Yegparian: Altar or Alter

“Lav, pav, tzav” (OK, enough, pain) is our saying, perhaps somehow equivalent to “Jamais deux sans trois” (There’s no two without three) in French. I like ours better, since the third opens the door to action, in this case an article.

The issue is wedding locations, the actual ritual, not the reception and festivities that follow. It turns out that the Armenian Apostolic Church has rules that require that this rite can only be performed in a church, at an altar.

I assume this is because of some “blessedness” associated with such sites.

It’s now way past time to alter this rule.

A quarter century ago, a very close friend ended up choosing to have a Protestant Armenian minister marry him and his wife because the Armenian Apostolic Church refused to perform the ceremony at their chosen location.

Last week, I encountered an article in which Catholicos Karekin II was being severely criticized for authorizing an out-of-church wedding because the person getting married was rich/connected and the author implied unsavory circumstances leading to this authorization.

Just this weekend, I learned of another couple who was denied being wedded by the Armenian Apostolic Church because of where they wanted the ceremony performed. The response was a shrug and the observation that the church would thus be denied a fee.

Whatever the mumbo-jumbo “reasons” are for this policy, they are less important than the fact that people are being driven away from an Armenian institution in the diaspora. There has to be a better solution.

If sanctification of some sort is necessary for a “proper” wedding, then why not sprinkle holy water, burn incense, and chant to the priests’ hearts’ content until any given site is sufficiently “holy” and “blessed” to satisfy their mythological masters? Hell, we’re talking about the institution that found a way to reinterpret, coopt, and subsume all kinds of pre-Christian religious rituals into its then-new order—think fire at Diyaruntarach (Presentation of the Lord), water at Vartavar (pagan holiday)/Transfiguration, a pagan goddess’ name, Zadeeg, for the Resurrection, i.e., Easter, grapes for the Assumption of St. Mary, and on and on. Now, all that is deemed sacrosanct, integral, and immutable, but the location of an altar may not be altered?

Spare me, please, any arguments about tradition, propriety, and Christianity. This has nothing to do with anything except an implacable resistance to improvement, based on nothing other than human frailty manifested, in this case, as fear of change.

It’s time we all told the church to get with it or lose our (admittedly grudging) support. Tell all the priests, monks, and bishops you know to put their heads together and come up with a solution, lest they find themselves jobless and bereft of the institution they profess to serve because that institution chose, through their inaction, to be blind to change.

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Garen Yegparian

Asbarez Columnist

Garen Yegparian is a fat, bald guy who has too much to say and do for his own good. So, you know he loves mouthing off weekly about anything he damn well pleases to write about that he can remotely tie in to things Armenian. He's got a checkered past: principal of an Armenian school, project manager on a housing development, ANC-WR Executive Director, AYF Field worker (again on the left coast), Operations Director for a telecom startup, and a City of LA employee most recently (in three different departments so far). Plus, he's got delusions of breaking into electoral politics, meanwhile participating in other aspects of it and making sure to stay in trouble. His is a weekly column that appears originally in Asbarez, but has been republished to the Armenian Weekly for many years.