Definition of religious marriage
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Florencia Ucha, on Jun. 2012
The marriage is one of the institutions social oldest of humanity and that implies the legal union between a man and a woman on the basis of a series of rights and obligations that must be respected by the spouses.
Marriage that is celebrated under the gaze of the religious belief that the couple have after completing their civil union
It should be noted that in Western culture couples choose to marry civilly and religiously, that is, first they specify their civil union, which is the one contracted according to the law civil that corresponds and then, in case of being faithful believers of a religion they carry out a religious union that is known as religious marriage and that as such legitimizes the union in question in the eyes of the God in whom they fervently believe.
Signed by the respect of the dogmas and norms of the religious faith in question
The main characteristic that comes with this type of union is that in it The dogmas of the religion to which their contracting parties belong will prevail: Catholic, Jewish or Islamic.
For the catholic religion, marriage is a sacrament that will establish for life an intimate alliance between a man and a woman, that from the moment the who celebrate their union become a community whose primary purpose is the formation of a family from which the children that the couple procreate will be educated.
Purposes and requirements of Catholic marriage
Religious marriage for Catholics is based on three pillars, unity, reproduction and indissolubility.
The first requirement to carry out the religious union under the Catholic rite is that the bride and groom be single and have previously received the sacrament of baptism, having to prove this through a certificate.
Meanwhile, the couple who are going to take this step are required to complete a course special, called premarital, before fulfilling this sacrament, without this they will not be able to contract the link.
In this course, she guides them and also shows them how the relationship and life should be that they build from God's permission.
A union for life and indissoluble
As a consequence that who legitimizes the union of the contracting parties is God, the celebration of the same is carried out in the dwelling place of God, that is, in the Church and is administered by a representative of God, such is the case of the priest.
In the aforementioned ritual, the couple to join establishes a commitment of I respect mutual and towards the obligations that religion imposes on them.
It is important to mention that this union is indissoluble and only the death of one of the spouses can interrupt it and also that the The Catholic Church only admits the union between people of different sex, that is, it does not admit religious marriage between homosexuals, as it does allows civil marriage, which in recent years has accepted and opened the doors for homosexual couples to formalize their unions by this way.
Rites, uses and customs
On the other hand, the uses and traditions of the union force the observation of several issues, among which are: that the bride uses a white dress, symbolizing purity, the man uses a suit, the parents of both exercise the role of godparents / godmothers of the link and the couple exchange rings as seal of the Union.
Usually, the bride enters the church hand in hand with her father (her godfather) and goes all the way down the aisle to the altar where the groom is waiting for her with her mother (her godmother).
Before that exchange of rings, the priest who officiates the union mass will ask both the groom and the bride if accepts and with this acceptance undertakes to respect him and to fulfill his duty both in health and in the disease, that is, put in more colloquial words, if you are willing to do it through thick and thin, because as we know, marriages will happen throughout their union different moments, happy and others that will not be at all, but precisely there is for religion the value, that knows how to accompany and be with the other in the most difficult.
It should be noted that the Catholic Church opposes adultery, polygamy and divorce, and has also established its opposition to same-sex unions.
Topics in religious marriage