code of sins and their levels of wickedness. For brothers in monastic life, however, there was. During the 11^th century, a confession manual from a monastery came into the hands of some priests doing private confessions. Among actions considered sinful were masturbation and other sexual deviations from celibacy. For monks who had promised abstinence, these sins made sense. For other people who made no such vows, they might have been a bit confused when something that was for a thousand years thought to be acceptable was suddenly a grave offense to God. The monastic manual proved a convenient way to systematize confession for both priests and lay people Â.

According to Bob Curan, priestly celibacy was proposed in 11th century by Pope Gregory VII as a way to ensure that Church property would not be lost due to inheritance (23)+. Before and since then, there have been about 39 popes who were married or had been married at one time. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Married popes+:
-Pope Hormisdas (514-523), a widower when he was elected Pontiff, was the father of one of his successors, Pope Silverius (536-537).

-Silverius is sometimes believed to have been married. He resided in the Lateran Palace with a woman named Antonia, but we do not know if she was his wife. Either way, it didn’t seem to have affected his canonization… apparently Saints can have mistresses too.
-Gregory the Great (590-604) is rumored to be the great-grandson of Felix III (II?) (483-492).

-Clement IV (1265-1268) was married, although perhaps his wife died before he was in office.

-Boniface IX (1389-1404) is rumored to have married while in office. He was pope during the Great Western Schism and apparently he annulled all doctrine relating to celibacy in order to marry his mistress. He was also an autocrat, so no one really questioned him.

-Felix V (1439-1449), now known as an antipope after being deposed by Nicholas V, had a wife when he was elected. He’s the last of the antipopes and the last known married pope.

The longest papal marriage saga I encountered was that of Adrian II (867-872), who was offered the papacy twice before accepting it a third time. He brought his wife and daughter to the Lateran Palace where special rooms were made for them. Adrian's political enemies, especially the Duke of Spoleto, used his marital status as fire to feed their criticisms.

The Duke used another man, Anastasius, to try to bring Adrian down. In 855, Pope Leo IV died and a group within the Church elected Anastasius, then Vatican Librarian, to the papacy. Many believed this election was incorrect, however, so Anastasius was deposed and Benedict III put in his place. Anastasius was still allowed to be the librarian and continued as one through Nicholas I (858-867). He still wanted to be pope though so when Adrian was elected, with the help of the Duke, Anastasius talked up how bad it was that Adrian was a married pope.

While the Spoleto army attacked Rome, Anastasius’ brother managed to capture Adrian’s wife and daughter. The two women were tortured and eventually killed. Adrian enlisted the help of King Louis II of France, and together they found the kidnappers. The Roman people were also on Adrian’s side, helping him to defeat the rebels.

Anastasius was fired, excommunicated, and banished. In an intelligent move, a year later Adrian brought Anastasius back and reinstated him in a different position.

A Couple Famous Adulterous Popes+:

-John XII (955-964) is rumored to have had a fatal stroke while in bed with a married woman. We’ll be discussing John later as he is the infamous Promiscuous Pope (Curan, 77).

-Alexander VI (1942-1503), the Roderigo Borgia, lived openly with Giulia Farnese, a young woman, after he became pope when he was in his sixties. Throughout his life he fathered at least nine children, from at least three different women, one of whom was married to someone else (Duffy, 189).

~

*Stanford, Peter. "Teach Yourself Catholicism." U.S.: The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc., 2008.

**Catechism of the Catholic Church. http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c3a7.htm.

I am generally loath to use the Catechism as a proper source, considering Catholics are not required to believe its contents. Cardinal Ratzinger (remember him? He’s the current pope) wrote the one that is most often quoted. He was known for his conservativism, and his work is such an ordered outline that it is easy to teach, which is why it is so often taught in schools. Contrary to popular belief, it is not required to believe everything in the Catechism to consider yourself Catholic and many of the theological insights in the work are outdated and have never been updated. Despite these reasons, I quote from the Catechism because so many people have used it as a basis for teaching Catholic doctrine and it has become a large part of Catholic tradition due to its widespread appealÂ.

xDuffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

 Source: my memory. If you don’t believe what I have stated here, you are free to look it up yourselves. If I am wrong, please don’t hesitate to correct me.

+Curan, Bob. Unholy Popes. United States: Fall River Press, 2006.