Turning people away

...But more to the point: a dissident Russian Orthodox priest told of a woman who asked him to baptize her infant son...

...What I understand now about the Eucharist is not at all what I understood when I was seven years old...

...I know of a priest who married a couple because they asked him to, as a man whose friendship and Christian belief mattered to them...

...But the church is not always free of responsibility for the distance some people feel from Catholic practice...

...In any case, the church ought to feel some responsibility and some sense of mission towards the people who, for whatever reason, live at the edges of the church...

...It seems reasonable to ask for a commitment to Catholic practice before admitting people to Catholic sacraments...

...To demand too much clarity of people, too sure a purchase on their motives, may be as wrong in its way as demanding too little is...

...Some of our rules and regulations show us to be more fastidious than Jesus was...

...We usually are...

...But beneath the most obvious changes (the ones in liturgy, for example, or the welcome disappearance of the index of forbidden books) there are more profound changes, and they are beginning to have an important pastoral effect...

...After fourteen years I know a good deal more, but not as much, I am sure, as my grandfather, who is in his nineties and who has known many more years of marriage, fatherhood, and grandfatherhood than I have...

...The same goes for baptism...

...This form of Christianity is dying off and shouldn't be lamented...

...I don't want him to be empty, like me," she answered...

...Their desire should not be dealt with too simply...

...JOHN GARVEY...

...We could be hurting people who feel that they are, however tenuously, part of the church, connected with us in a way which is not entirely voluntary on their part...

...They were not sure of their own belief, but they drew strength from his belief, a belief they may or may not come to share...

...but they feel that this relationship-however odd, complicated, or thin-is one they should honor at an important moment in their lives...

...There has been a trend, recently, towards a stricter administration of the sacraments of baptism and matrimony...

...Never mind how you stood before God if your wedding was not blessed by the church...

...Are we that sure of our own relationship to the mystery of the church...

...Deeper and more binding feelings might also be involved, and even though they may not be articulated easily they should not be dismissed...

...To want a Catholic wedding because your family is Catholic and expects a Catholic wedding may not be the best reason for getting married in the church, but it does show a feeling for the larger community which is part of what marriage, and Catholicism, are about...

...It should not necessarily be put down to a belief in baptism's protective magic, or a desire to do no more than live up to a merely social obligation, although it could be either of those things...

...THERE HAVE BEEN a lot of changes in the Catholic church since the end of the Second Vatican Council-I'm sure I am not the first person to bring you this news-and some have been quite dramatic...

...The sacraments, we have been told repeatedly, are not magic...

...In respecting the desire-however obscure, or obscurely expressed-to fill up the emptiness, to bring the light of meaning to a world drained of meaning's possibility, the church fulfills its most profoundly important contemporary vocation...

...This reflects an important shift in the church's conception of itself, a shift away from a mentality which prevailed from the Edict of Milan onward...

...I understand the theology behind this trend, and sympathize with it...

...think of how it would look to the neighbors...

...JOHN GARVEYtion...

...The priest is not sure that he should have married them, but he feels that it would have been a terrible thing to turn them down...

...But I hope there is a good deal of flexibility here...

...This was the age of the equation between Christianity and respectability...

...What Jesus's words and actions meant became clear only after the fact...

...I don't like the idea of turning down the parent who is not a practicing Catholic but wants a child baptized, or the couple who want a church wedding because it is what their family wants, even though they themselves are not practicing Catholics...

...The sacraments became rites of passage in the larger society as well as sacramen-tally important acts for those whose Christian belief was central to their lives...

...So what bothers me...

...We cannot assume that it never does, in any case, and it seems wrong to sever the last thin connection those people have to Catholicism...

...During the period when Christendom and Christianity were considered more or less the same thing, the church was expected to touch the lives of everyone in some way...

...Most of the disciples plainly did not know what was going on at the Last Supper...

...To be Christian today is more clearly a matter of choice, and the stricter scrutiny of people's motives for church weddings and baptisms reflects a changed situation...

...That's not nothing...

...It is quite common now for parents to be told that unless they are themselves practicing Catholics they cannot have their child baptized...

...It is certain that they weren't nudging one another to point out that this was the first Eucharist...

...The same indefinite connection may be there in parents who feel the need to have a baby baptized, even though they are not practicing Catholics...

...It is certainly a proper pastoral consideration to see that weddings are not routinely reduced to sentimental social occasions, but are understood instead as permanent sacramental commitments...

...The same is true of marriage: unless the couple (or at least the Catholic partner) is churchgoing, the marriage won't be blessed in church...

...In addition, many dioceses demand attendance at marriage-preparation programs which are much lengthier and more intensive than the old pre-Cana conferences were, and unless the couple is willing to participate they can be denied a Catholic wedding...

...The same growth in knowledge may go on in the lives of those whose relationship to the church is marginal...

...Parents who want their children baptized but who are not willing to live as Catholics are told that it is not right to make a decision for a child if you are not willing to live with the consequence of that decision yourself...

...And I have problems with it...

...I am afraid that in moving from a period during which the church embraced too much, in the effort to be inclusive and to be all things to all men, we may now be embracing too little...

...She was not a believer, so the priest asked why she wanted to have her son baptized...

...when I was married I had very little insight into what marriage was about...

...I want to make it clear that I do sympathize with the reasons for the new strictness, and sacraments should not be allowed to degenerate into merely social occasions...

...The same applied to christening...

...I am not entirely comfortable with the point I want to make...

...This is true of our own sacramental lives...