Warped Rules on Marriage

by Letters Editor · October 22, 2016

From Helen Granville, Kleinmond- I read in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper: “Church bans impotent groom”. It was reported that an Italian bishop told a paraplegic man he could not marry in church because he was impotent, despite his fiancee being aware of the condition.

A spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo said: “No bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of admitted impotence as it is a motive for annulment.” The couple had a civil ceremony.

An article in “The Living Faith Daily Catholic Devotions” by Mitch Finley states: “Christ frees us from the burden of any legalistic interpretation of faith and of Christian discipleship. Faith is a word that refers to a life lived in loving intimacy with the Lord, not a life lived according to rules and regulations as ends to themselves.”

I cannot believe that the Church still imposes this shocking law on its people. What of Christ’s love and humanity?

In 1990 I fell in love with a wonderful man who happened to be a quadriplegic and we decided to get married. We both had grown up children, were in our early 50s, and I was the only person who could fully support him financially. As his unmarried “friend” I had no legal right to call a doctor for him, to have him on my medical aid, to conduct any business on his behalf, to sign for his entry to a hospital. We were both Catholics, but the Church refused to marry us, giving the excuse that he must be assumed impotent.

We were married in a civil ceremony, and eight months later, due to the caring remonstrations of our local priest, received permission from higher authority to receive the sacrament of marriage from this priest. But there were qualifications! We could not be married in the church itself; the ceremony had to take place in a private home among a few friends; it must not be made public knowledge; and we had to live together only as brother and sister. Can you believe it!

Obviously the Church is unaware that paraplegics and even quadriplegics are not necessarily impotent at all. I have a very dear quadriplegic friend who fathered twins in a perfectly normal way. Much depends on the accident or disease that caused the paralysis.

How can a so-called loving Church inflict such humiliation on its members? Updated from 2008