Marriage Contract Initially Prepares Family to Divorce, Russian Bishop Believes
Yekaterinburg, 11 March 2010, Interfax - Archbishop Vikenty of Yekaterinburg and Verkhnyaya Tura recommends prospective couples not even to consider a marriage contract.
"A marriage contract a priori involves divorce: a person prepares to it from the start. But we should believe that we are getting married forever to stay together to the end of our lives and even after. Therefore, one should not even think of such a contract," the Archbishop said on air of Soyuz TV and Voskreseniye radio.
According to him, a marriage contract emerged because the society "gradually loses its real true values," when many young couples "say at first: let us just live together for a while and see how we get on," that is, "live in sin, don't get married, and don't wed because they have doubts as from the very beginning they have doubts whether they will stay together."
"If there is a need to marry, one should carefully think it over, evaluate, consider and get married without thinking that they will have to ruin it and divorce. They should think how to preserve it and make such considerations the basis of their married life," Archbishop Vikenty recommends.
According to him, "nothing can happen if we believe and hope that we are able to preserve our marriage with the help of God," and this "should be made a basis of matrimony and considerations how to preserve it in all circumstances of life."
"This is what true love and self-giving love is when a person can devote himself or herself to preserve his or her marriage. Such Western trends as marriage contracts are aimed at debilitating both matrimony and the very essence of marriage," the Archbishop believes.