A number of people charge the Marriage Pledge authored by Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz with “clericalism,” claiming that it seeks to keep the hands of pastors clean from signing dirty marriage docs while urging laymen to make their perilous way to City Hall. This is probably the silliest of many silly charges that have been made.
The pledge finds no problem in Christians—be they clergy or laity—entering into civil marriages. Its quarrel is narrowly with the simultaneous enactment of that civil contract with the sacrament of marriage. By separating the two, the pledge seeks as much to clarify and protect the witness of the laity as it does that of the clergy. Perhaps more so, given that the people married are the actual ministers of the sacrament.
Separating what is done at the altar from what happens at the courthouse is equally clarifying for the witness of both clergy and laity. Indeed, Ephraim Radner, one of the authors of the pledge, is a clergyman married to a clergywoman. It has been particularly amusing to see him accused of having a problem with clergy getting near civil marriage.
By my lights, the pledge is an idea well worth debating though by no means a necessary move. Which is fine. Why should there not be multiple responses to the legal redefinition of marriage? Here, as often, we are in the realm of prudence and of legitimate debate (the most compelling arguments against, I think, are ones that say the move should not be made until it is necessary).
By contrast, to claim that the pledge somehow reflects “clericalism” or that it reflects genetic flaws in Catholicism or Protestantism (I have seen both claims made) seems a way of batting away the real question and avoiding hard reckoning with where religious believers are being pushed—and how they might push back. I wonder if those saying that the Marriage Pledge is a “retreat” know much about George Weigel, Charles J. Chaput, and others who have urged this idea’s consideration.
