Posted on 07/26/2003 11:33:49 AM PDT by Loyalist
Weddings without the dogma 'I'm not there to judge': Quebec ministers eager to offer Catholic couples a way to break the rules
MONTREAL - Sometimes Reverend Bernard Cantin conducts weddings wearing his bishop's outfit, a miter perched on his head and a staff in hand. Or he might don the red leather boots that were a gift from a Hells Angels member he married. What he never does is marry couples inside a church.
Mr. Cantin, a defrocked Catholic priest, is the founder of Le Nouveau Penser, an officially recognized religious organization with 32 pastors whose main business is weddings.
Having drifted away from the Catholic Church, a growing number of Quebecers are turning to groups like Mr. Cantin's when they decide to marry. Mr. Cantin, 65, has six weddings scheduled this weekend. By the end of the year, Nouveau Penser ministers will have conducted 1,100, up from about 400 five years ago. A similar group, known as FSEV, married 1,300 couples last year, compared with just 30 when it began in 1994.
Unlike Catholic priests, who will only celebrate weddings inside a church, these groups bring the wedding to the bride and groom. And they welcome couples who would be shunned by the Church, such as non-Christians, divorcés, even the Hells Angels.
Last spring, Mr. Cantin unwittingly found himself in the news when a videotape of him officiating at the 1999 wedding of biker André Chouinard was introduced as evidence in a court case. Among the guests was Maurice (Mom) Boucher, the Hells Angels leader who has since been imprisoned for the murders of two prison guards.
Mr. Chouinard, who went into hiding two years ago when the police cracked down on the gang, is now facing murder and gangsterism charges after being arrested in April. But Mr. Cantin makes no apologies for having mingled with some of the province's most notorious criminals.
"I don't give a damn. It was one of the best weddings I ever served at," he said, adding: "I'm not there to judge. If I didn't marry him, he would go to the courthouse."
While the Chouinard wedding thrust Mr. Cantin into the spotlight, and earned him a smashing pair of boots, more typical was a ceremony yesterday afternoon in the Montreal suburb of Baie d'Urfé.
Anne-Marie Guindon and Michel Huneault are both Catholics, both getting married for the second time. Ms. Guindon, 48, is a widow, but Mr. Huneault, 53, is divorced, meaning the Catholic Church would not marry him.
"The option we had was to go to the courthouse. I wasn't crazy about that idea," Ms. Guindon said. "They make it so fast. This is something we want to share with our families."
Then a friend told her about Mr. Cantin, the self-described "curé on wheels." Yesterday, as he pulled up to the wedding in his shiny blue PT Cruiser, one guest saw his red shirt and priest's collar and mistook him for a Roman Catholic cardinal.
During the service, held in front of a gazebo on a grassy slope overlooking Lac Saint-Louis, he did nothing to shatter the image, introducing himself as "Monsignor Cantin."
Germain Daoust, 62, a friend of the newlyweds who was attending his first outdoor wedding, said he was not bothered by the fact the wedding was not in a church.
"Whether you're in a church or outside, you're still married," he said.
Mr. Cantin said the growing popularity of services like yesterday's is evidence of the Church's failure to adapt to changing public attitudes.
"They say you have to get married in a church, but the churches are deserted," he said in an interview.
People coming to him "are basically spiritual people but they don't want dogmatic things and judgment and being lectured to," he said. Couples that have been living together for 10 years before deciding to marry find it ridiculous that the Church insists on marriage-preparation courses. People whose first marriages have ended in divorce are hurt when they are told they cannot remarry.
But he said his clients, still reluctant to completely break with Catholic traditions that go back generations, like the fact he is a former priest and can dress the part.
"They want a pastor. They don't want a civil wedding at the courthouse," he said.
FSEV started later than Nouveau Penser but it has overtaken the older group, with 45 officiants spread across Quebec. The initials stand for Fraternité sacerdotale des enfants du Verseau, or Sacerdotal Brotherhood of the Children of Aquarius, but Alain Préfontaine says not to read too much into the new-age name.
"We're not a cult or anything like that. The name is misleading," he said.
More accurate would be Weddings R Us. While Nouveau Penser ministers have a philosophy inspired by the American New Thought movement -- although very few of those married by its ministers are adherents -- FSEV was created solely to marry people.
"We celebrate weddings wherever the couple wants ... as long as it's a respectable location," Mr. Préfontaine said.
Last March, he conducted a wedding on a frozen lake in the Laurentians with an altar made of ice, but he said a nudist camp would be out of the question. FSEV also specializes in a Druid ceremony and a medieval wedding, for which Mr. Préfontaine wears a Friar Tuck suit.
It can be a lucrative sideline for the officiants, most of whom have day jobs. (Mr. Préfontaine is a health and safety consultant.) FSEV charges $375 per wedding, of which 75% goes to the officiant and the rest covers the organization's costs. Nouveau Penser ministers charge $300 per wedding, more if the minister has to travel.
Weddings in general are hardly a growth industry in Quebec as more and more couples choose common-law relationships. Last year, there were 21,998 weddings in the province, compared with 53,967 in 1972. Thirty years ago, 95% of the marriages were religious; today the figure is around 70%.
Gaëtan Baillargeon, a Catholic priest and director of the National Liturgy Office in Montreal, said he has not heard much concern from Quebec dioceses that they are losing ground in the wedding business.
He finds it reassuring that even when people get married outside the Church, they want services that borrow heavily from what goes on in the church.
"We know that a lot of people say they remain attached to the Christian faith even if they are not attending church," he said.
Ms. Guindon supported that notion in an interview just before her non-denominational wedding. "In my head, even if he doesn't mention God, for me it is going to be religious inside," she said.
"The option we had was to go to the courthouse. I wasn't crazy about that idea," Ms. Guindon said. "They make it so fast. This is something we want to share with our families."
Understandably so. A rushed formalising of Adultery is always disappointing. One needs time to manuver themselves into position to try and catch the Scarlet "A" the Bride tosses.
Sounds like an Episcopalian to me, or a Satanist.
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