When did RCC start charging to use the Church for marriage?

[fnz2thrght]

ASimpleSinner - see my reply to the previous poster - we posted at the same time and my reply will clarify that I completely understand exceptions.

So my original question may have been better phrased as disallowing the church use for those who do not have very valid reasons. But we all know that church shopping does happen. And often by non-practicing people who feel the need to have their marriage in a church ( without a mass because whine it’s just too long and we want to just “get to the party” - don’t even get me started there lol)

 

[Sarabande]

That's what I'm getting at then - can't a church simply say that the use of their building is only for parishioners? (or those with very valid reasons for wanting to use the church)

Yes, they can refuse non-parishioners the use of the church. At many of the parishes I’ve attended for mass, they have in the bulletins that couples who would like to be married at their parish would need to be active members of the congregation for at least 6 months to a year before asking to get married there. You basically can’t get married there unless you are a parishioner.

The Cathedral where I’m at is different, though, because it’s the “parish” of the entire archdiocese, so it is open to anyone within the diocese - with the permission of the pastor from their own parish.

 

[fnz2thrght]

Yes, they can refuse non-parishioners the use of the church. At many of the parishes I’ve attended for mass, they have in the bulletins that couples who would like to be married at their parish would need to be active members of the congregation for at least 6 months to a year before asking to get married there. You basically can’t get married there unless you are a parishioner.

The Cathedral where I’m at is different, though, because it’s the “parish” of the entire archdiocese, so it is open to anyone within the diocese - with the permission of the pastor from their own parish.

Thank you! And that’s a good point about Cathedrals.

 

[Sarabande]

One additional factor about Church musicians that I haven’t seen mentioned here is that to be available on a day or two’s notice to sing or play for a funeral requires you not to work a regular job. I was able to do this for some years as a cantor because my other paying jobs were performances in the evenings. So the fee covers many aspects of the working musician’s training and availability.

I’m right there with you and sacredcello. Most of my music “gigs” are in the evenings and weekends, but I also work a part-time day job for steady income. The GREAT thing about this job is that it is so flexible, I make my own hours, so that I can do the funerals that come up with one or two days notice. My employer knows I’m a musician and is very supportive of it, which is also a plus. But I’m working my way to cutting the hours down. I first started at 32 hrs/week. Now, with more gigs, I’m down to 10-20 hours a week.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

ASimpleSinner - see my reply to the previous poster - we posted at the same time and my reply will clarify that I completely understand exceptions.

So my original question may have been better phrased as disallowing the church use for those who do not have very valid reasons. But we all know that church shopping does happen. And often by non-practicing people who feel the need to have their marriage in a church ( without a mass because whine it’s just too long and we want to just “get to the party” - don’t even get me started there lol)

I have had that happen to me a lot lately when I post at these busy hours!

Agreed, thanks for clarifying.

Frankly I think a lot of couples should be told “no” when they show up out of nowhere… My friends “Suzy & Bob” show up at a parish they don’t attend but live close to and looks nice in photos…

Suzy tells Father she is an Athiest although she was raised Catholic and is “doing this for her mom”. They are already living together, they are using abortifacient birth control - neither have been to confession since their confirmation retreat 12 years prior, neither go to Mass regularly… but Suzy the Athiest does take communion just to fit in… and they have already drafted a pre-nup…

That is an annulment waiting to happen…

Those are the cases where “church renting” really bothers me.

 

[sacredcello]

Well, I finally have my answer as to how much it will cost to get married at my parish: $2,140.

Father said no to marrying us at the regular 4:00 parish Saturday vigil Mass because my dear FH is not currently receiving communion (he is scandalized by the priest abuse crisis and blames the hierarchy). Nor will Father marry us immediately before or after, as they only do weddings at 1:00 on Saturday, no exceptions. That’s right, it means only 1 wedding per week at my parish.

So, it costs $1,500 for the wedding liturgy and $500 to the parish to refresh the flowers in the sanctuary because our date of January 10, 2009 is still within the Christmas season.

And, Father will receive a stipend of $100. and the two altar servers will receive $20 each. Fortunately, my friends will volunteer to play music for free.

My Mom made a good point that, since we will be getting married at 1:00 in the afternoon, we don’t have to provide dinner for all of our guests. If Father had agreed to marry us at the 4:00 Mass, we may have had to pay just as much for catering dinner. Since I live in a tiny thimble-sized apartment, there is nowhere in town for our guests who have traveled long distances to gather. We will probably go to the Arts and Letters Cafe for light hor doeuvres and cake afterward. We will certainly compare the cost of having our guests gather in the refectory afterward, but it might be roughly the same cost.

Fortunately, I found a lovely second-hand wedding dress on craigslist for $150.

Thanks to all for your suggestions here previously.

 

[JaMc]

A man at my parish mentioned that when he was an altar server (years ago - he is now in his 70’s), the servers would take up a collection at the entrance of the church as the wedding guests filed in. Apparently, this was to cover the various costs, etc. Given his age, this would have probably been some time in the 1940’s. Has anybody heard of this practice as an alternative to charging for the use of the church? (mind you, other elderly parishoners present when he said this had no idea what he was talking about… )

 

[turtle18]

How did this post get hijacked by so many Church musicians complaining about their pay? It takes everyone, no matter what their calling is in life, years & years of education and student loan debt to get to their professional status. Many other positions in the Church, including alot of DRE’s, teachers, etc. require Master’s degree.

My question was regarding the fee for the Church. I don’t believe it is right to have to pay for the Church when the Church requires marriage to be a sacrament–therefore, you have to get married in the Church.

If you are using part of the fee for the Church to pay the musical director’s salary, that doesn’t seem right because the musician is getting a stipend to play the wedding.

 

[sacredcello]

I agree that the fee for marriage (a sacrament) is becoming more and more outrageous in some churches. I will be paying $2,140 to get married in the parish where I regular contribute to the weekly offering, and that does not include anything for music. Someone on this thread suggested that we get married at the regular parish vigil Mass (just like you would get baptized or confirmed at a regular parish Mass). My future husband and I are going to explore that, but unless my FH decides to start taking communion again (he blames the hierarchy for the priest abuse crisis) the answer from Father is no because he said it would be “weird” to have a marriage take place within the parish community where one person was not receiving. (if you ask me the priest abuse crisis was caused by the laypeople and their dissent from Humanae Vitae, but that’s another thread…)

I don’t believe this thread was hijacked by musicians complaining. If you scroll back and take a look, you will find that we were defending ourselves. Some people don’t realize that music is a profession, it is not volunteer work. That’s all we were saying.

 

[hasikelee]

They probably started charging around the time the bulk of the congregation stopped tithing. If everyone tithed you wouldn’t have these fees for everything including tuition. But that is not the world we live in hence the individual must bear the burden of paying for electricity and such. There are fees associated with funeral masses also.

This has become my line of thinking as well.

When I was getting married I started one of these threads. I paid $1600 for the church, $500 for the choir and $250 for the choir director.

Although at first I was pretty amazed at the price, after that I had to go book the reception, which was almost 10K for the catering/decor and $2k for the site.

The church looked pretty reasonable after that.

On a serious side, I lost all resentment when I thought about how we were expecting to be married at a new church and not my or his childhood parish. We had not been attending every single Sunday at this new parish and we certainly hadn’t been tithing regularly. It only seemed fair to pay the price. If I had chosen to stay with my childhood parish, the church would have been free. I think his would have been $600.

 

[sacredcello]

Not only have many people stopped tithing, but it is estimated that 95% of Catholics use contraception or are sterilized. Since there are fewer children, there are also fewer vocations.

Even though I am somewhat disgruntled at the amount of money I will pay to my church in order to get married, I understand the reason for it. It is mainly because we now have laypeople who run the Church. For instance, the pastoral associate at my parish was making a salary of $78,000 a year before she resigned last year. If her job was being done by a priest, weddings would not be so expensive.

I’m not against laypeople working in the Church, but it is because of the dissent from Humanae Vitae that things have gotten to be the way they are. We only have ourselves to blame for these high fees.

I intend to offer to teach NFP at my parish after we are married, though it might be totally rejected by the pastor and his ultra-feminist associate.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Some parishes are really stretched in terms of finances and in terms of trying to accommodate everyone’s needs with a fixed “amount” of staff, facilities and time.

We were at one wedding and the priest was getting nervous because the bride was a “no-show”. Turns out the limo driver got totally lost. Everything had been timed to the second and there was a baptism scheduled right after. If the bride had been any later, the wedding would have to have been a very quick exchange of vows and out-of-there. The singer kept everyone entertained by singing beautifully for a half-hour and then calmed the late bride down and got the all the participants organized and cued the organist.

Immediately after the bride and groom marched out of the church, the priest “volunteered” a bunch of the men attending and got them to help him rearrange everything to set up for the baptisms. Normally, he would do it all himself in a leasurely fashion. But this day, there just wasn’t time. The next group was already starting to arrive.

These folks really worked hard. It’s not a matter of charging for the church, but generating some income to reimburse for the singer, organist, the air conditioning, the custodial cleanup afterwards, coordinating with the florist and the photographer(s), and etc.

I’m sure that if folks just want to receive the Sacrament of Matrimony at minimal cost, they can arrange to have a five minute ceremony conducted by an ordained Deacon. Totally valid sacrament and legal marriage.

But if they want a whole big production, then there is a small army of arrangers who have to be hired. The parish doesn’t have the financial resources to have these folks standing by.

 

[Sarabande]

If you are using part of the fee for the Church to pay the musical director’s salary, that doesn’t seem right because the musician is getting a stipend to play the wedding.

You seem to misunderstand. A church musician’s salary (especially the organist or music director) is many times determined by an estimated number of funerals and weddings a parish may get for the year. That means they subtract the amount that they think the musician will make from the weddings and funerals from the actual salary. If it is $200 a wedding for an organist and there might be an estimated 25 weddings a year, and if the salary is supposed to be $30,000, they will subtract $5000 from the actual salary they give in the pay check. So, the organist will actually receive $25,000 from the parish (less if they are also determining the funerals) and will depend on the other amount for when and if there is a wedding that the couple will pay. Sometimes it might be more, sometimes less. A musician will take that into account when budgeting for the month and the year.

As Sacredcello said, the musicians here were defending themselves. In no ways are they complaining about their pay. A musician would know that. Any of us who have chosen music as a profession made a conscious decision and knew that we would probably never make much money. It’s the complaint by non-musicians planning their weddings, etc. approaching us with the belief that being a musician - church musician or not - is not a legitimate profession or worthy of any pay to make a living despite the time and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested just like any other professional out there. They want it for free or for practically nothing.

The cost of music came up in this thread because it is often times a part of the liturgy which is required in order to make the Sacrament. If there is going to be music for the Liturgy, even if it is a Sacrament, the musicians must be paid as they need to put bread on the table as well.

Of course, the cost of things are going up very high. There might be some who are gouging, but I believe others here have laid out different and legitimate reasons as to why this may be happening and have nothing to do with gouging nor jumping on the wedding industry bandwagon. Also, no fine parish will deny the Sacrament to any parishioner if he/she cannot afford it.

 

[sacredcello]

My sister is getting married and all of the churches she has checked into are charging between $150 & $1000 for the use of the Church, even if you are a member. When did this start? When my other sisters got married 10 years ago & 15 years ago, the church was free. Of course, you paid the musician & the priest but you didn’t have to pay to use the Church. This seems inherently wrong–You don’t have to pay to use the Church for any other sacrament–or are they charging for funerals now too?

My future husband and I recently went to a “wedding info session” at my parish with 7 other couples where we learned all that we need to know about getting married there, including cost. Incidentally, none of the other couples were members of the parish; they were attracted to the church because of its history and to the city itself which is one of the most stunningly beautiful in the world.

Our pastor opened with prayer and introductions and we were asked to tell the story of how we became engaged. I was really looking forward to meeting other Catholic couples, but was deeply disappointed to hear their stories, as it became evident that most were already living together. One couple stated somewhat proudly that they rolled over in bed one morning and he popped the question. Our pastor handled this revelation very graciously.

I imagine these scenarios are very common, so pastors need to use discernment, skill and grace in dealing with people like this. That’s not to say that all church shoppers are living reckless lives. But, now that I think about it, I don’t mind paying the high fee at our parish, if it helps our pastor to turn away those who are not serious about a Catholic marriage.

 

[dessert]

Well, I finally have my answer as to how much it will cost to get married at my parish: $2,140.

Father said no to marrying us at the regular 4:00 parish Saturday vigil Mass because my dear FH is not currently receiving communion (he is scandalized by the priest abuse crisis and blames the hierarchy). Nor will Father marry us immediately before or after, as they only do weddings at 1:00 on Saturday, no exceptions. That’s right, it means only 1 wedding per week at my parish.

So, it costs $1,500 for the wedding liturgy and $500 to the parish to refresh the flowers in the sanctuary because our date of January 10, 2009 is still within the Christmas season.

And, Father will receive a stipend of $100. and the two altar servers will receive $20 each. Fortunately, my friends will volunteer to play music for free.

My Mom made a good point that, since we will be getting married at 1:00 in the afternoon, we don’t have to provide dinner for all of our guests. If Father had agreed to marry us at the 4:00 Mass, we may have had to pay just as much for catering dinner. Since I live in a tiny thimble-sized apartment, there is nowhere in town for our guests who have traveled long distances to gather. We will probably go to the Arts and Letters Cafe for light hor doeuvres and cake afterward. We will certainly compare the cost of having our guests gather in the refectory afterward, but it might be roughly the same cost.

Fortunately, I found a lovely second-hand wedding dress on craigslist for $150.

Thanks to all for your suggestions here previously.

I would not marry him, just my opinion!

 

[turtle18]

As far as I know, there has always been a charge for the priest and for the musician. That has been standard throughout the years. But sometimes around/after the year 2000, parishes started charging for use of the buildling, which to me seems like they are charging for the sacrament. If you are Catholic, you have to get married in the Church. The issue of musician fees is separate; marrying couples have always paid the musicians. My mom & dad paid their musicians when they married in the 1950s. So I still don’t see why everyone keeps trying to tie musican fees into this thread.

 

[turtle18]

Also, I have seen couples get married at our Saturday mass; not the Sunday Vigil Mass but the daily Saturday Mass. I think there is less of a problem if you just want to exchange your vows at the Saturday Daily Mass as opposed to a Sunday Mass.

 

[Sarabande]

As far as I know, there has always been a charge for the priest and for the musician. That has been standard throughout the years. But sometimes around/after the year 2000, parishes started charging for use of the buildling, which to me seems like they are charging for the sacrament. If you are Catholic, you have to get married in the Church. The issue of musician fees is separate; marrying couples have always paid the musicians. My mom & dad paid their musicians when they married in the 1950s. So I still don’t see why everyone keeps trying to tie musican fees into this thread.

Well, it’s good to know you are not one of those who think they should get their wedding musicians for free or for very little. That is not always the norm, which is why many musicians bring it up. You may think it has nothing to do with it, but for many other non-musicians it does.

My parish is our archdiocese cathedral. They have charged for the use of the building since the 1980s, at least.

Other people, including myself, have brought up the costs of heating/cooling, lighting, paying the people there to clean up, open up, etc. These are costs that used to be covered by what was brought in by the collections. But like with everything, costs are going up, people are not giving as much in their weekly offerings and more and more lay people are assisting in doing these weekend jobs that the clergy used to do when there were more of them to help out. Also, the older the church, the more costly it is to keep up the maintenance. When you have small parish or a parish that isn’t made up of well-off people, you are not going to get enough money to keep up the church or cover the costs for a Saturday wedding.

You are right, I’m sure there may be churches which would offer couples to have their wedding during an actual Vigil mass to save money, but either couples are not aware of it or they don’t want to have it during the Vigil. In my experience of dealing with brides, it is overwhelmingly the latter.

And again… almost any parish would waive the fees if a couple truly cannot afford it and are part of the parish or are very active in the parish. So, in in a way, it’s a non-issue.

 

[Sarabande]

Also, I have seen couples get married at our Saturday mass; not the Sunday Vigil Mass but the daily Saturday Mass. I think there is less of a problem if you just want to exchange your vows at the Saturday Daily Mass as opposed to a Sunday Mass.

Yes, probably less of a problem, but in my experience (as mentioned in my previous post), for whatever reason, most brides don’t want to exchange their vows at a Vigil Mass or a Sunday Mass.

 

[sacredcello]

I would not marry him, just my opinion!

You would not marry someone who was concerned about the abuse of children? Or, you would not marry someone who was not a “perfect Catholic?”

I was previously married to one of these “perfect Catholics,” but when things became difficult, he lost his faith entirely. Now he is agnostic.