Vatican City - Nobody has the automatic right to be married in a Catholic church, Pope Benedict XVI said on Saturday, taking aim also at the culture of quicky divorces.
“A serious consideration of the matter could avoid (merely) emotional impulses or superficial reasons which can drive young people to take on a responsibility which they don't know how to honour,” he warned, as he hosted members of the Vatican's marital affairs court at the start of the judicial year.
The Pope stressed his wish to break “the vicious circle between quasi-automatic admission to marriage, without adequate preparation and serious examination... and equally easy judicial declarations” which end marriages just because there's some problem between the couple.
“The right to contract a marriage presupposes that one has the intention to properly celebrate it, through its essential truth and church teaching,” the pope added.
A church wedding is not something to be carried out by priests as a mere formality without regard to the “real nature of the union,” he added.
“Marriage and family are institutions which must be promoted and defended” to avoid damaging “human cohabitation”. - Sapa-AFP