The Most Religious Wedding Money Can Buy?

 

                             Madonna dell’Orto Roman Catholic Church, Venice 

The hideous spectacle of the Jeff Bezos/Lauren Sanchez wedding in Venice has mercifully come to an end. Bezos is one of the world's richest people, so spending an estimated $50 dollars on the nuptials was chump change, but the thought of it all was sickening. Of course, the rich, the famous ,and the naricissistic showed up for the happy couple even though Venetians were not star struck and pushed back hard against the invasion. 

I still have lingering questions about how this wedding between two divorced people, one of them not RC took place in a Catholic church. And what priest was willing to preside at such an ostentatious event? 

When I was in ministry United Church congregants marrying Catholics were required to prove their baptismal status and, depending on the priest, had to promise to raise their children in Catholicism. Sometimes they were expected to attend RC boot camp before the ceremony. Some gave up and married in the other congregation, to the dismay of staunch RC family members. 

Could it possibly be that money buys just about anything, regardless of supposedly hard and fast doctrinal rules and regs? Ah well, I'm sure this will be a "forever" marriage, although I'm dubious that the Madonna was smiling.