Sent to marriage

The Ekaterinburg Archbishop condemned legal contracts between spouses

One of the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye Vikenty (Morar), publicly condemned the institution of a marriage contract. Speaking live on Thursday on the Orthodox TV channel “Soyuz” and the radio station “Resurrection,” Bishop Vikenty urged future spouses not to even think about concluding any agreements on the possible division of property. “A marriage contract presupposes divorce from the very beginning - a person is already preparing for it,” the archbishop warned and reminded that spouses, especially believers, must marry “forever, in order to be together until the end of their lives and even after.”

The marriage contract and the general approach to family relationships as a transaction arose from the fact that in society “there is a gradual loss of true values,” Bishop Vikenty emphasized. According to him, many young couples “live prodigal lives, do not get married, do not get married, because already at the beginning there is doubt about whether they will live together or not.” “Western trends like the marriage contract are aimed at weakening the marriage union and the very meaning of marriage,” added the head of the Yekaterinburg diocese.

This is not the first time that Bishop Vincent, in his sermons and appearances in the press, touches on issues of family and marriage. Thus, speaking last July on the Spas TV channel, the archbishop said that “children who are conceived during Lent, in the majority (about 80-90%) are born sick.” “It is not difficult to calculate that the majority of sick children are conceived during Great Lent or other fasts, when the church does not bless living together,” the hierarch explained. The activities of family planning centers also caused disapproval of the Archbishop of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye. “They plan in such a way that only unhealthy children are born,” noted Bishop Vikenty. “And when a believing woman does not listen to them and gives birth to a second, and a third, and a fifth, then beautiful children are born.”

More unexpected was the archbishop's criticism of parents who send their children to choreography classes. “We are destroying our children with these dances, we are destroying their souls, because dancing devastates the human soul. It’s better to be careful and not send children to such harmful actions,” the bishop said in November of the year before. If in this case the archbishop’s statement can be considered his private opinion, then his attitude towards marriage contracts expresses the general church position.

The Russian Orthodox Church has not adopted any official resolutions defining its attitude to marriage contracts, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, chairman of the Synodal Department for Relations between the Church and Society, explained to Vremya Novostei. By comparison, the code of canon law of the Roman Catholic Church clearly states that a marriage subject to any preconditions cannot be considered legal. In Orthodoxy there is no canonical legal norm in this regard, notes Fr. Vsevolod. “Nevertheless,” he emphasizes, “for believers it is obvious that one should not begin life together with suspicions (which in this case will certainly be present), this means an unwillingness to remain faithful and be sacrificial throughout one’s life and, by and large, means unwillingness to love. This poisons the life of two people together and makes them fear for the future of their relationship.”

The institution of a marriage contract can only with some stretch be attributed to “newfangled Western trends.” For the first time, the attitude to marriage as a contract was formulated by ancient Roman jurists, who considered the marital union as an ordinary civil contract - Romans and Roman women quite often entered into contracts that indicated the procedure for returning the dowry in the event of divorce (which was not uncommon in pagan Rome).

Domestic law - both pre-revolutionary and Soviet - did not recognize marriage contracts. For the first time, the procedure for concluding an agreement between spouses was prescribed in the Family Code of 1995, which is still in force today. According to Art. 40 of the code, “a marriage contract can be concluded both before the state registration of marriage and at any time during the marriage”; it defines “the property rights and obligations of spouses in marriage and (or) in the event of its dissolution.” In the West, where contracts between spouses came into use much earlier and are concluded more often, not only aspects related to property are stipulated: for example, in the marriage contract of Hollywood actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman there was a clause in which the husband was charged with the obligation to return toilet seat after using the toilet.

Mikhail MOSHKIN