Unlikely allies

Sometimes, just sometimes, I worry about the Today programme. Not in any way enough to make me listen to anything else, and certainly not when such excellent items as this piece by Dr Murray are recorded. But other times, like this morning, when they had a silly woman on to respond to Giles Fraser's attack on wedding trivialisation on the Thought for the Day slot yesterday (are you keeping up?). She burbled a bit and after arguing initially that nothing had changed and that weddings had always been a celebration, she then wittered a bit about how Giles Fraser was old fashioned and they had to change. She was shit, and we could have had a better discussion if they'd asked some nine year olds what the answer was. We then went on to today's Thought for the Day, which was a platitude filled paragraph of pointlessness - something about being nice. I forget.

And it was a shame, because while Giles Fraser is usually boring and platitudinous himself, or, as they pointed out this morning, 'modern' (and thus usually a bad thing), he actually had something to say. I didn't agree with all of it, but I enjoyed it, especially because was a full blown rant. His thesis, that we have got the focus of weddings wrong, is probably true. Most of the weddings I have been to are good at preserving the sanctity of the ceremony, and in making it a solemn occasion, even the secular ones, which normally don't count. But they don't always, and very often we guests don't treat them as such - we've all thought "glad that's over; where's the bar?", or at least I have. And that's a shame: for us, for the couple, and indeed for God. Not for nothing is marriage, in sacramental terms, unique, as the priest does not play an essential role, the couple alone are the ministers of the sacrament. And this says a lot about the church's teaching on marriage, which is far from the caricature painted by this and other silly critics. I've been deeply affected by good weddings, when I've been concentrating on what it means and the commitment it proclaims: a reminder both of my own and of the covenant of God with his church. Weddings are magical not because of the very welcome free booze, but because of the important bit at the start. The more we spend on the back end, the more the service risks being overshadowed, and that is anathema.

And, deliciously, this was a Thought for the Day that provoked debate - good and welcome; it would be even more welcome it we'd then actually had one. Someone should fix that.