Marriages within church continue to decline

Local and national observers cite changes within society and the COVID-19 pandemic

By Jennifer Rector
Hawaii Catholic Herald

A recent study shows that across the country, fewer and fewer adults are getting married — including within the Catholic Church.

In Hawaii, statistics confirm that fewer Catholics are getting married within the Diocese of Honolulu every year.

From June 2022 to July 2023, there were 215 marriages in the Diocese of Honolulu and 56 interfaith marriages, according to the Office of the Chancellor. (Interfaith means one member of the party is from a different faith or not practicing a faith.)

The parish with the most marriages in that timespan was the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Honolulu with 22.

The numbers were significantly higher less than a decade before the most current figures: In 2014-15, the diocese saw 304 Catholic marriages and 125 interfaith marriages.

Marriages started to decline right before and during the coronavirus pandemic, with 227 Catholic marriages and 67 interfaith marriages in 2019-2020.

It’s difficult to say whether the decline in Catholic marriages is due to the pandemic, but there is no doubt it likely had an influence.

Organizers with Hawaii Catholic Engaged Encounter, a group with the mission to help couples prepare for marriage during a weekend retreat, noticed a decline during the pandemic.

“Although we cannot attribute the declining numbers on COVID, we believe it may have had an impact as we saw the numbers of couples decrease from about 20-25 couples to 10-15 couples (per retreat). This was also evident in the parishes as many people stopped coming to Mass partly because of fear and as a convenient excuse,” said Deacon Renier and Roxanne Torres, coordinators of Hawaii Catholic Engaged Encounter.

Economics, convenience

National research cites several reasons for the decline in marriages.

The Institute for Family Studies, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based think tank, found in a recent study that adults are waiting longer to get married and those who will “never marry” are at an all-time high in the U.S., according to an article published last month by OSV News.

“I think economic factors delaying the life course are the dominant force shaping declining marriage, alongside marriage penalties in tax and welfare policies,” Lyman Stone from the institute told OSV News. “The long delay between adulthood and economic independence is the main cause of declining marriage.”

Meanwhile, Deacon Torres said he believes it is also a lack of good marriage examples for younger Catholics.

“I believe the younger generations lack good examples of long-lasting marriages and they do not appreciate the commitment that older generations had to stay together. Couples viewed their marriage as permanent and the only way out was death,” he said.

Julia Dezelski, associate director of marriage and family life for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, told OSV News that “The promiscuity, and the cohabitation, and all the so-called ‘perks’ that come with this kind of lifestyle, obviously does not lend itself to encouraging couples to marry if they can reap the benefits of just cohabiting at a lower cost — and without the risks of pregnancy, thanks to contraception.”

She said that adults can delay marriage even more now that in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, has become an option for anyone, even single people.

The Catholic church opposes IVF due to “the artificial reproduction method on the grounds that it treats the child as a product, divorces sex from procreation, and the process often involves the destruction of human embryos in order to achieve pregnancy resulting in birth,” according to OSV News.

Lessons from church

Another theory posits that younger generations are changing their perspective on marriage altogether.

“Millennials are much less likely to be living with a family of their own than previous generations when they were the same age,” according to a 2020 Pew Research study.

According to Deacon Torres and Roxanne Torres, “The short-term effects are people start to view their marriages as a matter of convenience and that when they grow tired of each other they can simply quit or find someone else.

“The long-term effects will start to erode the greater church as more and more families are broken apart and the nuclear family will no longer be able to represent the Holy Family.”

The Torreses said change can come from the church to put more efforts into teaching parishioners the meaning of marriage.

“There needs to be a better catechistical understanding on the sacrament of marriage as a vocation of service. This is not for the service to another, although that is part of it, but they represent the domestic church as thus are part of the greater body of Christ the universal church,” said Deacon Torres.

J.P. De Gance, founder and president of Communio, a Virginia-based nonprofit ministry that trains and equips churches to renew healthy relationships, marriages and the family, told OSV News that the church needs to step up.

“My question for every priest, pastor and bishop is: How much longer do we have to continue to see the annual, year-over-year decline of marriage before we start becoming effective and strategic about actually promoting the vocation of marriage? Eighty-two percent of all Catholic parishes spend zero dollars on marriage ministry each year,” he said.

Christian research organization Barna found that “72% of all American churches lack a substantive marriage ministry, while 74% have no ministry for newlyweds to help them through their first critical years of marriage.”

That same survey found that 93% of churches do not offer ministries for people who are single, which some argue could be an opportunity for singles to feel encouraged to date and get married.

Within the Diocese of Honolulu, the Torreses are part of a group of people working toward helping couples toward holy matrimony.

“Even if the couples have been civilly married for years, it is never too late to ask God to be in the center of your marriage,” Deacon Torres said.

“I recently assisted a couple who had been married for 32 years by the justice of the peace and wouldn’t come to communion at Mass because they weren’t married in the church. Imagine feeling we weren’t able to eat the heavenly host for so long, because they didn’t follow the prescribed way of getting married. Sometimes we cage in circumstances of our own choosing,” he said.

Deacon Torres and Roxanne Torres hope to continue to encourage couples toward holy matrimony.

“It may seem unimportant at the moment, but if they seek God’s grace through the sacrament, the richness of those graces will start to manifest in their marriage when they need it the most and carry them through the challenges of life,” said Deacon Torres.