Sir, - In his letters (May 10th) Jim Cantwell of the Catholic and Press Information Office stated, with regards to mixed marriages, that all Catholics are asked to try to have the children baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith. "Nothing more is required of the Catholic partner in a mixed marriage than of Catholics marrying one another."
Surely the whole point of a marriage is that it does involve inevitably a degree of compromise between two people who want to share the rest of their lives together? When two people are coming from different backgrounds it is clearly paramount that differences are dealt with in a honest and fair way.
Mr Cantwell seems to regard it as completely reasonable that the children of a mixed marriage should be treated in exactly the same way as the children of a Catholic/Catholic marriage. This is a completely untenable position. This in essence is no different from a meat eating male saying "if I marry a meat eating female would expect her to eat meat. If on the other hand I marry a vegetarian female I would expect her to eat meat". Such a proposition would be absurd and yet this in essence is what the Catholic Church is saying with regard to the children of mixed marriages.
The Report produced for the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation by the ESRI disclosed the very disturbing fact, that over 80 per cent of the children of mixed marriages in the Republic of Ireland are brought up as Catholic. It was perfectly obvious at the Forum that both the Taoiseach Mr Bruton, the Tanaiste Mr Spring as well as many other colleagues were deeply depressed at the total failure of the Church representatives to recognise that this even presents an issue worthy of debate.
One ray of hope at the current time has been the constructive comments of Bishop Willy Walsh who has been honest in saying that the rigid application of the Ne Temere Decree has had a significant effect in widening divisions between the Irish people. I would conclude with one proposition which I feel would help us to make progress. It would be a major contribution towards reconciliation if the Catholic Church could issue a clear statement indicating that it would not normally expect that more than half of the children in mixed marriages would be brought up as Catholics.
Such a statement, which would not be detrimental of course to any of the Churches, would help to indicate that the Church has a willingness to move into the new millennium in a spirit of trust and reconciliation with other denominations. - Yours, etc.,
Alliance Councillor,
Dorchester Park,
Belfast BT9.