Married at first sight?

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Corki

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Anyone see this show? I usually don’t watch reality TV but I am hypnotized by this one. It’s a “social experiment” that takes singles and puts them through a series of evaluations to find a “perfect” mate. They actually get married, meeting only at the altar.

nypost.com/2014/07/08/total-strangers-meet-at-the-altar-and-marry-at-first-sight/

There are obvious moral issues from a Catholic perspective but it is also fascinating in terms of what makes marriages work. One of the producers said he wants to try to move people’s ideas about marriage to deeper ideas than just romance.
 
The greatest threat to the “sanctity of marriage” comes from the heterosexual world.

Think Vegas wedding chapels, shows like Bridezilla, etc.

Encouraging TV shows like this (by watching them) makes it more difficult to criticize gay people who are trying to make a “mockery” of marriage.

The fact that after four weeks the lucky couple can decide to continue or divorce tells you all you need know about these people who want their 15 minutes of fame.
 
Personally, while I can see the theoretical appeal, I’m also horrified by how lightly marriage is being taken both by those involved in this show and by our culture at large. For those who believe marriage is a sacrament and that divorce is something that God hates (and does not truly recognize) the idea of marrying someone you’ve never even seen before is ridiculous. On the other hand, back in the days of arranged marriages this wouldn’t have been so far from reality for a lot of people- marrying for business and family reasons without regard to love, but I thought we had progressed past that.
 
coachdennis said:
The greatest threat to the “sanctity of marriage” comes from the heterosexual world.

Think Vegas wedding chapels, shows like Bridezilla, etc.

Encouraging TV shows like this (by watching them) makes it more difficult to criticize gay people who are trying to make a “mockery” of marriage.

The fact that after four weeks the lucky couple can decide to continue or divorce tells you all you need know about these people who want their 15 minutes of fame.
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I agree with you about the greatest threat. But other than the four-week escape clause, is there anything so wrong with this approach? We have a thread going right now on CAF, where people are asserting that as long as you are of age and do not have an impediment that you have an absolute right be be married and that the priest cannot refuse or delay the wedding. That’s a very dangerous approach to the idea of marriage too. Is love without reason a better approach to marriage than reason without love?
 
I wanted to watch this show, but I just could not get over the way it was making a mockery of marriage. And I was pretty sure that they would be talking about sex a lot, so I decided to stay away.
 
MonikaBarbara said:
I wanted to watch this show, but I just could not get over the way it was making a mockery of marriage. And I was pretty sure that they would be talking about sex a lot, so I decided to stay away.
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Not as much as you might think. An interesting thing from the last episode was that the the sociologist made the point that while 60% of couples live together before marriage, those that do are twice as likely to divorce. This is something that religious leaders have been saying for decades but has been minimized.
 
Corki said:
I agree with you about the greatest threat. But other than the four-week escape clause, is there anything so wrong with this approach? We have a thread going right now on CAF, where people are asserting that as long as you are of age and do not have an impediment that you have an absolute right be be married and that the priest cannot refuse or delay the wedding. That’s a very dangerous approach to the idea of marriage too. Is love without reason a better approach to marriage than reason without love?
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With the four week “escape clause”, it basically makes it a 30 day blind date that they can walk away from when it is over. That’s a slam dunk annulment case waiting to happen.

That is interesting that they actually repeated the cohabitation/divorce statistic. Even though the general premise pretty well cheapens marriage, perhaps some good can still come from it. Sometimes it is something like that which gets people thinking about what marriage really is.
 
Catholic1954 said:
It sounds like a temporary “arranged” marriage. 🤷
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That’s pretty much what it is but the theory is that the marriages could very well work out. Evidently on the Danish series on which this is based, most of the pairs were successful.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with an arranged marriage; it’s the temporary that’s wrong.
 
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