Sunday, June 28, 2020

Marital Admonitions: Tradition or Liturgical Abuse?

The wedding went off without too many hitches, the Mass very a well sung Missa cunctipotens Genitor Deus, and Arcadelt's Ave Maria graced the offertory. As a silver lining, we did not have to endure a sermon! The Mass did have one tiny feature that I have only seen at nuptial ceremonies conducted by the FSSP, that of inserting "admonitions" into the liturgical texts of the Nuptial vows and votive Mass.

I have attended several pre-1970 wedding Masses and the three or four I have heard at FSSP parishes are the only ones which contain this particular practice. Indeed, it is somewhat hard to equivocate what this practice is because it varies a little every time I attend a wedding in such a setting. This past wedding, a solemn high Mass, the "admonition" was a speech or instruction read from a print-out prior to the vows laid out in the Rituale Romanum. It contained the familiar "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today....", the secular "If anyone knows any reason why these two should not be joined....", a some good words on the nature of marriage as a Sacrament of God and for His own ends. Then followed the straightforward exchange of vows, the blessing of the ring[s], and the solemnization by the priest dictated in the Rituale. As a preface to the actual rites of marriage and as a means of sprucing up the rather bare Roman rites of nuptial, one could do worse. On the other hand, one could do more.

During another wedding at the same parish, a low Mass celebrated by a different priest, the same opening "admonition" was read before the vows. Then prior to the blessing of the bride which follows the Pater noster yet another vernacular admonition was read. Then came the blessing for fecundity following the Placeat tibi, which was again preceded by several paragraphs of vernacular admonitions—textually forgotten to this writer. Yet another wedding attended months early had an even different pattern.

Consultation with a 1910 Missal, a Baronius hand Missal, a 1945 St. Joseph Missal, the Ecclesia Dei (RIP) hand booklet, and the Paul V and Pius XII editions of the Rituale Romanum reveals no mandate or precedent for this practice. The closest thing is a warning that contracting marriage prior to denouncing heresy does not invalidate the union. Interestingly, pastors were warned against marrying cohabitants, but were allowed to marry the homeless under certain conditions.

So are extensive "admonitions" a tradition, an elaboration of the Nuptial rites, or an outright abuse?

8 comments:

  1. In the English Ordo Administrandi there was a long exhortation written in the 17th cent. by the great and venerable Bishop Richard Challoner. I think it was based on a Sarum rite which included some rather interesting phrases about being blithe at thy meat and buxsom in bed. I would have to look it all up, it's a long time since I have looked at it and I don't have a copy now of the O.A. I am not sure how much it was used.

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    1. I believe words are part of the vows in the Use of Sarum (I promise to be bonny and buxom at bed and at board, and I plight thee my troth & etc)

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  2. The Ordo administrandi Sacramenta, et Alia quædam Officia Ecclesiastica ritè peragendi in Missione Anglicana, printed in 1812, that can be found in the Internet Archive, does not contain an exhortation in the rite of matrimony itself; however, there are lengthy exhortations in the appendix.

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  4. It seems it varies according to local custom. In my wedding (Brazil) - which had Arcadelt's Ave Maria and Missa De Angelis + Orbis Factor, but not Missa IV as the priest would have preffered, due to choir limitations - after the exchange of vows (vernacular) and immediately before the "Ego conjugo vos" my wife and I said to each other (vernacular): "I, N., recieve thee, N., as my legitimate wife/husband, by the indissoluble Sacrament of Matrimony". As far as I know this is an accretion seen in the approved (usus antiquior) Rituale Romanum for Brazil and is always used.

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  5. Congratulations and Best Wishes!! This is a headscratcher for me Myself...They could have done it before The Mass itself.

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  6. The admonitions are printed in multiple languages in a Supplement for the United States in a 1926 Pustet edition of the Rituale Romanum.

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    1. Here are the pages in question: https://archive.org/details/RitualeRomanum/page/n629/mode/2up

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