Selfishness beyond belief

As thick-skinned as I try to get, this stuff still gets to me.
All Catholics are like this, right?
BULLSHIT!

catholics are universal

The fact that any catholic is like this is what should get under your skin. The fact that for sections of the church this is policy, is what should get under your skin. Take your apologist crap and shove it up your ass.

My civil ceremony was preformed by a Catholic judge.

He was brilliant and fun.

Yes, they are an elitist bunch. (I'm a former Catholic)

but in defense . . . Marriage is one of their 7 Sacraments and so it should be done in their church, if they want to be called Catholic.

Wilso- You don't cite the quote. Is this an edict from the church, or what?

There are countries where you can choose between a civil service or a church wedding.
There are countries where only the civil service is accepted as a lawful marriage, which can be followed by a church blessing. The last one you can make as eleborate as you want to.
The Catholic Church just like the other Christian churches accept these civil services.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2511962.htm

Isn´t that more a question of the father than the Roman Catholic Church?
Are there not many reasons why parents don´t want to attend a child´s wedding - they don´t like the partner, his/her religion, his/her job or the partner is not good enough for your child.
I would even think that the father did not go to the wedding of reasons he has not told and he blames it on the civil service. Maybe if he had gone and kept a good relation ship with his daughter she might have liked to have a church blessing later on. I have seen people do that.
Maybe she did it for the sake of her future husband.

What has any of that got to do with a pack of selfish, self serving scum who think they've got the right to control and influence other people's lives on the basis of their pathetic superstitions? Are you one of these idiots who spends their Sunday mornings in a house of worship bobbing your head up and down like some demented parrot?

Wilso, sometimes I think your anger - which I can agree with on occasion - gets away from you.

I was raised a pious catholic, and worked my way out of it in my late teens and early twenties via theological argument and then sudden "I don't believe any of it, the whole thing is a construct". Some time later, I was on a trip to Mexico with friends and they wanted to visit the church of Guadalupe, and, as we were all a group, I went too. I cried there in anger, at a church with a history of many devout penitents moving on their knees..

I also, at age seventeen, the tip of my confused religious ardor, sent a snotty admonishing note to a friend from grade school who was getting married in the lutheran church. Not because my church told me to, but from my own conviction. I tried once, years later, to call her and straight out apologize, but it's hard to find women sometimes, with changing names. Anyway, I figure the tables are turned and that if she is still alive, she may be more religious that I am by far.

I see you as arrogant in your way, Wilso, as I was in mine with that snotty letter in, what, 1959. Most catholics don't proselytize. Indeed, I think the fifties were about the height of proselytization - and I know something about that, re my family, and the rosary crusade. Although there is a wing of the church now that is flinging itself backwards, given Ratzinger as pope, not all catholics around the world just get in line.

Your anger flumes, Wilso, and doesn't seem to be aware of any distinctions.
After my decades of anger, I'm back to seeing religion as complicated. We all know, or I hope we do, of instances of hate and murder in the name of religion - I might be able to list more than you could. But good, societal good, has also been borne of religion. I don't think of all that in a blanket way any more.

You of course can think as you wish, but you're off base on this last thing, generalizing from whatever instance you read about.

Given it's an Opus Dei priest, and the rest of the transcript speaks of a poor schmuck who was advised by priests not to go to his own daughter's wedding ceremony (!) because it was a civil service, and they haven't spoken since, it's actually a step forward, as far as I can see.

The Opus Dei priest's (I presume a representative of the far right of the catolic church) admittedly grudging, ungracious and rather nasty comments come in the context of his supporting catholics to go to civil ceremonies.

This appears to be a relaxation of rigidity.

So, I suppose, while I also react to the arrogance, it's a matter of whether you see the glass as half full or half empty.

I am choosing to see it as half full.

Being a secular Jew, I love to read about the antagonisms in other faiths, since Jews can be very emotional about impending marriages for one reason or another, religious or not.

I missed that -- Opus Dei is looney tunes, always has been, but does not represent catholicism as a whole and should be purported as that.

Well, except that the poor daddy schmuck who did not attend his daughter's wedding, appears to have been advised not to do so by "normal" priests?

No, I don´t spend Sunday mornings in church. I would at any given time prefer to be in a beautiful church taking part of a good lithurgy to spend my sunday with an impolite and aggresive person with lots of opinions and little knowledge about the subject.

64% of Australian weddings last year were conducted by civil celebrants. No wonder the catholics are going ape ****. They must be losing money hand over fist, which is what the church is mainly about anyway.

Does anyone know where and when the first recorded wedding occured -

The first recorded marriage was in Ancient Egypt. In the times of the Pharaohs. The marriage of Thutmose II and Hapshepsut abt 1491BCE they wed between the ages of 12 and 15.
The oldest I can find.
The OT has probably also something about marriage, but I am too lazy now to look for it.