By John M. Grondelski

Each year, February 7-14 is designated as "National Marriage Week," an opportunity individually, socially, and culturally to recommit ourselves to the institution of marriage. I choose the term "institution" of marriage deliberately because, in the polemics of the Reformation, whether marriage was a sacrament (i.e., a privileged locus of divine grace connected to salvation) or an institution (i.e., a divinely-sanctioned event marking a change in civil, not spiritual status) was a point of contention.

Protestant reductionism of marriage to a civil institution, however, has suffered further secular reductionism. What the civil law in many Western countries brands as "marriage" shares but a name with what Christians – and certainly Catholics – understood by that name.

The Protestant "estate" of marriage, although primarily a civil thing, enjoyed divine sanction: what society today calls marriage neither acknowledges its author nor necessarily even appeals to Him.

Marriage traditionally took place before a religious minister, in recognition of the origins of marriage and in appeal to the support of Him who makes its yoke easier and burden lighter. Today, it occurs in many jurisdictions before an "officiant" whose authority depends on Form 123A and a fee. In some places, one doesn't even need a separate officiant: the parties can simply exchange vows to each other.

Lest revisionist Catholic theologians announce this reflects Catholic teaching (that the parties themselves minister the sacrament to each other), let us not forget that the whole reason the Church required marriage before a priest and witnesses as a condition for validity was to end the abuse of clandestine marriage. Today, some might just call it "privacy."

Speaking of vows, the ritual "I A., take thee B., to be my lawful wedded husband/wife," is but one variant among many. There's a whole sub-industry within the Wedding Industrial Complex now that will write your vows for you, based on the effect you want: romantic, nostalgic, quirky, funny, or prenuptial legalese.

Self-made vows reflect a deeper problem: the relativization of marriage. In many ways, contemporary marriage has become a shell, a mere label to be attached to whatever two people want. The consequence of that move has been that marriage is increasingly a form without content.

The civil law still has a few guardrails left. Divorce is not yet as easy as telling her "I divorce you" three times, although no-fault divorce essentially lets one party end a marriage regardless of what the other wants. The residue – kids and goods – might be fought over, but the overarching institution in which they existed – marriage – is dissolved.

One might argue that the major reason we have not reached unilateral divorce of the "I divorce you" kind is to protect attorneys' contingency fees.

DIY vows, however, express another aspect of this radical privatization of marriage. If vows can be reduced to a stand-up monologue, then when is any mutual binding commitment to the essential characteristics and features of marriage voiced?

The Church required vows as an expression of the parties' free consent to be married. But Pope Pius XI taught in Casti connubii that marriage involves acceptance of what marriage itself is. In other words, John is free to marry Mary or Anne, but he is not free to marry "for five years, automatically renewable if no objections are voiced."

Yet that has always been where human resistance to marriage generally strikes. It is the characteristics of marriage which the Church teaches are sine qua non to the existence of marriage that become targets. Unity, exclusivity, indissolubility, fruitfulness – these are where marriage is attacked.

Which characteristics are assaulted and where seems mostly a matter of cultural geography. "Accompanying" theologians in Africa may argue for a tolerance of polygamy that does quite (yet) cut it in America.

"Indissolubility" in America becomes the sh...