Marriages celebrated in church are allegedly growing in popularity: that is the claim made by the survey findings published in recent days by the magazine Bruid & Bruidegom (“Bride & Bridegroom”). It’s a “significant growth” stresses the magazine if one considers that the percentage of those who intend to get married also by a religious rite (among those who have already done so by a civil ceremony) has grown from 42% in 1999 to the present 58%”. But within the Dutch Church the mood is less upbeat. The Catholic Church in Holland, with its ten million faithful, is the country’s greatest religious community, and therefore the “market leader” for the marriage sector. But, says Jan Willem Wits, spokesman of the Dutch Episcopal Conference, only one civil marriage in ten has hitherto also been celebrated in a Catholic church and this number has been in considerable decline in recent years. A “market slice” equivalent to a further ten percent can be attributed, with some approximation, to the other Christian churches. The discrepancy with the findings of the survey therefore seems difficult to reconcile. “Would that they were true!” is the tone of most of the reactions to the findings published by the press, precisely because no significant growth in the popularity of religious marriages seems to be confirmed by recent statistics compiled by church agencies. No one however wants to “renounce the hope the Dutch Church has made it known that the survey findings may be prophetic and that a good part of those who gave a positive response really do wish to have their marriage blessed in church, albeit belatedly. In any case any request by interested couples should be addressed to the competent parish”.
