“I now pronounce you husband and wife”: reflections on the heteronormative discourse on marriage ritual of the Catholic Church

Abstract

In a Foucauldian perspective of explicitness of the social construction of sexuality, we analyze the elements of heteronormative discourse that are present, albeit surreptitiously, in the post-conciliar marriage ritual of the Catholic Church in its liturgical and doctrinal dimensions. From a diachronic recension of Western heteronormative discourse, particularly its two major arguments that characterize the current Sexual and Marital Catholic Doctrine. Then there are the social and liturgical elements of ritual marriage with a view to gradual appropriation of elements celebratory German-germâncicos (Christianization) and intrusion slow but growing church in the marriage contract. Finally, comments on the construction of modern historical Matrimonial Ritual and its structuring liturgical-pastoral as well as the relationship between liturgy and catechesis moral, in which the ritual formulas appear as signs of Christian morality, that is, elements of a heteronormative discourse