Priest to reception?

theredskittle

How many of you are inviting your priest to your wedding reception? I was thinking about it, but he is officiating 3 weddings on our date. But regardless of my situ, just wondering what you girls are doing!

mlhw-nh

I would invite him anyway just to be polite.  More than likely he will decline, but I think it is proper ettiquette to invite him.  We are inviting ours. 

ring_pop

I invited our priest. He had 2 weddings that day (including ours) and actually made appearances at both.

GulfCoaster

I invited our priest, but he did not come. 

Even if your priest is officiating multiple weddings that day and you doubt he could make it to your reception, I'd still invite him to the reception just to be polite.

Clare13

I am fortunate that my priest is a good friend.  He has actually taken off after 3:00 on Thursday for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner and after 12:00 on Friday for our wedding and reception.  I'm so excited to have him included in all the wedding events.  When talking to him about most of his weddings, he stated that usually he does not attend the reception but finds it weird when the couple does not invite him. 

lburkey21

We're fortunate enough to have our priest come to Ohio officiate our wedding. He has already told us that he'll be at the rehearsal dinner/cookout and the reception - both of which he normally doesn't do.

Calypso1977

you are supposed to invite your priest/officiant.  ours had a baptism after our wedding so he knew we wouldnt come, but if that had fallen through for some reason, we know that he would ahve come to our reception.

he shoudl also be invited to yoru RD as well.

luvdelilah

Ok, I'll jump in here although everyone will disagree with me - I did not invite our priest to our wedding.  Ours is officiating 2 other weddings that day, plus the usual Friday night/Saturday Mass schedules, so I know that he will not be able to attend.

The un-Catholic part of me says he's made no effort to get to know us, only met with us twice in the past year, and has shot down any and every request we've made to 'personalize' our ceremony (a different reading, a different communion hymn).  He even hung up on our wedding planner why she tried to ask a question about rehearsal times.  All in all, he's made me feel like just another paycheck and even if he could attend, I wouldn't care if he was there.

But yes, its polite etiquette to invite him!

Calypso1977

luv, do you attend Mass regularly?  if so, have you reached out to him to try to get to know him?  not saying his behavior is right, btu i can see how priests can be easily annoyed by people who cruise in to receive a sacrament then disappear until the next time they need one.  and that's not to say that is what you are doing by any means.

luvdelilah

That's totally true - we're sort of "middle of the road" Catholics.  We've been going to this church occasionally for 3 years but not regularly.  He had us do Pre-Cana through the diocese, never asked us any personal questions outside of the usual stuff, and always shuffled us out the door quickly.  But its a huge city church next to a gorgeous park - they've probably used to a lot of "drive-by" weddings!

Whether on us or on him, if I'd felt like he was at all interested in the event, I would have invited him.  Just a little different perspective!

Calypso1977

could also be priest burn out/general apathy too, if he's an older priest.  my sister experienced this with her wedding.  he'd blow off their pre-cana sessions after they drove 1/2 hour to get there, was generally uninterested, then on the day of hte wedding sends another priest to do the ceremony!  the real kicker was that for a variety of reasons she ended up having to have a convalidation 10 years later (long story, not even related to the apathetic priest).

Theresa626

Calypso: 

what the heck?  SHe had a real catholic mass and then it didn't count that whole time?   That is truly awful.  How did that happen?  

meghan.goodson

I invited mine; his was actually the first RSVP I received!
He declined, but because he had to be at the church all day ... I thought it was polite
Now I'm wondering if I should have invited the church's wedding coordinator to the reception! aaahhhh

Calypso1977

theresa, turns out the priest and the parish were not in communion with Rome - he had no authority to perform marriages.

they and the priest all had a good laugh at the convalidation when they got to the question of "are you open to children" and their four kids were sitting in the front row.

Riss91

Calypso, was it a SSPX church?

agapecarrie

SSPX stands for society of st. paul the 10th. This is a traditionalist schism of the church that belives the pauline mass (The one after vatican 2) is invalid and wrong, some even believe the seat of Peter is vacant.  They as a group have continued to attempt sacraments (the priests have real valid ordainations, but they are illicit- meaning they are not in full commnion with the church so they aren't given the proper factulties to celebrate them, except in danger of death).  Marriages are especially a problem because one must be in communion with the diocese to be considered valid.

To clarify... there are some communities that celebrate the Tridentine latin mass validly in communion with Rome and it is completely allowed. The SSPX is an actual schismatic group that have separated.

Riss91

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/cultural-wedding-boards_catholic-weddings_priest-reception?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Cultural%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:615Discussion:380f984b-68ee-4ad1-bc25-3b7f8938128aPost:c8c57258-51a5-429a-a861-3c6c96bc25f1">Re: Priest to reception?</a>:
[QUOTE]SSPX stands for society of st. paul the 10th. This is a traditionalist schism of the church that belives the pauline mass (The one after vatican 2) is invalid and wrong, some even believe the seat of Peter is vacant.  They as a group have continued to attempt sacraments (the priests have real valid ordainations, but they are illicit- meaning they are not in full commnion with the church so they aren't given the proper factulties to celebrate them, except in danger of death).  Marriages are especially a problem because one must be in communion with the diocese to be considered valid. To clarify... there are some communities that celebrate the Tridentine latin mass validly in communion with Rome and it is completely allowed. The SSPX is an actual schismatic group that have separated.
Posted by agapecarrie[/QUOTE]

Yup! Thanks for providing the background. A couple corrections, SSPX is Society of St. Pius X (this group recognizes Benedict XVI as Pope). They are currently engaged in discussions with Rome aimed at full reconciliation. There is also a group called SSPV which is Society of St. Pius V - this is the group that believes the seat of Peter is vacant and basically non-Catholic.

I know Calypso attends the Latin Mass (which both groups are associated with) and was wondering if this was the problem her sister ran into...

Calypso1977

yes, my mom, sister and i are all "refugees" of SSPX.  we all got out about 8 years ago.  my sister was confirmed by archbishop lefevbre (sp?) himself.   i consider it a cult, and i worry for folks that are involved with them now.  our parish growing up was very normal, other than the fact that our two child family was only one of 2 families that had less than 5 kids .  it wasnt until my sister and i moved away and got involved with other SSPX parishes that we started to see things that werent right.  we had a period of maybe 6 months where we were all church-less and didnt know what to do.  it then took us a good 1-2 years to feel ok about attending non SSPX churches, and ok with not covering my head or wearing pants to mass.  because of what was drilled into our heads, there are still to this day some things i struggle with, like communion in the hand (i still to this day dont take it in the hand). 

the mass we attend now is in communion with rome, and is officially a part of the archdiocese of boston so we are good to go.  they offer both the latin and the english.  i feel fortunate my family and i got out.  so many others arent so lucky.

Riss91

Michael and I attended mass at a local SSPX church for a short period before Latin masses were available in our area. Luckily, we found an amazing church only half hour away that has a wonderful Pastor who does a beautiful Solemn/High Mass. There's a mixed group of people - some women wear head coverings, most women wear dresses or skirts. there are a bunch of larger families - but it is distinctly different from the SSPX church we attended. Everyone at our parish takes communion on the tongue, even in the Novus Ordo masses. Our pastor is definitely trying to rid the Novus Ordo mass of the nonsense.

Glad you were able to find an acceptable church and your sister was able to sort things out!

Calypso1977

yeah, me too.  i really consider ourselves lucky.  we felt we knew our faith well enough to question some things.  those questions and solid research helped us.  i also made contact with a wonderful priest who i had known from years ago through SSPX that "got out" as well and he was a fountain of info.  we had seen other priests leave the SSPX during our years with them, and it was always considered "scandalous" and they were deemed to be "fallen away".  now looking back, so many questions are now answered and we know full well why they left.

its funny, i only recently learned that the very early days of the church had folks taking communion in the hand.  taking via tongue came later.  but of course, SSPX told us the hand was bad so of course we believed them.