Church marriages are rare in ČR

Prague, July 27 (CTK) - Most couples in the Czech Republic get married in a civil ceremony, while only about one-tenth of them conclude a church marriage, according to the data released by the churches and the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) yesterday.

Some 52,000 marriages are concluded in the Czech Republic annually, but only about 6,000 of them do so during a Catholic ceremony.

Other Christian churches and Jewish communities also have the right to marry people, but in their cases, the numbers are very small.

Some 200 couples conclude marriages by the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and there are some five to six Jewish marriages annually in the Czech Republic, the statistics show.

The people who want to conclude a church marriage must fulfil a number of conditions.

"Many people only want to 'have the marriage in a church,' but this is the last thing. It is substantial that the union should be Christian, before God and within the church," Catholic priest Ales Opatrny writes in the manual Preparation for Marriage.

One of the assumptions is that both spouses are baptised Catholics.

The population census taken in 2001 registered 2.7 million Catholics in the roughly 10-million Czech Republic.

However, the Church White Paper by current Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka and journalist Milan Badal put their number at around 4.2 million.

Some ten Muslim marriages are held annually in the Czech Republic, but without a civilian ceremony they are invalid.

Czech Muslims are also seeking the right to conclude marriages officially.

Czech population is considered one of the most atheist in Europe, if not in the world.

Marriages in Czech Republic
Catholic Marriages All Marriages
2008 5956 52,457
2007 6304 57,157
2006 6331 52,860
2005 6449 51,829
2004 6516 51,447
2003 6357 48,943
2002 5839 52,732

Source: Czech Statistical Office (CSU) and Czech Bishops' Conference (CBK)