Text 12979, 30 rader
Skriven 2007-03-08 07:30:32 av John W. Kennedy (16422.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 12974 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (16417.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: My Presidential Pick for 2006
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On Mar 7, 10:19 pm, Andrew Swallow <
> It is even more complex than that.  It took over a thousand years
> for the Roman Catholic Church to make marriage an official ceremony.

Well, not exactly. It was only at the Council of Trent that it became /
required/ by canon law for a priest to be present, because,
theologically, the bride and groom are the ministers of the sacrament
of matrimony, the priest being there only to give the blessing that
any serious Christian would wish at the taking of so great a step in
life. However, although the requirement for a priest is a purely legal
one, and modern (a precaution against fraud), Christian marriages
before a priest go back as far as such things can be traced. None of
this is really very different from non-Christian practice.

The entrance of the state into the matter has two chief causes. First,
it is in the interest of the state that it be quite unambiguous who is
married to whom, and who is not married at all, because of issues of
child care and inheritance. Second, once it was admitted that the
Church of England would always have rivals, the question arose: how
were persons not of the Church of England to marry? The mechanism that
evolved borrowed somewhat from the mechanisms already in place to
allow Church of England weddings without calling of the banns, or in a
church other than the official parish church of one of the parties. In
other parts of the world, other factors arose, such as anticlericalism
in republican France.

One additional factor entered in the early 20th century -- public
health concerns.
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