Marriage not simply about two individuals in love - archbishop

Voters have been asked to reflect carefully on what change in people’s understanding of marriage across society would entail.

Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said “it is important in our discussions about marriage and the family in these days that people should stop for a moment and reflect carefully on what marriage and the family mean within society, and on what a change in our understanding of marriage across society would entail”.

Speaking at a retreat in St Conleth’s parish in Newbridge, Co Kildare, he said “marriage is not simply about ‘two individuals who are in love’. The Christian teaching about marriage stresses the complementary relationship between male and female, which is not just a social construction.

“Marriage is also about a stable and loving relationship where children are generated and educated. Family is also an intergenerational reality. The stability of marriage contributes in a unique way to the stability of society.”

‘The church must listen’

The church, he said, “must listen to married couples. The church must listen also to where God is speaking through the witness of those Christian married couples who struggle and fail and begin again and fail again.”

The church must also “reach out to encounter families where they are, but that does not mean that you simply leave people where they are.

“The church speaks of a law of gradualness, not in the sense that ‘anything goes’, but that we can be led, by the help of grace, to move step-by-step towards living our Christian vocation more fully,” he said.

“We have to reach out to people in what for the church are irregular situations. We will attain more by reaching out rather than by simply condemning,” he said.

‘Love and fidelity’

“The vocation of the family is... about love and about fidelity and about the transmission and nurturing of life and faith.

“These are in fact fundamental values not just for the church, but for the strengthening of society,” he said.

“The Christian message of love is not something just personal and removed from the realities of day-to-day life or irrelevant to the good of society.

“When we as individuals and as a church fail to witness to love, when we allow love to be compromised and weakened, we damage the church as an institution, but we also contribute to the weakening of the message of Jesus in our world and we contribute to a weakening of what enduring and caring love is about,” he continued.