Everyone thinks the church is the same worldwide. In Brazil, you MUST get married by the state. They do not recognize church marriages.
Which is weird considering the word "catholic" means "worldwide".
In Brazil, do people go to church afterwards and get their “Church” marriage?
If you mean the state doesn’t recognize church marriages, that’s the way it is most places, to my understanding. The US allows religious figures to act as representatives of the state, which apparently is pretty unusual. It would be interesting to know how all countries handle it.
FReegards
That doesn’t seem very different from what we have here if I understand you correctly. One can’t be recognized as “married” here either without a state license.
It just appears that our churches here (Catholic or otherwise) “marry” a couple because the ceremony is coupled with the legal process, usually because the pastor or priest is authorized by the state to marry people, in other words functions as an agent of the state (e.g. A justice of the peace)
So, for example, if for whatever bizarre reason, a given priest or pastor wasn’t authorized by the state to marry people, then the ceremony itself, even a Catholic one, wouldn’t be recognized by the state as a valid marriage until and unless the couple went to the courthouse and got a marriage license signed by an authorized state representative.
My case is probably a good example of what I’m taking about. When I married my Italian wife in Italy, that marriage wasn’t recognized as a valid marriage here, even though it was in a Catholic Church. We had to go to our local courthouse and get married by a justice of the peace to have a “valid” marriage here, in the US.
And likewise, the Church does not recognize civil marriages, so for Catholics to be married in the eyes of the Church, they MUST do a church ceremony. In countries with a civil requirement, they can then do a civil ceremony after the Church ceremony.
I think that’s also the law in California.
At this point, I'd like to get the state out of the marriage business period.