If you hate the sugarcoated, Disney, Hollywood approach to marriage, this Fr. Andrey's vehement words will resonate with you
If you hate the sugarcoated, Disney, Hollywood approach to marriage, this vehement video will resonate with you. (Full transcript provided below).
Fr. Andrey Tkachev's pet peeve seems to be the modern light, flippant approach to marriage. He refuses to sugarcoat anything, so in our politically correct time, he may seem overly harsh and on edge.
But he doesn't seem to care. He wants people to get it through their heads that marriages have become all show and no substance, all about glitter and not about God... and that this is desperately, horribly WRONG.
Transcript:
Marriage in church doesn't keep people together. Who doesn't know this? Even priests, married in church, divorce. And priests' wives cheat. We know lots of such terrifying stories.
Nothing holds people together anymore. People have gone mad.
The issue is that not everyone should be married in church. Some people should be turned away.
And some people should be worked with at length to prepare them for the marriage in church. But not like: I want to get married in church! How great! How much is it? 500 rubles. You can come tomorrow. Just like that.
If a priest marries 100 couples and out of these hundred 85 turned out to get divorced, the priest is a villain then.
The marriage in church has been turned into a beautiful ceremony, into a rented limo, a doll on the hood, a cameraman, into rice on the road, beautiful white and black rugs on the bride and groom, into beautiful rings, some nonsense, into two-to-three-day drunk parties. All of it requires a lot of preparations.
Instead, the energy should be placed when the priest talks, teaches, explains everything to them. The priest should pray with them together,
make them go to church every Sunday. Forbid them to sleep together before the marriage. And teach them about the marital relationship.
Nobody will tell you about it except for me. They will wish you happiness and health… There is nothing else in the brains. Nobody will wish you anything else.
And I have to tell you that you should be faithful to each other. So if you fight, you should come to me and we will decide how you can put up with each other. So you don't complain about each other to your friends and parents. So the wife will be obedient, so the husband works 3 jobs for the family. So he tries his best to be a bread-winner and not a parasite.
One need to tell them the truth. And one has to say, too, that in the prayers first we say Ivan and Svetlana, not the other way round.
And that abortions are forbidden, that they should have more than 2 children. Not 2, but more than 2. Immediately marrying you should plan to have more than 2 children. Because 2 is just to sustain, we need to multiply.
Don't you dare come here with the question of divorcing. I married you so that you live eternally together. Come to me for communion, baptism, confession.
This is all because of the permissiveness of the parents and secret blessings of lazy priests. It is a crime. It is a conspiracy. We need to change that before it's too late.
Do you think we will anger God for a long time? How long can it keep going?
That's why the marriage in church is too serious to be trifled with.