A Medieval wedding.
Boris Johnson and his longtime girlfriend, Carrie Symonds (now Johnson) married.
So what, you may ask. Indeed, dulled by the long 2019-2021 parade of bad news of one kind or another, that was my initial reaction, even though there's an obvious Christian point to this story from the onset, as by marrying, they're no longer shacking up, if you will, even though they certainly haven't been shacking up in quarters that could be compared to a shack.
Frankly, as an Apostolic Christian, I'd normally have probably made a comment at some point about their living arrangements as its clearly contradictory to the tenants of the Christian faith, and even in Europe this would have been poorly regarded in almost any society up until, well right now. Now, it pretty much produces a yawn, as do the majority of other serious religious tenants shared by all of the Abrahamic religions on a variety of matters related to sex. I.e., this conduct is regarded as seriously sinful by all the Christian religions, Judaism and Islam. In the modern world, it seems, Christians, including some serious ones but also a lot of nominal ones, have decided that most of what the Apostles wrote down was elective in nature and that people pretty much get a vote on what is and what isn't sinful.
More on that here later.
That's not what sparked the news, as soon became apparent. What did, is that Johnson and Symonds married in a Catholic cathedral in a Catholic ceremony. For people who like to be shocked, amazed, or scandalized, this was shocking, amazing, and scandalous. And the press all over the English speaking world reacted with a giant "WHAT? How could this be?" For example, the New York Time ran this headline:
Why Could Boris Johnson Marry in a Catholic Church?
The Guardian, a British newspaper that has made inroads into this US, ran this bizarre historically dim headline:
Boris Johnson’s outdone Henry VIII in having his third marriage blessed by the Catholic church
Apparently the writers at this British paper are historical dimwits.
The Irish Times, less dim on the topic, ran this one, which was actually interesting and informative.
Boris Johnson baptised Catholic and cannot defect from Church, says canon law
And the Times headline gets to the crux of the matter.
That didn't keep, however, an Irish priest from stating that the wedding made a "mockery" of the Church's laws.
Which it does not.
I don't know much about Johnson personally, Or indeed, hardly at all. And among the things I didn't know is that his mother was Catholic and he was baptized by a Catholic priest. His mother raised him as a Catholic as a child, but when he was in Eaton, he was confirmed (rather late, if we look at North American anyhow) by an Episcopal Bishop.
And that makes him an Episcopalian, right?
Well, that depends.
Carrying the story forward, in the 1980s he married Allegra Mostyn-Owen. The couple divorced in 1993 after six years of marriage. She's currently married to a man 22 years her junior who is a Muslim, which has lead Johnson to put Mostyn-Owen on a Muslim relations task force. Reportedly, she's given her husband permission to have more than one wife as she is unlikely to be able to bear children and of course polygamy is a feature of Islam, although that would not be legal anywhere in Europe, in so far as I know. [1].
His second wife was Mariana Wheeler, a childhood friend of Johnson's. They married twelve days after his first divorce and she was pregnant at the time. Their marriage lasted seven years.
So, eeh gads, surely this is contrary to Catholic teaching, right? I.e., his current marriage to Symonds, age 33 (Johnson is 56), just can't happen, right?
To read the press, you'd think so. I've read everything, however, from this can't happen as Catholics don't allow divorce to this could only happen as Catholics don't recognize the marriages of other faiths.
That doesn't grasp the interesting religious angle, however, of this at all.
In reality, all of the Apostolic faiths, as well as some of the Christian faiths that are close to the Apostolic faiths and regard themselves as Apostolic, take Christs' injunction against divorce seriously, although they don't all approach it exactly the same way. Interestingly, and completely missed in all of this, the Church of England doesn't recognize divorce. The mother church of the Anglican Communion, that is, regards it as invalid, just as Catholicism does, which isn't surprising as High Church Anglicans regard themselves as a type of Catholic, even if the Catholic Church completely rejects that assertion as "completely null and utterly void".
We'll get to more of that in a minute, but perhaps the most peculiar of the approaches to divorce is the Orthodox one. The Orthodox allow more than one marriage under a vague application of a mercy principal that tolerates, in some cases, up to three marriages. It's tempting to compare this to the Catholic concept of annulment, and indeed it is somewhat comparable, but lacking in the formality. The basic approach, however, is that the Orthodox only recognize one valid marriage, but accept that human nature is frail and people goof up, so it applies some leeway essentially as it generally feels that the problem of sex in human nature makes it difficult not to. I'm not Orthodox, so I could be off on this by quite some margin.
The Catholic Church doesn't recognize divorce at all. It does apply the principal of annulments where it judges that one of the original marrying parties lacked something to make that marriage valid. I don't' know what percentage of people who go through the annulment process obtain one, but frankly it seems rather shockingly high, which as been a long criticism of it, and a valid one in my view. Outside of that, however, Catholics hold that once you are married, its until death. No exceptions, save for the one noted, which would hold that the first marriage wasn't valid, and therefore wasn't really a marriage.
So how on Earth could Johnson and Symonds marry in a Catholic cathedral?
Well that leads to messy press analysis.
The Irish Times, not surprisingly, had it best.
Contrary to what some of the press elsewhere would have it, the Catholic church fully recognizes the marriages of non Catholics, and for that matter, non Christians. If two Muslims marry, the Catholic Church regards them as married. Married and can't divorce is how the Catholic Church would regard it, irrespective of how Muslims may view it.
And also contrary to what some of the press is claiming, the Church also recognizes the marriages of people who are two different faith, or no faith at all. Go down to the Courthouse and have the judge marry you, in other words, and you are married.
So what's the deal here?
That's where you get into Canon Law.
Originally the overwhelming majority of Christians, all of whom were Catholic, married outside of a Church ceremony. Indeed, it was extremely informal. People just decided they were to marry, and they were. No wedding ceremony at all.
That first began to change with monarchs, as their marriages were also effectively treaties between nations, and they wanted it to be really clear and official in every respect possible. But also, during the Middle Ages, things began to change with regular people as the need for marriage witnesses arose. This was principally because one member of the couple would claim they were never married, usually the man, leaving he other, usually the woman, in a very bad position.
Indeed, even with very early Christian monarchs you can see this at work. Some early Saxon and English kings, for example, had queens who were subject to this. Hardecanute is a famous one who married with King of England, but who had a Scandinavian queen before and during that period. What was she? Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon king of England, had a Saxon queen who was "married in the old style" and a Welsh queen to whom he was more formally married. When he died at Hastings, it was apparently the Saxon queen, still around, that identified his body.
This presents a series of obvious problems and the Church therefore worked to clear it up, imposing the Canon law that Christians had to be married by a priest. This served a number of purposes, one of which was that the wedding was therefore witnesses and couldn't be simply excused away.
It would be tempting to think that the current situation came about immediately upon the Reformation, but that would be in error. Indeed, it's important to keep in mind that at the parish level, while the fact that the Church was in turmoil was obvious, the severance wasn't necessarily immediately apparent in the pews. All of the original Lutheran priests, for example, had been ordained Catholic priests. No Bishops followed Luther into rebellion in what is now Germany, so there was no way to ordain valid new priests in the eyes of the Catholic Church there, but in Scandinavia things muddled on in an unclear fashion for some time and the Scandinavian Bishops did follow their monarchs into a series of murky positions.
In England, the situation in the pews was also unclear. All of the original Anglican priests had been Catholic priests and most, but not all, of the Bishops followed Henry VIII into schism. Edward VI took the country as far from the Catholic folds as he could, but then Queen Mary brought the country back into the Church, although without completely success. Then Elizabeth struck a middle ground, most likely for political reasons more than anything else. As late as the Prayer Book Rebellion, 1549, Catholicism was still so strongly rooted in the minds of average Englishmen that they revolted over the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer which the conceived of as too Protestant.
The point of this isn't to introduce a treatise on the history of religion in England, but rather to note that for average people this must have been distressing, but if they were going to get married, they still went to the same place, the Church, and the presiding cleric presided over it. This is important to our story here as, at least in England, in spite of an outright war by the Crown against Catholicism, the Church did not prohibit Catholics from marrying in a ceremony presided over by an Anglican priest and no dispensation was required for a "disparity of cult".
Indeed, it's widely believed that as late as 1785 the man who would reign as King George IV married Maria Fitzherbert, a Catholic. The marriage remains really murky in terms of details, as it was conducted in secret, and was arguably invalid because George IV had not obtained permission from George III, which was a legal requirement. The marriage did not, however, require Fitzherbert to obtain permission from the Catholic Church and its believed it was conducted by an Anglian priest. Interestingly, while George IV would later deny that the marriage was valid, and their relationship was rocky, it never completely ceased altogether and he asked to be buried with a locket containing her image. George IV was officially married to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick in what was pretty clearly both an arranged and unhappy marriage that he did wish to terminate. He died first.
So when, exactly, the current canon came in requiring permission for a marriage outside of a Catholic officiation, I frankly don't know. It may not have occurred everywhere at the same time, for that matter. Having said that, it seems to have been first mentioned as a Church law, and therefore a legal requirement binding Catholics, in 1563, so the example given above is problematic.
Note, however, that it binds Catholics. Not other people, and the Church has never stated otherwise.
Additionally, it binds Catholics as its a law of the Church. In order for a Catholic to have a valid marriage, it must be presided over by a Catholic priest or there must be some dispensation. If that doesn't occur it isn't valid, as to Catholics.
And that's what we have here. It's not change in the law of the Church in any fashion. Boris Johnson was baptized as a Catholic and so he is a Catholic, the way that Catholics understand that. Carrie Symonds is also a Catholic, and indeed, press comments about her routinely refer to her as a "practicing Catholic". Her status in that regard is problematic as she and Johnson have been shacked up, which is contrary to Catholic moral law in a major way, but with their marriage, and presumably with a Confession that preceded it, that's no longer an issue of any kind. And Symonds' views would otherwise be evident in that she had their son, born out of wedlock (see issue above again), baptized in the Catholic faith.
So, why al the fussing?
Well, for the most part at least knowledgeable Catholics aren't fussing. Not everyone likes Johnson politically, but Catholics pretty much take a "welcome home" view towards this sort of thing. So, the past is what its, and Boris is back. All is fine, religion wise.
Of course, some Catholics who don't know the doctrines of their own church, or who simply want to have a fit, are. But its' a pretty misplaced one.
Non Catholics can have a fit if they're predisposed to, as they don't understand the Church's law and they are often surprised to find that the Church retains its original position that as it is the original Church, which is indisputable, all others lack in some fashion. [2]. So this serves to remind people that the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church have a lot of similarities, but no matter what the Anglican Communion may maintain, the Catholic Church doesn't regard it as Catholic. Of course, not all Anglicans wish to be regarded as Catholics, but some of them are offended as the fact that the Catholic Church isn't according them equivalency with the Catholicism is offensive to them.
More than that, however, a long held cultural anti Catholicism that came in with the reformation is still pretty strong in certain Protestant regions of Europe in spite of the decline of their Protestant established churches. This is very evident in England, and is very strong in Scandinavia. It's somewhat ironic in various ways, not the least of which is that these regions have become highly secularized and as that has occurred, the Church that has remained strong has been the minority Catholic Church, which has not only survived its long Reformation winter, but which has gained new adherents.
Does this mean that Johnson has fully returned to the Catholic fold and will be at Mass next Sunday? Well, Catholics should hope so, and frankly so should Protestants as well. And there is some evidence that Johnson, who has lived a fairly libertine life, may in fact be taking his Christianity more seriously than he did in earlier days. His recent address regarding the Pandemic specifically referenced Christ and his mercy, something that very few politicians would generally do, and European ones even less.
So, while people can have fits if they want to, all in all, they shouldn't. Indeed, no matter what a person thinks of Johnson one way or another, there's reason to be happy about this development, and not just in being happy for the apparently happy couple if a person is inclined to be such.
Footnotes
1. Having said that, I don't know if polygamy is legal in Turkey, which is obviously a Muslim majority nation, and which is in Europe, depending upon how you draw the continental lines. Turkey has become increasingly Islamic under its current leadership but had years of aggressive secularism, so the status of Muslim polygamist marriages isn't a given, and I don't know the answer as to its status there.
2. The various Orthodox Churches also stretch back to Apostolic origins, which is why the Catholic and Orthodox Churches regard each others sacraments as valid, and also regard their separation as schismatic, depending upon which you are in, rather than an outright rebellion and departure as was the case with the Protestant Churches.
