There’s unseen gold – and goldfish – in many weddings - The Clarion Herald

Father Colm Cahill, the director of the archdiocesan Vocations Office, witnesses more than two dozen weddings each year, among the most in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The Clarion Herald spoke with Father Cahill about his specialized ministry and the opportunities it affords him to evangelize more than the bridal party.

Rumor has it you may be doing as many weddings in a year as Msgr. Bob Massett used to do – and he was known as “The Marryin’ Priest”!

Yes, Father Bob was known as the wedding priest!

How is it that so many couples are coming to you to witness their marriage vows?

I’ve inherited a lot of my weddings because I did a lot of work as a seminarian at Mount Carmel Academy. So, they graduate from college, they find the love of their life and the last seminarian or priest that they remember was Father Colm. So, I’ve inherited pretty much an entire girls’ school of weddings. It’s the largest girls’ school in the archdiocese. That’s part of it. Probably about 40% of my weddings are of Mount Carmel graduates. And then, this is the funny part. If you do a half-decent job at a wedding, there’s always at least one or two couples in the congregation who are either about to get engaged or they’re engaged and looking for a priest. They’re priest-shopping. I’m not saying I do a good job, but if you do a half-decent job, then you’ve basically written your resume for that next couple, and then they come to you. I do 24 or 25 weddings a year. It’s about every other week.

There’s also a lot of bridesmaids who may be close to getting engaged.

That’s correct. What I typically like to do is point them back to their pastor if at all possible. The reason for that is it will give them a grounding in a relationship with the parish where they’re going to be after marriage because this should be marriage prep, not wedding prep. You’re not preparing them for the wedding. You’re preparing them for their marriage. So you want to ground them in their parish.

Are most of the couples you marry going through marriage prep with you or are they being prepared by someone else?

My preference is to have them go through in-home marriage prep, where they meet with a married couple. I think that’s the most fruitful marriage prep, but the Engaged Encounter retreat weekends are phenomenal, and we’re actually very blessed in this archdiocese because we’ve got a lot of good people who work in Engaged Encounter who are fantastic mentors.

Are you seeing any trends about people coming forward for marriage? The statistics say there are fewer couples being married in the church.

This is solely my opinion. Because of my role as vocation director, I work with people who are discerning – making a large commitment in their life. I think it’s true in any vocation. I’m not saying I’m old-fashioned, but we live in a society where the idea of making a commitment is daunting. People think: Be free, be easy, do what you want. I think a lot of that trickles over into how we approach our vocations, whether it’s to marriage, a religious vocation or consecrated life. The idea of a lifelong commitment is a very daunting thing in our particular culture right now because it means basically submitting yourself to somebody else. When someone gets married, it’s no longer “I” – it’s “us.” You are putting the other before yourself. St. John Paul II often quoted from “Gaudium et Spes”: “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”

Do you find in the celebration of the marriage that the congregation includes many people who haven’t darkened the door of a church in years? What opportunity does that present to you?

It’s a huge opportunity. That’s something that weddings and funerals have in common: You get people in the congregation who maybe have not been in church for a long time. The opportunity for evangelization is massive. You don’t get those opportunities often outside of those particular liturgies. One of the challenges of a wedding is that you’re the only person that stands between the entire church and a party. So, to be succinct is important because you’ve only got a short attention span. But, you also have to capitalize on that opportunity, which may be the only time in the next year that that person hears the Gospel.

So what will you try to do to reach those who haven’t been to church in a long time?

A

This is something I do pretty consistently. I obviously speak to the couple about their responsibilities and the audacious step that they’re about to take – because the vows are right after the homily. But, then, I speak to the congregation as well, and I tell them of their responsibility to support the couple. That also includes supporting them in the faith. One of the promises the couple makes is to accept children lovingly from God and to raise them according to the law of Christ and his church. So, it is the congregation’s job to support them as Christian parents. What the congregation is witnessing is the couple conferring the sacrament on one another. And it’s a very interesting sacrament. In all of the other sacraments, the priest or the deacon does it to you. In matrimony, the couple is conferring the sacrament on each other. I’m merely witnessing it, and I bestow a nuptial blessing. I remind the congregation of their responsibility that now that they have witnessed this, they have to be a support to the couple.

Any interesting wedding stories – that we can print?

You know those little crackers – the Goldfish crackers? You’d be amazed at how many goldfish you see at a wedding, and it’s always just out of view of the camera. So, the camera is taking pictures, and the flower girls and the ring bearers are walking up the aisle, and sometimes they’re crying and walking all around. What usually happens is someone behind the camera is jiggling a bag of goldfish, and the kids lock onto it and they see it and they walk right toward the camera, and they get the good pictures. It looks like the kids were so focused. In actual fact, they were on their way to get goldfish.

– Peter Finney Jr.

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