Celebrancy

[1] The aim of the celebrancy program was to authorise persons to officiate at secular ceremonies of substance, meaning and dignity mainly for non-church people.

[1] A senator, attorney-general and High Court Justice of Australia, Lionel Murphy was the founder of modern celebrancy.

[1]: 41ff  Murphy's vision, more carefully articulated as the program progressed, included training standards and a limit on the number of celebrants to be registered.

The deeper meaning of the Murphy ideal was to improve the individual psychologically, and the community socially and culturally through ceremonies.

As the celebrant is a resource person and advisor to his/her clients, a transforming education in the arts and humanities would appear to be a prerequisite.

Civil celebrant skill is to creatively combine appropriate poetry, prose, music, choreography and movement, storytelling, myth and symbolism into a ceremony of substance and power.

The experienced celebrant-educator and voice and speech coach Jane Day spent a great deal of her life emphasising to her students that all the other knowledge and skills of celebrancy means next to nothing unless the celebrant acquires the learned skill of delivery of the "spoken word, body language, and the written word".

They need to have a voice delivery which creates "respect and trust, inspires, encourages, sympathises and feeds the human hunger for emotional as well as intellectual satisfaction".

[12] Messenger maintained that even though celebrant ceremonies were non-religious it was important that they express a person or couple's "spiritual" beliefs and qualities.

Civil celebrants have taken their place between the dogmatic and non-dogmatic religions and the avowedly atheistic Humanist society stance on ceremonies.

[17] In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland and Canada there are, as of 2021, private training colleges which are educating civil celebrants following the Australian model.