Thou shalt not be married in thy bathing suit

“Pssst… hey, you want a wedding? For you, almost free.”

Cardinal Norberto Rivera has come out against “sacerdotes piratas” (pirate priests). And “chocolate weddings”.

Before you get the image in your head of some kinky ritual involving food fetishists presided over by a peg-legged cleric with a parrot on his shoulder, His Eminence was talking about beachfront and nightclub wedding done by priests working without the approval of their bishops.

SInce 1854, clerical activities in Mexico have been regulated. Between 1917 and 1992 the clergy could not vote, and could not be seen outside church grounds in clerical garb. While they can exit church grounds dressed any way they want, and they can — by prior arrangement with the local authorities — hold services off church grounds, they certainly cannot perform a legal wedding. Only a magistrate can do that.

While a lot of people do have church weddings, either for social or religious reasons, the church ritual is irrelevant to the state. It’s one of the reasons recent changes, like same gender marriages, had an easier time in Napoleonic Law countries — there was no confusion about the what a cleric can and can’t do (I aways found it amusing that in Texas, where I got myself — and my dog — ordained over the Internet, I could legally officiate at a wedding).

The Church can refuse to marry anyone they don’t want to marry (non-Catholics for starters, let alone gay couples or first cousins), but that’s their business. They also… according to Cardinal Rivera… have to follow the strictures of both Church Law.

The Church has a few things to say about WHERE you can get married. In a church for the most part. So… the Cardinal is firing a broadside over the bow of the clerical pirates (the free-lance priests) who’ve been doing beachfront and nightclub weddings. ¡No mas!, His Eminence says.

He may also be heading off a minor church-state conflict. With only judges able to perform marriages, the judges might resent some priest collecting their fees for sitting on the beach for some romantically-inclined tourists . You can still have the beachfront wedding, and even a religious wedding… just not at the same time, and in the same place.

Oh, by the way, importing your uncle the priest to do the wedding at that perfect romantic setting can get you — and him — in a heap of trouble. The state won’t recognize the marriage, the cardinal won’t recognize the marriage, but Immigration WILL recognize that you snuck in a foreign clergyman to do the work that Mexican priests CAN do.