GET CLERGY OUT OF "MARRIAGE BUSINESS": Cody Lowe

Maybe clergy should just get out of the marriage business.

Sounds shocking to you? Well, listen to this:

"Many members of the clergy say they would much rather do a funeral than a marriage."

The reason, said Episcopal priest Deborah Hentz Hunley, is that weddings "tend not to be about the faith issues that are so critical for Christian marriage.

"People want to come in and have a big party," she said, often with hardly a thought about the religious implications of the ceremony. Clergy, on the other hand, "try to focus on spirituality, what we know will get them [the couple] through the marriage."

But many people aren't listening, apparently, based on divorce rates that are as high among churchgoers as in the general population.

So, Hunley -- and many others -- hope that the current debate over gay marriages can be expanded to "looking at Christian marriage and what we think it means."

For her, that includes the possibility of separating the governmental recognition of a marriage -- deciding who is eligible for the legal benefits and obligations that entails -- from the religious blessing of the union. ...

Everyone would then have a civil union -- whose rules the state could decide outside of religious considerations.

Then, couples who wanted a religious ceremony to solemnize that union could find a willing priest/minister/rabbi/imam/shaman or whoever to bless them.

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posted by Eve at 7:28 PM VOTE

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