Many mixed-marriage couples face old pressures

The young Catholic man wanted to marry a girl who was a member of the Church of Ireland. His parish priest told him he would be "excommunicated" unless he signed a form promising to have all the children of the marriage baptised and brought up in the Catholic Church. He refused to sign it and "excommunicated himself," as his father-in-law, a Church of Ireland minister, put it.

Another young Catholic man decided he and his Church of Ireland girlfriend would bring up their children in her church. He told his parish priest when he went to get the required dispensation to marry his girlfriend.

He was told he "had to" sign the declaration promising to bring up their children in the Catholic Church. He said he couldn't do that, and was refused a dispensation by the bishop. Pressure was put on his family by the parish priest. Eventually he agreed to sign the declaration, "tongue in cheek". The dispensation to marry arrived "at the last minute," days before the wedding.

Both cases sound like tales from the bad old days pre-1970, where mixed marriages are concerned. Up to then, under the terms of the Catholic Church's 1907 Ne Temere decree, both partners to a mixed marriage had to sign a "guarantee" that they would bring up all their children in the Catholic Church.

But the two cases referred to above happened in the Catholic diocese of Cork and Ross within the past three years. The bishop who refused the dispensation was the new bishop of that diocese, Dr John Buckley, then acting bishop following the death of his predecessor, Dr Michael Murphy, on October 7th, 1996.

The two cases involved members of the Rev Peter Hanna's family. A Church of Ireland minister at St Luke's parish in Cork, over the past three years two of his daughters and two of his nieces have married Catholics. All weddings took place in the Church of Ireland, at the request of the couples, but with varying degrees of difficulty where the Catholic Church was concerned.

When the first wedding took place his Catholic son-in-law had no difficulty with his parish priest, who didn't even require that he sign the promise about their children. That promise, from the Catholic Church's 1983 directory on mixed marriages, requires the Catholic partner to "sincerely undertake to do everything possible, so far as in me lies, to have all the children of our marriage baptised and brought up in the Catholic church". Assenting to it is essential to a Catholic being allowed dispensation to marry outside the church.

That first wedding went ahead with a Catholic priest in attendance and with both Catholic and Church of Ireland members of the congregation taking Communion, though the priest did not.

When it came to Mr Hanna's second daughter, things were different. In this instance his son-in-law was threatened with excommunication by his parish priest unless he agreed to sign the promise. He refused, and got married without the dispensation. His wedding was also attended by a priest, and again all members of the congregation, except the priest, took Communion.

It was Mr Hanna's two nieces who experienced most difficulty. Their husbands-to-be had the same parish priest, who insisted they sign the declaration to bring up the children as Catholics. One man does not recall signing, while the other did so under duress and after being initially refused the dispensation by Bishop Buckley. This man has since decided the declaration does not apply to him, and plans to raise his children in the Church of Ireland.

In both these latter cases the parish priest put great pressure on both young men's families to get them to sign, and more directly on the families themselves where the issue of taking Communion at the wedding ceremonies was concerned. As a result neither Catholic family took Communion at those weddings.

John Gormley, the Green Party TD, is a Catholic in a mixed marriage. He was lord mayor of Dublin when he married Penny, who is a member of the Church of Ireland, in St Ann's Church of Ireland church in Dawson Street in 1994. A priest friend of Penny's also attended, and all present took Communion, except the priest.

When he sought dispensation to marry Penny, Mr Gormley was given the impression that signing the promise was "merely a formality". He and Penny had decided to bring up their children as Christians, leaving it to themselves to decide later in life which denomination they wished to belong to. He and Penny have frequently taken Communion together in Catholic and Church of Ireland churches. He did so as lord mayor.

Michael Orr, of the Association of Inter-church Families, said that in their experience there was "a vast inconsistency" in the way the Catholic Church applied its mixed-marriage regulations in Ireland, with ignorance, prejudice and hostility evident from some clergy and families.

He and his wife, who is a Catholic, have been raising their children in the pre-1907 style, the boys in his denomination and the girl's in his wife's. Both also take Communion in each other's churches.

A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association (NIMMA) said attitudes to inter-church marriage there were "one of the major items' which has kept people segregated in their own communities.

He felt some Catholic clergy in the North "still hanker" after the old pre-1970 Ne Temere days, but "both lots" were keenly opposed to inter-church marriage. So serious is the issue in Northern Ireland that people in NIMMA have been targeted by paramilitaries on both sides as "spies and traitors", which is why he asked not to be named.

A Protestant man in the South, reluctant to be named lest his comments give offence to family members involved in mixed marriage, described the situation as "the inexorable colonisation of the non-Roman Catholic people of Ireland by the majority church through that most unforgivable and un-Christian decree Ne Temere, and its successor".

The more recent situation, whereby the onus was on the Catholic partner to raise the children as Catholics, was "almost worse" than Ne Temere, in that it placed moral pressure on one partner to prevail over the other from the outset of their marriage.