OUTSIDE THE CHURCH
Davidson, James D.
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH Whom Catholics marry & where James D. Davidson Are more young Catholics marrying outside the church today, without seeking its approval? The answer seems to be yes. While...
...Historically, the pre-Vatican II church discouraged Catholics from marrying members of other faiths...
...terfaith marriage continues to rise...
...In a 1988 article in the Review of Religious Research, Alan McCutcheon used data from the highly regarded General Social Survey to show that the intermarriage rate for white Catholics, which was 18 percent among persons married prior to the 1930s, jumped to 33 percent in the 1930s and 1940s, increased to 36 percent in the 1950s and 1960s, and climbed to 43 percent in the 1970s...
...But despite the church's efforts to discourage interfaith marriages, even in the 1940s and 1950s such unions comprised about 27 percent of all church-sanctioned marriages...
...While sociological surveys indicate that interfaith marriages are increasing, data from The Official Catholic Directory report that intermarriages are declining...
...For cradle Catholics, the percentage of Catholic men married to a person of another faith rose from 22 percent in the pre-1930 birth cohort to 48 percent for men born in the 1950s...
...Nowadays, some three decades following the changes inaugurated by Vatican II, the Catholic church is more inclined to treat interfaith marriages with the same respect and even solemnity it grants marriages involving two Catholics...
...This situation, if true, would have enormous pastoral implications for persons working with young and marriage-age Catholics, and it would portend profound changes for the future of American Catholicism in general...
...Though the Catholic church continues to stress the advantages of parents having the same religion and raising the children in the Catholic faith, its approach to these matters involves greater respect for the wishes of the non-Catholic spouse...
...Table 1______________________ Interfaith Marriages as Percent of All Marriages __________Reported in 1995 National Survey__________ Post-Vatican II Generation 40 Vatican II Generation 32 Pre-Vatican II Generation 16 Commonweal I 41 September 10,1999...
...In a 1991 article in the American Sociological Review, Matthijs Kalmijn studied data from national surveys in 1955, 1965, and 1972-89 and found that the intermarriage rate among Catholics "increased dramatically between the 1920s and the 1980s...
...The church also is more lenient in granting permission for interfaith marriages to take place in other churches...
...Thus, separate and quite reliable national surveys point to the same conclusion: More and more Catholics are involved in interfaith marriages...
...While national surveys clearly establish that the intermarriage rate is rising, church data in The Official Catholic Directory (OCD) paint a very different picture (see figure 1...
...He is senior author of The Search for Common Ground, which received the 1998 Research Award from the National Conference of Catechetical Leadership...
...Sometimes a representative of the non-Catholic spouse's faith tradition may even participate in the ceremony as an official witness...
...In 1995, colleagues and I examined interfaith marriage rates in a national survey of American Catholics (including Hispanics, Asians, and African-Americans...
...When I ask parish and diocesan pastoral leaders what they make of this discrepancy, they reach the same conclusion I do: More and more interfaith marriages are indeed taking place outside the church...
...Furthermore, it strongly urged the spouse to convert to Catholicism, and it required that the children be raised Catholic...
...If a Catholic insisted on marrying a non-Catholic, the church countenanced a simple exchange of vows in the rectory or at a side chapel...
...Whereas only 16 percent of Catholics born before 1941 (the pre-Vatican II cohort) are—or, if widowed, separated, or divorced, were— in interfaith marriages, 32 percent of Catholics born between 1941 and 1960 (the Vatican II cohort) are/were in such marriages, and 40 percent of Catholics born between 1961 and 1977 (the post-Vatican II cohort) are/were intermarried...
...The same pattern held for women who were raised Catholic...
...Marriages between a Catholic and a baptized non-Catholic ("mixed marriages"), and those involving a Catholic and a nonbaptized person ("disparity of cult") are usually public ceremonies, celebrated in the church...
...As we reported in The Search for Common Ground (Our Sunday Visitor, 1997), today's intermarriage rate for Catholics is at least twice what it was in the pre-Vatican II era (see table 1...
...Finally, in a 1993 article in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, William Sander, using data from the 1987-91 General Social Survey, reported a similar increase...
...Not surprisingly, then, surveys show that the rate of inJames D. Davidson is professor of sociology at Purdue University...
Vol. 126 • September 1999 • No. 15
