‘They lived happily ever after’? Practices of sustaining the durability of Roman Catholic marriage in the context of transformations in intimacy in late modernity

Abstract

Although in late-modern societies the idea of a ‘forever’ relationship has lost its dominant status, it is consistently upheld by the Roman Catholic Church. The aim of the article is to analyse the practices of sustaining the durability of Catholic marriage, which we treat as ways of adapting to the tensions between late-modern models of intimacy and the rule of indissolubility of marriage. We refer to data collected in qualitative research among educated Roman Catholic women in Poland. Using the lived religion approach, we demonstrate how these women sacralise actions within marriage that have been secularised in the late-modern world, while also using late modernity as a reservoir of meanings, leading to hybridisation of religious practices. We argue that sustaining conservative religious rules is often based on actions in which religious aspects are negotiated and transformed. Religion operates ‘non-autonomously’ in these processes, entering a relationship with elements that are originally not religious.

Introduction

The transformations in intimacy characteristic of late-modern societies have resulted in major diversification of the models of living as a couple, with marriage being just one of the possible options. There are, of course, many factors involved in ensuring that a couple stays together, but a significant role today is attributed to relationship work (Gabb and Fink, 2015: 17–37), as well as both partners gaining various types of benefits from the union (Giddens, 1992). Although for many people lasting relationships remain the point of reference in planning their intimate lives, the idea of a ‘forever’ relationship has lost its dominant status in the secular world. Yet it is consistently upheld by the Roman Catholic Church, which sees marriage as the only legitimate fulfilment of human sexuality. The Church defines marriage in terms of the rule of indissolubility as an exclusive union of a woman and man, assuming procreation and able to be dissolved only with the death of one of the spouses. The tension between this Catholic rule and the late-modern transformations in intimate relations provides the broad context and inspiration for our analysis.

In the article, we refer to data collected in qualitative research that we conducted among educated, religiously engaged Roman Catholic women living in the largest cities in Poland. Our objective is to analyse the practices serving to sustain the durability of Catholic marriage. We treat these practices as ways of adapting to the tensions the women participating in our research experience between the late-modern models of intimate life they encounter in secularising big-city environments and the rule of indissolubility of marriage imposed by the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. Late-modern models of intimate life move away from regulative traditions (Gross, 2005) and are constituted by individualisation, reflexivity, flexibility, and contingency (Giddens, 1992). We are interested in the ways in which, in everyday life, through routine and non-routine actions and at various stages of a relationship, the durability of Catholic marriage is sustained, as well as which types of resources, religious and secular, the women we studied use in these practices. In our analysis, we concentrate on the women’s perspective, while aware that other actors, for example, current or future husbands, are also involved in the process of sustaining the durability of marriage. This gendered focus gives us a deeper insight into how marriage and religion are lived by women in conservative religions.

In the article, we use a lived religion perspective (Ammerman, 2021), which employs a broad view of religious practices, seeing them as bundles of actions referring to both the institutional and non-institutional elements of religion. We see religious practices as intersecting with other social practices, and the elements of various practices as dynamic components that can migrate between practices. Our analysis shows that, to sustain the durability of marriage, the women we studied make use of complex practices containing tensions between religious and non-religious meanings or their hybridisation. Catholic women, on one hand, carry out processes of sacralisation of those actions within their relationship that have been secularised in the late-modern world, while, on the other hand, they use late modernity as a certain reservoir of meanings and practices that are implemented in religious practices, which finally brings about their hybridisation. Using the case of reproduction of the Catholic rule of indissolubility of marriage we contribute to the broader research on conservative religions. We show that sustaining conservative religious rules is often based on actions in which religious aspects are negotiated and transformed. This article also adds to the discussion on the role and forms of the presence of religion in the secularising and individualising world of late modernity. We demonstrate that religion operates ‘non-autonomously’, entering a relationship with elements of meanings and practices that are originally not religious in nature.

Between late-modern transformations and the Roman Catholic Church. The context of Poland

The transformations in intimacy taking place in contemporary societies are reflected, among others, in such factors as growing numbers of divorces, cohabitation, extramarital births, and decisions not to have children (Lesthaeghe, 2020), as well as the falling popularity of religious rites of passage (Rejowska, 2021). These phenomena also apply to Poland, which, in terms of declaration of religious belonging, is still one of the most religious countries in Europe (Pew Research Centre, 2018), although it is currently experiencing accelerated processes of secularisation and privatisation of religion (CBOS, 2022b). The largest Polish cities where our respondents live have become ‘centres of non-religiosity’ (CBOS, 2022a). Indicators of religiosity, as measured by both self-declaration of faith and level of practice, are declining fastest among the youngest people and residents of large cities with higher education.

In Poland, similarly to Western societies, the decline in individual religiosity has affected the moral sphere and brought a liberalisation of attitudes. Moral rigour among Poles is declining and acceptance of divorce, but also cohabitation, premarital sex, contraception, and homosexuality, are on the rise (Kościańska, 2009; Marody, 2019: 26) (although a gap remains between Poland and Western Europe; see Pew Research Centre, 2018). Marital patterns in Poland are changing. Between 2000 and 2017, the number of religious weddings in Poland decreased by 10 percentage points, from 72% to 62.3% (Rejowska, 2021). Surveys reveal a changing perception of marriage and its indissolubility, as well as a rise in acceptance of divorce among Poles. Currently, one in three marriages in Poland ends in dissolution (CBOS, 2019). The increasing rate of annulments of marriages within the Roman Catholic Church also reflects this trend. At the end of 1989, there were around 3000 unresolved applications for a marriage annulment in the Church’s ecclesiastical courts in Poland. At the end of 2016, in contrast, there were around 8000 such issues (Paprzycka and Mianowska, 2020: 83).

All these phenomena have not escaped the attention of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, both at the local level (Szwed, 2018) and more broadly. In the exhortation Amoris laetitia, Pope Francis (2016) referred to the ‘culture of the ephemeral’ influencing the instability of relationships and a consumerist approach to them. The Roman Catholic Church, despite its critical reflection on its previous, defensive approach and often abstract, theological teaching about marriage without consideration for the intricacies of modern lives (Francis, 2016: 39), absolutely maintains its position regarding the indissolubility of marriage. This union is regarded as established by God and symbolising his covenant with humanity. As a sacrament, therefore, it cannot be dissolved by any human decision. The Church traces the causes of the crisis of marriage, challenging its unity and indissolubility, to the secularised external society, and sees the remedy as being actions of a religious nature.

A similar position is adopted by the local Roman Catholic Church in Poland, which perceives a danger to marriage in the cultural transformations taking place in Western societies, which are also seeping into Poland. The Church hierarchy criticises individualistically oriented culture, the correlates of which they discern at the individual level as a ‘divorce mentality’ or ‘contraception mentality’ (Szwed, 2018). Owing to the Church’s close contacts with the conservative ruling party, Law and Justice, and conservative non-governmental organisations (e.g. Ordo Iuris), this diagnosis and the accompanying pro-family demands enter the political discourse. In recent years, the idea of protection and support for family based on a lasting, heterosexual marriage with children has become a constant element of the right-wing political agenda and the basis of public policies in Poland (Graff and Korolczuk, 2022).

The tensions between changing models of intimacy and family life in Poland and the conservative position of the Roman Catholic Church concerning marriage issues provide an important context for the practices of Roman Catholics analysed in this article. It is also worth remembering that our interviewees operate in big-city environments characterised by intensive secularisation. The desire to maintain indissoluble Catholic marriage is therefore reinforced both by the still present domination of Roman Catholicism in the symbolic sphere in Poland and by the threat posed by the alternative models of practices available in large cities.

Research on marriage and religion

A growing body of research has focused on the relations between religion and marriage. Most studies, however, have not focused explicitly on sustaining the durability of marriage, but mainly on issues such as division and negotiation of gender roles (Bartkowski, 2001; Konieczny, 2013), female agency within conservative groups, or negotiations between different ideological frameworks, such as patriarchalism and egalitarianism (Chong, 2008). Many of them emphasise the dynamic nature of marriage, accentuating ‘doing’ over ‘being’ (Avishai, 2008; Bartkowski, 1999), which is coherent with our approach. Various studies show that modern religious actors, surrounded by different, competing worldviews, must navigate their religiosity and marriage on a daily basis to cope with social pressures and challenges, as well as reduce contradictions or normative conflicts (Beaman, 2001; Gallagher and Smith, 1999; Wolkomir, 2004). In this article, we perceive the actions of the women we interviewed as ‘a semiconscious, self-authoring project’ (Avishai, 2008: 413) of being religious and practising religious marriage in the secularising context of Polish cities.

The literature indicates that one possible reaction to the increasing liberalisation of the sphere of intimacy is a retreat into social bubbles, which brings a feeling of safety and being surrounded by people that think alike (Inglehart and Norris, 2019; Wolkomir, 2004). As a result, social actors protect traditional patterns from the influence of new cultural models. Michelle Wolkomir (2004) analyses one example of such activities and describes how the religious wives of gay men create so-called ‘ideological safety nets’ to manage meanings and emotions. These groups allow them to define homosexuality as an illness that should be subjected to spiritual healing, and to perceive their efforts to cure men in sacred terms, as a calling from God.

Contemporary studies on marriage and religion note another strategy that conservative religious actors undertake to adapt to the liberal world, which is a selective borrowing from gender ideologies other than traditional/patriarchal ones. Researchers indicate a tension between ideology and practice (Bartkowski, 1999; Gallagher and Smith, 1999). As Gallagher and Smith (1999) show, to adapt to economic market changes, Evangelicals in the United States preserve symbolic traditionalism (men’s headship) but embrace pragmatic egalitarianism (inclusion of women in the labour market). Researchers also strongly emphasise the partially open and negotiable nature of gender roles and spousal relationships (Bartkowski, 1999; Irby, 2014). Women in conservative religions often bargain with the patriarchy and try to reinterpret a religious institution’s doctrine to maximise their agency, but at the same time be compliant and stay within the religious community (Bartkowski, 2001; Beaman, 2001).

Certain practices of doing religion and marriage therefore seem to be semiconscious or pragmatic (Avishai, 2008). Nevertheless, religious actors do not perceive marriage as lacking sacred meanings (Dollahite et al., 2012; Hatch et al., 2016). In their view, marriage is ‘something more’: more than the self, more than the couple, more than the family. It involves God and transcends the social and cultural perception of marriage (Dollahite et al., 2012: 351). The fact that some social actors still perceive marriage as a ‘sacred union’ provides a counterpoint for narratives about the de-institutionalisation of contemporary marriage.

Religion lived in marriage – theoretical framework

The analyses conducted in this article refer to previous research on marriage and religion. Our main theoretical framework, however, is the lived religion approach (Ammerman, 2021; McGuire, 2008). We treat this as a broad perspective of examining the forms of presence of religion in people’s everyday lives and the intersection between religious and other aspects of social life. We take from the lived religion approach, first, the understanding of religion in terms of social practices. We follow the concept of Nancy Ammerman (2021), who defines religious practices as bundles of activities that assume a direct or indirect reference to reality ‘beyond the ordinary’. In this sense, our analysis concentrates more on what people do, rather than on how far or close their beliefs or practices are from the ideal type of beliefs promoted by the institutional Church. Our approach concentrates on the practice of religion, and more specifically on practising Catholic marriage and sustaining its durability (including discursive components of such practices; Schatzki, 2017). This also resonates with the theoretical and research trends present in sociology of the family, which perceive marriage and family in terms rather of processes and practices than durable structures (Finch, 2007; Morgan, 2011).

Second, we take from lived religion a broad understanding of the religious, which is not confined to the institutional dimension. As Meredith McGuire (2008: 4) notes, religion at the individual level is a variable, often disorderly amalgam of beliefs and practices not necessarily comprising what religious institutions regard as important. But this also does not mean that institutional elements are insignificant in how religion is lived or that people in their practices do not refer to the meanings, rules, and other resources that the institution offers them. In the practices analysed in this article, Catholic women adhere to the rule of indissolubility of marriage binding in the Church, while actually sustaining it in their practices in a diverse, often hybrid way.

Third, we assume that religious practices are both habitual and emergent in nature. They can both sustain certain models of action and transform them. The lived religion perspective assumes that people ‘can bring agency and creativity to any situation’ (Ammerman, 2021: 18). Yet this does not mean producing radically subjective, individualised versions of religion. The elements that construct religious practices are intersubjective; they are the outcome of shared experiences and recurring actions (McGuire, 2008: 12–13). When we analyse practices carried out by women to sustain Catholic marriage, therefore, we are rather looking for emerging regularities or models of actions (Ammerman, 2021: 19).

Fourth, we employ a perspective present in the lived religion approach, which sees religious practices as intersecting and interacting with other social practices. The same actions undertaken by an individual can also be part of various practices, for example, practising religion and marriage. Moreover, the elements of specific practices (e.g. meanings, competences) can migrate between them or be stopped from this migration. Crucial, therefore, for our analysis is Ammerman’s (2021: 17) claim that ‘to study lived religion is to analyze those (practices) boundary-crossing tactics, as well as the possibilities – and constraints – offered by each set of circumstances’.

Methodology

The results of the research we refer to are part of a project on religion in the everyday lives of Roman Catholic women in Poland. Within the project we conducted individual in-depth interviews with 48 cisgender, heterosexual women with higher education (from bachelor’s degrees to doctorates), living in large cities (over 250,000 residents), aged between 23 and 44, members of Catholic groups and communities (both single-sex and exclusively female). Since we agreed on an upper age limit of 44, this meant that we were able to study Catholic women in various life situations, including having children.

Our interviewees can certainly be identified as devout Catholics with close ties to the Church as an institution. All our respondents were born in Catholic, more or less observant families, and socialised to Catholicism. They declared regular participation in religious practices and generally did not question the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (e.g. on women’s issues, reproduction, priesthood).

The group was dominated by women aged between 30 and 40 years. Two-thirds of the participants were married, and only three were in an informal relationship, including one divorcee (marriage annulled by the Church). Thirteen of our interlocutors were single. More than half of them (26) had children, including 16 with 3 or more. It is worth emphasising that, although the subject matter of this article concerns marriage, we analyse the statements of all the women, including those who are not married, since we assume that practices of doing Catholic, indissoluble marriage are already beginning when unmarried people are dating and/or looking for a partner with the intention of finding a lifelong, exclusive relationship (many of our already-married interviewees referred to this period of their relationship with the husband). The interviews lasted on average 2 hours and took place in cafes or participants’ homes, and were recorded with the women’s approval. In the individual interviews, we did not ask our interlocutors directly about their attitude to the Church’s rules on marriage. Either this question arose spontaneously or the women’s position on it could be reconstructed based on their various statements on marriage and family. None of them openly questioned the principle of indissolubility of marriage, although one had experienced the Church procedure of declaration of nullity. Below we will analyse the three main models of practices undertaken by our interviewees in everyday life to sustain Catholic marriage. These models are attaining religious homogeneity, sacralisation of everyday married life, and embedment of marriage in Catholic networks. Our analysis points to the contexts in which they emerge, as well as how religious aspects are negotiated and transformed within them and how non-religious meanings gain religious senses and justifications.

Looking for a godly husband and balancing levels of religiosity. Practices of religious homogeneity

The research participants regarded religious homogeneity as a factor increasing the chances of creating a lasting relationship. This confirms the rule that people looking for partners generally follow religious, political (Huber and Malhotra, 2017), or educational (Schwartz, 2010) homophily. Nevertheless, whereas aspiring to homogeneity need not always be an entirely conscious process, in the case of the women participating in our study it was reflexive, and often even methodical, based on a clear plan of action. In this part of the article, we focus on religious homogeneity practices in reference to two areas of actions: concerning the search for a partner and balancing levels of religiosity in an already existing relationship.

For our interviewees, religion was a key factor that they considered in their choice of partner. The women often looked for a man who not only declared Catholicism (denominational homogamy) but was also similarly religiously engaged, referring to this figure as a ‘converted Catholic’. This expression refers to someone who is Catholic not only in a cultural, habitual sense, but whose religiosity is deepened, encompassing not only belonging but also believing. The figure of a ‘converted Catholic’ alludes to the Polish context, where Catholicism is a kind of ‘default’ religion. However, although the majority of Poles (71.3%) (GUS, 2023) declare belonging to the Catholic Church, their religiosity is internally differentiated and represents different streams.

Among our interviewees’ most common actions for finding a suitable partner was prayer. Maria, who is single, says the following about her strategy aiming to attain religious homogeneity in a future relationship:

For a few years I’ve been praying for conversion for my (future) husband. (…) For example, I request masses for that. (…) For conversion of this man. I don’t pray for a good husband any more, because I know he will be. (…) But I pray for him to be a convert. (…) When standing at the altar, I would like to know this is a person who truly knows Jesus (Maria).

It might seem that the ideal of marital homogeneity would be a high level of religiosity presented by both spouses. Our interviewees’ practices, however, indicate that aspiring to religious homogeneity in fact means achieving similar ‘patterns of religious attendance’ and a similar level of ‘theological conservatism’ (Vaaler et al., 2009), rather than religious excellence. Karolina, who is now married, told us that she was at first not interested in getting to know her current husband, as she was dissuaded by the fact that he was a student of theology, which she equated with overly committed religiosity.

Since it was important for the research participants for their partner’s religiosity to be on a similar level to their own, they often saw it as self-evident that the search for a partner should begin in the immediate surroundings, meaning their own religious community. Some of the women approached this process ‘methodically’, with religious homogeneity as one of the criteria organising this search. Alina said that she had divided the characteristics of her future husband in terms of importance, with the most important one being ‘love for Jesus’:

I’m very orderly, let’s say; I like order. I like good organisation. And I went over this list in order to divide these things into two categories – category A and category B. Category A is what is very important. And category B is what is not important and not crucial. Things that would be nice. And then, of course, I marked the AA category, that is the most important, even inalienable, which is that he needs to love Jesus… That was the most important.

Alina’s actions are an illustration of Weberian value rationality, since her target action, the search for a husband, was subordinated to concrete values – love for Jesus. This does not mean, however, that such relationships are devoid of emotions such as love or desire. The relationship between rationality, calculability, or efficiency and emotions (e.g. anxiety that one has not been elected to salvation) was demonstrated by Weber, and every rationalisation can have some ‘irrational’ basis.

Such ‘rationalisation of intimate relationships’ (Illouz, 2007: 30) would not be possible without the development of the ‘liberal narrative of choice’ (Illouz, 2007: 79), disseminated by particular streams of psychotherapy and feminism. Both therapeutic discourse and feminism ‘demanded that women be both surveyors and surveyed’ (Illouz, 2007: 32). In line with this assumption, women should be their own ‘objects of scrutiny’, analyse their values and objectives, and then choose the means for achieving them appropriately. Putting together a list of demanded attributes in a partner is a rationalised practice that assumes that a woman has a choice. It demands introspection and subsequently verbalisation of her needs and their calculation in the spirit of the recommendations of therapeutic discourse and the demands of feminism. The cases we analysed show that conservative religious circles also make use of the resources of the secular and more liberal world, tailoring them to their own needs, as they do not function in a cultural vacuum. However, these do not have to always be direct and fully conscious borrowings, but also some kind of ‘leakages’ from therapeutic discourse, or, speaking more broadly, (neo)liberal culture of individualism.

Another example of subordination to the process of rationalisation was constant monitoring of the women’s own and their husbands’ religiosity levels. Such a process of ‘value rationalisation’ and continual evaluation of one’s own feelings and emotions is possible ‘only when women carefully take themselves as objects of scrutiny, control their emotions, assess choices, and choose their preferred course of action’ (Illouz, 2007: 37). In this sense, we observe not only a process of fusing of religion and everyday life (Ammerman, 2014) but also one of externalisation and objectivisation of religiosity, which in specific contexts becomes a separate part of internal life and an ‘object’ subject to constant evaluation. Based on our interviewees’ statements, we can conclude that, to attain religious homogeneity within the relationship, a woman should monitor her religiosity so that it is not uncomfortable for her husband (regardless of whether her religiosity is higher or lower). Checking one’s own religiosity in this way to ensure that it remains within the ‘norm’ means that the individual needs of religious development become secondary. As Dominika, a local leader of a women’s religious group, puts it: ‘my life can be a constant prayer, but only one that won’t put my husband off me’. The reason for this is the hierarchy of values she declares: ‘I especially (have to be careful) not to lose myself in the (religious community), because I have to remember that first I am a woman, wife and mother’. The same interviewee notes that women tend to lose themselves in religiosity at the cost of marital relations. As she points out, however, laywomen should sometimes rein in their religious fervour, as ‘they aren’t nuns’. Therefore, in some way, they should remain lay and practise inner-world ascetism. Importantly, in this situation, the burden of emotional work rests on women, to ensure they remain ‘within the norm’.

Although the research participants perceived women’s religiosity as something ‘naturally’ at the highest level and more emotional, they also thought that women should control it. While in other cases, according to the traditionalist Catholic narrative, women ought not to suppress their innate, essential characteristics, in the case of religiosity, our respondents recommended restraining emotionality as a way to ensure the sustainability of a marriage. Similarly to psychological discourse, which advises how to manage feelings and control emotional life, the analysed narratives suggest managing religious life and surrendering to certain ‘healthy standards’. The practice of tempering female religiosity was supportive for both the institution of marriage and patriarchal culture, as exuberant women’s religiosity could be a threat to the men’s authority in the marriage.

At this point, it is worth noting that the practices of balancing religiosity were strongly androcentric in nature. In the cases when the interviewed women perceived their husband’s religiosity as stronger than their own, there was an expectation that the woman would adapt to the man and ‘catch up’ in some way. As Dorota, a married mother of three, put it, her husband is an example to her and ‘the engine that pulls me in that direction’. With some of our research participants, the husband regulated the whole family’s religiosity, deciding on (or agreeing to) certain practices or not. Małgorzata, a married mother of four, explained that ‘the husband is the head of the family’ and has the final say, for instance, regarding going away for recollections or a pilgrimage.

Whereas female religiosity is an object of control and monitoring, male religiosity demands a certain ‘space’ for development. Our respondents frequently expressed the view that when the man has a lower level of religiosity than the woman, she should give him time to grow into it on his own and come to appreciate the role of God in his life. It is also possible to support the partner’s religiosity discreetly, without pushing, such as by praying for this or adopting, in the spirit of value rationality, the partner’s ‘prayer duties’. Zuzanna, for example, recites ‘two decades’ of the Rosary – one for herself and one for her husband, while also hoping that when his religiosity is awakened, he will ‘take over’ his decade. Religiosity is thus externalised and becomes measurable in sacraments, masses, or decades of the Rosary. Significantly, the point of reference for the process of balancing the husband and wife’s religiosity levels is the survival of the relationship, which is seen as an overriding objective that demands compromise.

Summing this up, the analysis indicates that processes of rationalisation of intimate relationships, characteristic of late modernity (Illouz, 2007), can also be traced in religious unions. One can see ‘leakages’ from the culture of individualism and therapeutic discourse, highlighting the importance of choice, self-analysis of one’s needs, and control over one’s emotions and actions. However, these narratives are combined with patriarchal elements: maintenance of marriage is a priority and the man’s religiosity is the main point of reference. Sustaining the durability of marriage is a goal to which religion is also subordinate. In this way, religion becomes a means to an end and is subject to rationalisation. Paradoxically, such rationalisation of religion limits the scope and intensity of religion: it is religious homogeneity (which sometimes requires reining in of one’s religiosity), and not religious excellence, that is the main aim.

Making marriage religious again. Practices of sacralisation of everyday married life

Sacralisation of everyday married life is the second type of practices that we distinguished which sustain the durability of a marriage. The process of sacralisation involves attributing a supernatural meaning derived from transcendence to the situations, actions, or relations that constitute everyday routine. In this practice, religious meanings are given to practices that may have not religious purposes, such as eating, cooking, and hygiene, but also interactions referring to intimacy and generating emotional bonds.

The importance of sacred references and justifications is visible at the stage of determining the structure of the marriage, meaning the relationship between the positions of husband and wife. Our interlocutors’ marital roles gain meanings derived from God’s vocation and the transcendent order. With this come consequences. First, roles in the marriage understood in this way appear eternal and permanent. Perceiving sacred meaning in the positions that are adopted stabilises the marriage and implies its immutable nature. The husband’s dominant role in the decision-making process and the wife’s subordinate role, or the complementarity of spouses that some of the respondents identified, are therefore not merely a social convention. According to our interlocutors, they are rooted in the sacred and therefore belong to the transcendent order and are unarguable. Second, sacralisation, by routinising certain practices connected with roles and positions, limits the need to negotiate them and reduces the risk of potential conflicts associated with the division of family duties. Giving sacred meanings to roles in marriage takes on special importance in the context of secularisation, as well as the growing cultural complexity in which religious identifications are only one of many possible choices. This practice, which points to the sacred roots of the everyday, in a way, reduces the risk of relationship breakdown resulting from the uncertainty and complexity that are typical of late-modern culture.

Our interviewees also sacralise the structure of marriage by including God in this relationship. When speaking about the marital hierarchy, many respondents referred to a divine ‘pyramid’ or ‘marital triangle’ formed by the husband and wife (Daria) and at ‘the top (of which) is the Lord’ (Natalia). This triadic structure determines everyday marital life, and according to the interviewees – for example, Julia, quoted below – influences ways both of resolving crisis situations and of constructing intimate relations. Another implication of this triadic structure is sacralisation of the emotions that build the marital relationship. The couple’s love, whose sources transcend human experiences, gains sacred meaning, as they are derived from God at the top of the marital pyramid.

So in the sense that, if I don’t believe in anything, if for example, let’s say, my faith is based on the love of another person, so let’s say I get married and I’m in love with my husband and put him in the place of the Lord, so he is the most important for me. Then if I’m let down by him, let’s say he cheats on me, at that point there’s nothing I can do, I don’t know, but hang myself. Because my life loses its meaning. But the Lord always repairs and gives chances, right? And if I believe in that, then I’m not afraid of being alone. (Julia)

Practices of sacralisation gain a particular significance amid various experiences that threaten marital stability (e.g. adultery, violence). Although our interviewees appraised these experiences as ‘extreme’ and traumatic, at the same time they interpreted them as a sign or test from God or as an offering that can be ‘given to Jesus’ to ‘find solace’ (Lena). It is not the crisis situation alone that acquires a sacred meaning here, but also women’s agency in this respect. Our interviewees see coping with a crisis as a result not only of their personal effort, but above all of divine ‘grace’ (Lena), ‘calling’ (Adrianna), and an element of God’s plan. The emotional work a woman must do to manage her emotions (e.g. forgive, accept) as well as those of others (e.g. relieving her husband’s tensions, frustration, or indignation) is perceived as a result either of intervention of the sacred (e.g. Saint Rita) or of the performative power of prayer. Lena, who was first cheated on by her husband and was then herself unfaithful, while praying took responsibility for the marital crisis, but perceived its resolution (e.g. dealing with the suffering) as a result of supernatural actions – the influence of the saints.

The sacralisation of conflicts and ways of solving them can also be interpreted as a practice promoting greater flexibility in the structure of marriage and its adaptive qualities. Attributing sacred meaning to challenging experiences increases acceptance of difficulties and the perception of marriage as a ‘catch-all’ reality with room for both the normative form and various deviations. Practices of sacralisation thereby become a way of avoiding the potential negative consequences of violating the rules of maintaining a Catholic marriage. These are consequences which, in a religious context, have soteriological significance. For religious people, breakup of a marriage not only means breaking a certain structure, but is also a sin, and therefore threatens salvation.

Marriage safety nets in the secular world. Practices of embedding marriage in Catholic networks

The durability of marriage is also maintained via practices which aim at embedding the union in Catholic networks, meaning systems of individuals, groups, and organisations invoking Catholicism’s values and rules system. In our interviewees’ case, a key role was played by religious groups and communities in which they, and often also their husbands, were members. One respondent reflected on the stabilising influence on the marriage of joint participation:

I’m not saying that everything is rosy and that all marriages in Christian communities (…) are great (…), but I have the sense that it is much harder for them to decide on steps like divorces, that it’s not like now in these times when half of marriages break up (…) There are even studies showing that a much smaller percentage of married couples belonging to such communities break up. (Jowita)

In practice, the process of joining and engaging in a community often proves to be demanding as it necessarily involves making compromises and reconciling the couple’s different expectations. Paradoxically, therefore, actions intended in the long run to strengthen the relationship can, in the short term, also cause transitional crises between the couple. Ultimately, however, the women saw shared belonging to religious groups as a benefit, since it allowed both husband and wife to develop spiritually, encouraged them to spend time together, and freed them from the need to negotiate the space for individual religious activity.

As already noted, the Catholics we studied are educated, usually professionally active women functioning in secularised, big-city contexts. Thanks to the practices of being embedded in Catholic networks, they obtain access to environments in which values important to them, such as those concerning reproduction or marriage, are legitimised. These environments play the role of marriage safety nets (Wolkomir, 2004: 753); they form alternative structures to the big-city, mostly secular environments in which the women we studied operate (e.g. at work). A ‘group of people professing Christian values’, as Daria calls her community, confirms the legitimacy of the Church’s teachings and the correctness of abiding by them in everyday life, as well as giving a sense of understanding which is lacking in relations formed in the secular world. In this respect, these communities are largely spaces of resistance to the influences of the secular environment on the Catholic marriage, although, as we show below, they are not entirely immune to this influence.

The community’s stabilising influence on a marriage concerns not only legitimisation of its Catholic formula amid the pluralisation of the forms of family life occurring in the late-modern world but also the couple’s relationship. Embedding marriage in a system of group references increases the responsibility to maintain a durable relationship – in addition to the vows made to the spouse and God, it also becomes a kind of promise to the community. In this sense, embedment in the network of Catholic connections can be seen as a form of reduction of the risk that the other party will no longer cooperate in reproducing the indissolubility of marriage. The power of the stabilising but also the coercive role of the community is shown emphatically by the case of Liliana. Her husband’s violent behaviour led to her leaving home and applying for civil divorce. As part of the community to which the woman belonged refused to accept this fact, she was increasingly marginalised in the group and ultimately left it. Although the marriage was eventually also annulled in a Church court, this experience of group ostracism remains acute for her, showing that Catholic networks are an important element of social control and secure the institutional rules concerning marriage.

Joint participation in a religious community also stabilises the relationship as a result of the socialising effect of the group on the couple. This of course particularly applies to groups aimed at married couples or entire families. The members of such groups learn what it means to be a wife and husband, although the models of marital relations promoted vary according to the group. One of our interviewees, Adrianna, mentioned that she took from the community the belief that the husband is the head of the family, while another (Helena) emphasised the group’s role in communicating the model of the man engaged in family life and childcare. While there is some heterogeneity within these institutional patterns, none of them challenges the binary and essentialist approach to gender. Education about marital roles may also take place in the non-mixed communities in which the spouses participate individually. A 35-year-old mother of 3 children recalls her husband’s participation in recollections for men as follows:

My husband returned from one (recollections event) after a talk that stuck with him for a very long time and is still there (…). The talk was about giving the best part of yourself, and it was stated outright that you give the best part of yourself at work, when you go with ironed clothes, shaven, smiling, don’t get angry, and then you come home so exhausted that you don’t have energy left for anything. (Helena)

Some tensions related to negotiating roles in a couple may be channelled through the community, such as by defining in the group what expectations are legitimate towards the partner or what appropriate marital relations should look like. However, the community’s socialising influence on the couple is not limited to communicating abstract models but also involves normalising crises as parts of married life. Although Catholic networks set impassable boundaries in the form of the rule of indissolubility, within them negotiating what marriage is and how to sustain its permanence is possible. Preserving the durability of the relationship is not based here on discursive idealisation of marriage as a space of problem-free coexistence, as often presented in the Church’s discourse. Rather, it involves constructing the marriage as work on the relationship, entailing effort and inevitable problems which resembles late-modern narratives. The testimonies of other married couples, who have often been together longer, help to instil the belief that it is possible to continue in the face of crises. This offers the chance of a more flexible, unidealised approach to the marital relationship. The following statement from one of the women conveys this well:

I got married very young (…) The world tends to say: ‘they lived happily ever after’, but even then I was (…) aware that it was just the beginning. (…) Before we get there, it is a very long road, and so we don’t lose what is important and build it on certain values and also have support and just models. I mean, you can pay for therapists, you can read wise books and so on, but that will never replace relationships with other married couples who will tell you: we were there too, you can get through it. (Adrianna)

Our analysis of the interviews with women shows that collective and individual activities within communities (such as recollections or workshops) play an important role in solving the problems that occur in a marriage. Many groups were able to develop specific tools aiming to facilitate communication in couples and reduce tensions. The Catholic women we studied referred, for example, to the ritual of marital dates, on which every so often the husband and wife meet for joint prayer and conversation. The purposive nature of the meeting and its embedment in the religious system of references (e.g. the conviction that the couple is accompanied by the Holy Spirit) are meant to create suitable conditions for discussion. Such meetings work as safety valves based on anticipation of potential conflicts in a couple. Apart from the fact that a community can be a source of inspiration for such routine marital practices, it may also be a space of interventions in the case of genuine marital crises. The interviewees’ comments on how religious communities operate and their functions with respect to married couples call to mind therapy groups in which couples work through their problems in the relationship. Some types of events, such as workshops, marital weekends, or recollections, are more open in their use of psychological inspirations. As a result, new, hybrid forms of actions are emerging, which simultaneously draw on the therapeutic culture and Catholicism. For some of our interviewees, it is these hybrid forms, inspired by therapeutic practices but also not excluding religious interpretations, that seem especially important and useful. Unlike secular couples therapy, which can also result in the breakup of the relationship, they permit work on the relationship, without undermining the principle of the indissolubility of marriage.

The practices of embedding relationships in Catholic networks play an important role in enhancing the durability of marriage. Religious communities and groups stabilise the relationship by affirming the validity of the key rules that organise Catholic marriage and by resisting the influence of the secular environment. At the same time, they broaden the understanding of what Catholic marriage is by normalising crises and failures. The transformative influence of the communities can also be seen in actions that mimic secular patterns of work on relationships and offer hybrid forms and tools for dealing with marital crises. While the formal rule of indissolubility defines the boundaries of actions, within those boundaries we observe creative and agentic actions supporting the durability of marriage. This shows that networks whose original intent is to build an alternative to late-modern patterns of intimacy can also selectively use their resources (e.g. knowledge, competencies, modes of action).

Conclusion

Our analysis shows that for devout Catholics with a profound connection with the Church, acknowledgement of the rule of indissolubility does not simply mean passive acceptance, but a continual process of sustaining, taking place in diverse practices that are part of how religion and marriage are lived. These practices are engrained in various stages of marital trajectories. They concern both the premarital phase and life as a couple itself. While some actions undertaken by women are routinised, others are strategic and based on a selection of appropriate means to achieve the objective of survival of the marriage. The practices of attaining religious homogeneity, sacralisation of everyday married life, and embedment of marriage in Catholic networks described in the article are a form of adaptation to the tensions between the late-modern transformations of intimate life and the conservative rule of insolubility of marriage. This allows women to distance themselves, at least on a declarative level, from critically evaluated models of late modernity, while also upholding Catholic rules, such as when they sacralise everyday marital life or participate in alternative structures created by Catholic groups and communities.

More extensive analysis reveals, however, that within the boundaries delineated by the rule of indissolubility, an ‘encounter’ takes place in these practices between the religious and the secular. As the analysis showed, one can observe some ‘leakages’ from neo-liberal culture in the religious-cum-marital life of the researched women. In line with the ideas of choice and self-management, both marital and religious spheres are externalised and subject to scrutinous self-observation and value rationality. For instance, the women we studied applied ideals of reflexivity, verbalisation of needs, introspection, choice, and selective targeting in the process of ‘looking for a godly husband’. In the same vein, elements of therapeutic practices and more broadly of therapeutic culture were adopted and used in religious groups and communities.

Our analysis proves that specific elements of practices, such as meanings or competences (Shove et al., 2012), migrate between religious practices and other social practices. For example, broader cultural understandings referring to work on a relationship are also present in the processes of practising a religious marriage. At the same time, this shows that resistance to late-modern models, formulated from religious positions, does not necessarily entail rejection of all elements that constitute them. Late modernity rather becomes a kind of reservoir of meanings and practices that are combined with religious practices, finally leading to their hybridisation. Upholding institutional conservative religious rules is also based on actions in which religious aspects are negotiated and transformed (e.g. rationalised).

The patterns described above apply not only to Catholicism in Poland but also to the broader contemporary context of conservative religions. In a wider sense, the analysis presented in this article contributes to the observation that the practices of religious women elude simple views dichotomising the relationship between late modernity and religion, progressivism, and conservatism. It also shows that in the contemporary world religion often acts non-autonomously, intersecting and entering various relationships, including hybrid ones, with the secular.