The unity candle was one of my favorite parts of our wedding ceremony! If you want one, I say go for it!
Ours wasn’t huge… it was the same size as a baptismal candle. We had a candle on each side representing each of us, and we lit the middle one together.
I had no idea that it wasn’t Catholic. It was in the brochure the parish gave us in which we could choose all the options for our wedding. It had all the approved readings, and options for unity candle, flowers to Mary. etc… We checked off the ones we wanted. So it’s a shock to see people saying it’s not Catholic.
Even if it wasn’t invented by Catholics, though… what’s WRONG with a unity candle?
I was recently listening to a talk on Catholic marriage, and here are some of the things I learned in the talk:
The problem with the unity candle is that it’s not really part of the Catholic wedding ceremony. It’s not the only abuse you will see commonly at weddings, though, nor the most serious.
According to the speaker I was listening to, having the father walk the bride down the aisle is probably the worst abuse we see at modern Catholic weddings. He said, “The wedding is not about the bride, or about how beautful she is. Nor is it about an exchange of human property between the father and the husband. The Catholic wedding is about the joining of the man and woman in the Sacrament of Marriage, each by free consent.”
In the Catholic ceremony as written, the
couple walks down the aisle
together, behind the priest, after having met the priest at the door,
together, and receiving the first blessing of the marriage -
together.
The most beautiful of Catholic customs (which is not seen so much in North America) is that the groom picks up the bride at her home (her parents and other relatives go to the Church separately), and brings her to the Church, either in his own car, or in a limosine or taxi. This is a beautiful custom that arises from a proper understanding of Catholic marriage and the Catholic wedding ceremony.
However, how they arrive at the Church is not a matter of Church law. Once they arrive, they then wait together at the door of the Church for the priest to come. (The parents and other family members all go in and sit down in their appointed places.) The priest greets them in a friendly manner, gives them the first marriage blessing, and then the Entrance Procession begins, with altar servers in front (cross, then candles, then others) followed by the Deacon or lay reader carrying the Lectionary, then followed by the priest, who is followed by the bride and groom (they are last in the Procession because they are the ministers of the Sacrament of Marriage).
They then take a place near the front in a pew, and they sit together throughout the entire ceremony. The form to be followed is Form 1 in the Marriage Book of 1969. All of the other forms found in that book are
not to be used in Canada (I think Form 2 is still permitted in the United States. No other form is currently permitted, anywhere in the world.)
