Folia Canonica 8. (2005)
STUDIES - Grigorios D. Papathomas: An Open Ecclesial Communitarism: Dispar-Mixed Marriages and Adult Converions
160 GRIGORIOS D. PAPATHOMAS getting married in Church, and contracting any public or community engagement (civil marriage), and instead live together without getting married. * * * In conclusion, without asserting that this present paper is a thorough and in-depth study, much less that it is a research having exhausted all relevant historical sources, we would like to risk making the following conclusions and proposals: The mixed marriage, celebrated outside the Holy Liturgy, is the historical remnant of the dispar marriage. This shows the relation between mixed and dispar marriage, the former being the historical continuation of the latter in the modern age. Both types of marriages are historically related by the marriage ceremony of the Orthodox Church. Indeed, dispar marriage directly contributed to the creation of this ceremony which was celebrated at that time as it is now celebrated for mixed marriages. The Orthodox Church is invited today to restore the dispar marriage in order to cover the two categories of inter-religious and inter-confessional marriages (dispar and mixed respectively), as well as all corresponding heteroreligious and heterodox categories of marriages (Muslims, Jews and members of other religions on the one hand, and non Orthodox Christians on the other hand). In fact, the reason the existing ceremony of marriage of the Orthodox Church, which dates far back into the past, has been instituted is precisely to encompass all types of marriage. Besides, the revival of dispar marriage will contribute to the hannonious institutional coexistence of religions and to the peaceful cohabitation, freely and without pressures, of the members of different religions and churches in the pluralistic civic society of today and tomorrow. In view of all the above, when the Orthodox Church, which has sacramentally preserved the cosmogonic and eschatological perspective of marriage, does not recognise the marriage of other confessional Churches, regardless of hierology, it is inconsistent with perennial Church Theology and with the entire ecclesiastical practice prior to the Fall. The same applies in the case of marriages celebrated in various religious communities regardless of hierology. The same applies in the case of civil marriage, too. That is why the explicit condemnation of dispar marriages and implicit condemnation of mixed marriages in the name of a sacramental absolute, seldom reached by the Orthodox Christians themselves, seem completely inappropriate. These positions truly result from aberrant and absurd choices. Our proposal is based on the following experience. The patristic spirituality focuses on the fact that the Evangel should be present in all the decisions and all the risks of human existence, all the more so in this unique mysteric/sacramental event of marriage. God is ever-present in all the events of the world, though we
