Marriage is tough, and working through rough patches can be difficult – if not impossible – to do.
In remarks on Thursday, Pope Francis gave his own insight as to why marriage is so hard for couples today – and even suggested that “the great majority” of Catholic marriages may be null, Catholic News Agency reports.
“We live in a culture of the provisional,” the pope said. “It’s provisional, and because of this, the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null … [Couples] say, ‘Yes, for the rest of my life!’ (When they get married) but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.”
In order to illustrate this “culture of the provisional,” the pope recounted a conversation he had with a bishop. “He met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said ‘I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years,’” the pope said.
As African Ripples Magazine noted, marriage in Catholic teaching is considered a sacrament – “a permanent union of persons capable of knowing and loving each other and God,” according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website. For a Catholic marriage to be considered valid, both spouses must freely consent – an idea that involves their “intention to marry for life.”
A Catholic court can issue a “declaration of nullity” when a marriage is determined not to have met at least one of the church’s validity requirements.
Francis on Thursday said that many couples “don’t know what the sacrament is” and have an incomplete conception of “the beauty of the sacrament.”
“They don’t know that it’s indissoluble, they don’t know that it’s for your entire life,” he said. “It’s hard.”
