British queen and Prince Philip embody one of the best examples of the indissolubility of Christian wedlock
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, wave at their wedding on Nov. 20, 1947, in London. (Photo: AFP)
Last week the global spotlight was on Elizabeth II, queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth countries including Canada and others across the Asia-Pacific and the Caribbean.
At 96, Elizabeth is the oldest reigning monarch and head of state in the world, and the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee, having reigned for 70 years and nearly four months.
In addition to her 2022 platinum jubilee as monarch, Queen Elizabeth also celebrated another platinum landmark a few years ago — her platinum wedding anniversary with her late husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in 2017.
Among the royal families around the world, one of the best examples of the indissolubility of Christian marriage was set by Elizabeth and Prince Philip. It is considered a feat because 70 long years of royal and loyal togetherness is quite hard to follow.
Among contemporary monarchs, Emperor Hirohito of Japan also remained faithful in a monogamous relationship with Princess Nagako, his wife of 65 years, until his death in 1989. They were married in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition in 1924.
In the Catholic ethos, mutual conjugal love is made the core of the Sacrament of Matrimony. To give importance to this sacrament, four essential features are attached to it, namely:
• A freely entered covenant, which makes “shotgun” and arranged marriages inadmissible.
• A lifetime commitment in which the couple intone and live the solemn promise, “Until death do us part.”
• Heterosexual relationship, in compliance with the divine mandate, “Male and female he created them.”
• Monogamous, that is, with only one partner. To these, I add, a busload of forgiving and patient love in between.
I should mention here that the Catholic and the Anglican matrimonial promises are the same: monogamous, heterosexual and a lifelong commitment.
Therefore, using the 16th-century Anglican Book of Common Prayer, the same official book used by Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a solemn and public promise: “To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health, till death do us part.”
On that beautiful day in May 2018, the lifetime commitment of the royal couple was solemnized in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, a splendid sanctuary of the British monarch for a thousand years.
Prince Harry is Anglican and Meghan Markle converted to Anglicanism from being a Catholic just before the marriage.
However, being monogamous is not a feature of the marital relationships of the current Thai and Brunei kings.
King Vajiralongkorn of Thailand has a legal wife, an official royal consort and a harem of 20 mistresses. Polygamy was widely practiced in Thailand decades ago, although the majority of citizens today say that monogamy is important to them.
Matrimony is neither a signed paper nor a saccharine-schmaltzy ritual. It’s a divine institution, first and foremost, because the Sacred Scriptures say so
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, on the other hand, has a very complicated marital life. He is the world’s second-longest reigning current monarch after Queen Elizabeth, having celebrated his golden jubilee in 2017.
The sultan was married to Princess Pengiran Anak Saleha in 1965 but kept a second wife and a third, both of whom he divorced.
Polygamy is still commonplace in Asia, in which rich Muslims, eastern potentates and Arab sheiks often sire many children. Remember that the two nations with the largest Muslim populations in the world are in Asia — India and Indonesia. Based on the Quran and the Hadiths, women should remain monogamous while Muslim men can have four wives.
In Christian theology, in the Sacrament of Matrimony, the minister, unknown to many, is not the priest. The ministers are the husband and wife themselves because they make the sacrament happen. The priest, together with the principal sponsors, are just witnesses of the lovely promise mutually pledged by the couple.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church has put it, “Love seeks to be definitive; it cannot be an arrangement ‘until further notice’” (1646).
Matrimony is neither a signed paper nor a saccharine-schmaltzy ritual. It’s a divine institution, first and foremost, because the Sacred Scriptures say so. And for more than 2,000 years, the Sacred Tradition and Sacred Magisterium have mightily defended the sanctity of this divine institution:
“A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mt. 19:5-6).
* Jose Mario Bautista Maximiano is the author of ‘The Signs of the Times and the Social Doctrine of the Church’ (Salesiana, 1991) and ‘The Church Can Handle the Truth’ (Claretian, 2017). The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
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