Why are so many couples getting married outside the Church? —UPDATED

Some answers, from The Atlantic: 

Even though marriage has been a major reason why adults have joined the Church in the past, it’s becoming less so. Between 2000 and 2012, adult baptisms declined by nearly 50 percent, which, [researcher Mark] Gray said, probably has something to do with the declining rates of marriage.

So why are couples choosing to get married outside of the Church? For one thing, there might be a lack of awareness about the specific doctrinal importance the Church places on marriage. “More people are choosing to get married in country clubs and at the beach,” said Gray. “A lot of people are unaware of the importance of marriage and the place it has in Church sacramental life …Younger Catholics are probably not going to have a deep awareness about the sacrament of marriage, even if they self-identify as Catholic and [have] religious beliefs.”

Meanwhile, fewer Americans are getting married generally. From 2000 to 2011, the number of marriages in the United States fell from 2.3 million to 2.1 million, or roughly 0.82 percent of the population getting married each year to roughly 0.68 percent.

But while that’s a factor in declining Catholic marriage rates, the deeper cause is the changing relationship between people and traditional institutions, Gray says. “It’s not just churches, but all kinds of institutions have experienced detachments from the ‘brick and mortar,'” he said. By “brick and mortar,” Gray means in-person religious communities: people physically coming together in churches to worship together. In general, Americans are becoming less affiliated with traditional religious institutions, not just the Catholic Church:From 2007 to 2012, the percentage of the religiously unaffiliated grew from 15 percent to 20 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

Read it all. 

And, for another take, check out this post from two years ago: Why do Catholics have to get married in church? 

A reader writes:

I can tell you why I did – once my husband and I made the decision to get married, we wanted to be married right away. So we were really put off by the fact that sacramental marriage prep takes at least six months. On the other hand, we could drive down to the courthouse, get a license, and get married the next morning. Because of this, we were engaged for a total of three days.

Now, we eventually got the convalidation done – four and a half years after our courthouse marriage and at least two years after we began the convalidation process. But because we went the courthouse route in the beginning, we have been able to be a married couple in all legal and practical terms for all of that time, which was very important to us.