Charles Collins May 21, 2019 CRUX NOW
Ireland should do more to support marriage, instead of making it easier to get a divorce, says Bishop Denis Nulty.
The bishop of Kildare and Leighlin was speaking ahead of a May 24 referendum in the Republic of Ireland to change the Irish constitution which requires couples to have lived apart for four of the past five years before being able to dissolve their marriage.
The referendum is supported by every major party in Ireland and is expected to pass easily.
For most of its history, divorce was prohibited in the Republic of Ireland. In 1995, the constitutional ban on marriage dissolution was repealed in a referendum with just 50.28 percent of the vote.
The new constitutional language required a waiting period before a divorce, and also regulated which foreign divorces would be recognized by the Irish state.
The new referendum would remove both provisions, although the present government has said it would legislate a two-year minimum for divorce if the Yes vote wins.
“The referendum is not really about reducing the waiting time from four years to two. It is about giving the Oireachtas [Irish parliament] full power to decide what the waiting time should be in the future. It could later reduce the waiting time further still,” said a statement from the Iona Institute, a pro-family think tank.
Nulty, the chair of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Council for Marriage and Family, said the objective of the proposed referendum is “not to support marriage, rather to liberalize divorce.”
“For this reason, it is important to reflect deeply on the implications of this referendum which seeks to expedite the dissolution of marriage,” the bishop said. “The common good would be better served by supporting and resourcing couples and families in preparation for, and during marriage.”
According to the latest available statistics, Ireland has a divorce rate of just over 0.8 percent, one of the lowest in the European Union. For comparison, the rate in Britain is 1.9 percent, and the United States is 3.2 percent.
However, Ireland has seen an increase from 2015, when it was 0.6 percent. Also, fewer people are getting married in Ireland, and the rate of cohabitation has increased five-fold since 1995. Currently, 37 percent of children in Ireland are born out of wedlock.
Nulty encouraged the government to fund policies which would help people stay married.
“We believe that the incidence of marriage breakdown and divorce could be reduced through the introduction of socio-economic policies which support the family and through long-term education strategies which promote values such as fidelity and commitment. While this would cost money, the human and economic cost of breakdown and divorce, both for the couple and for their children, is a far greater cost,” the bishop said.
Once the most Catholic country in Western Europe, decades of revelations about clerical sexual abuse and appalling conditions in Church-run care facilities have greatly damaged the image of the Church.
Over the past few years, a series of votes has chipped away at the Catholic foundations of Ireland.
Last year, the people of the Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to remove pro-life protections for the unborn from the country’s constitution. A few months later, they voted to remove the crime of blasphemy from the document. In 2015, another referendum legalized same-sex marriage.
PAT SAYS
What makes a sill man like Denis Nulty think that the RC bishops in Ireland have any moral standing left to pronounce on social issues.
He should use his energy on his church’s paedophile priests, Grindr priests, gay sauna priests and cover up bishops.
The Irish Catholic bishops have absolutely no moral authority left.
They are a bunch of moral and social gangsters who have ben exposed for what they are.
The Irish people are not willing to be guided by morally bankrupt Pharisees.
The Irish people are modern secular, pluralist citizens of the world and Europeans.
They are finished with medievalist thinking and the Irish bishops are the peddlers of that thinking.
Rome has been defeated.
BISHOP PAT BUCKLEY 
39 replies on “IRISH BISHOPS AGAINST NEW DIVORCE LAW.”
I wouldn’t rejoice in making divorce easier. It is devastating for any children of the marriage.
https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/parents-and-young-people/information-for-parents-and-carers/divorce-or-separation-of-parents—the-impact-on-children-and-adolescents-for-parents-and-carers
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Is it easier thanliving with parents who argue because their marriage failed?
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11:32
Hasn’t it ever occurred to you the potential (and, perhaps, more devastating) consequences for children had the marriages surveyed here remained intact…at least on paper? And for what? For form’s sake. For the sake of yours and Nulty’s consciences. Well, oddly enough, this issue isn’t about you and Nulty.
None of these studies can show this potential devastion, because the spouses agreed to divorce. But logically, had they chosen otherwise, it would hardly have been plain sailing both for them and for their children, now would it? Assuming that legislating against divorce will keep society happy is as infantile as thinking that concealing child abuse by Roman Catholic priests would maintain the doctrinal ‘authority’ of the Magisterium.
You are like Nulty: you really dont ‘give a toss’ about people, but about a biblical ideal: the so-called ‘indissolubility of marraige’. You would have some useless Utopian precept enforced upon fractured relationships and broken people… and all to preserve some abstract concept: YOUR particular moral code. And such is your zeal you would indeed enforce it upon people…through legislation.
This is doctrinal oppression, long practised by Rome; but its days are over.
You know where you can RAM your moral code, right up Nulty’s dark…!
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All bishops everywhere including Pat Buckley have one thing in common. They have no authority from Almighty God to give absolution for sin. Why don’t they all just disappear and stop mocking Jesus Christ our Chief Priest forever.
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Divorce is really bad for the children.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/201112/the-impact-divorce-young-children-and-adolescents
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So are bad marriages forced, by cretins like you, to remain intact.
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Of the “cretins” who contribute YOU Sr Mary Magna Carta are the BIGGEST 😉😘
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Your Pat Says is both shallow, empty, off topic and a trite piece of comment. Says nothing about the sacredness of family life or marriage. Then of course we know your attitude to marriage, including sham marriages. You’d marry anything with two legs or none Buckley; anyone for money; you have displayed a reckless disregard for the sacrament of marriage, your own lifestyle being advocated to 3/4/5 year olds!! You, Pat, have probably broken every commandment of God and yet you condemn the true bishops. You are blindingly shallow. And instead drawing in all kinds of issues, why don’t you at least tell us what you believe about the Holy Sacrament of Marriage (from a true Catholic perspective)!! and not your diminished, self serving, makey up version. In season, out of season, let the truth be told. Well done Bishop Nulty.
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The church only got interested in marriage in the 12th century.
I believe that ideally marriage should be for life.
But when people fail they need a second chance.
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Nulty, really, is engaging in mental reservation here. When he ‘encourages’ 😉 the Irish Government to spend money on helping married couples remain married, what is actually motivating him is not concern for disintegrated marriages, but a doctrinaire, impersonal, religious ideology which demands that there should be no divorce at all…regardless of the destructive effects that bad marriages can have on spouses and their children.
These Christ-betrayers don’t give a f**k about people, (consider how many of them treated abused children and their families), but about ideas, and about corporate image.
Seriously, when was concern for others truly at the heart of evangelisation by the institutional Roman Catholic Church? Historically, wherever and whenever it gained a foothold territorially, it always demanded absolute conformity to its teachings and hierarchy, often through oppression, intimidation, and violence.
These days are over, Mr Nulty. And you had better get used to it, because people are totally repulsed by you and by your kind.
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I’m in agreement, MC.
The institutional church doesn’t care about people, considering the systemic cover up of child rape.
The ‘ true bishops’ have lost credibility, moral authority and discredited the Gospel.
Shame on them.
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How do you know what motivates another? You don’t have enough self-reflection to know what motivates yourself.
Nothing to contribute!
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2:54pm
Ditto.
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Well, not to those without ears to hear and eyes to see.
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Bishops are always warning against this and that. Politicians take notice only if they think they have to, and those days are over. So often I get the impression that even bishops feel they are going through the motions: merely mouthing platitudes that they think are expected of them. It would be surprising if any of them did say anything remotely inspiring or relevant to reality. JP2 and his odious fixer Ratzinger made sure that there would be no more bishops of courage and integrity such as the late Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle. Given the pool available who is there left to appoint? That’s why in England for instance there is talk of appointing Cockroach to Southwark. At Westminster, Elsie has been nothing more than a reasonably efficient administrator with the personality to match. As for the rest of them …. I accept that gays are not the only issue, even though it is the Church that makes such a big deal we should never forget, but I always admired old Cormac for sticking his neck out for the SoHo Masses. I lost any respect for Elsie when he shafted them to further his own ambition. That’s our Else!
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A five year delay is a cruel imposition, also because it may impede the possibility of having a child.
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Paedophile priests? But you have found no evidence of child abuse in recent times. Grindr and gay saunas are adult behavior, very much part of the gay scene.
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What planet do you live on? There is only rarely evidence of recent sexual abuse because it takes sometimes decades for the target to get to the point of reporting.
The current situation will be revealed beyond 2030, when fortunately I will be off in my caravan with my nun friend. That’s why I have been going round saying paedophilia is rife in society, I want a get out clause when the mess that is Westminster under my watch is revealed.
Do try to get with the program and not be so stupid.
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Pat we need an update on the seminaries as a matter of urgency.
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Yes! Agreed! Sean Fitz? Kicked out? Still up the bishops hole!
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I am no fan of the Irish Bishops, and believe that they have lost their moral integrity and authority to speak for the people of Ireland, or even to have the temerity to instruct the people of Ireland what they should do and how they should vote. They have become somewhat of an irrelevance.
However, in this matter of marriage, I think we should all think deeply about the importance of the marriage relationship in the lives of couples, families, and society at large. Whilst accepting that there are alternative ways of relating and living which some people prefer and chose, the fact is that most men and women (and some men and men and women and women) chose to get married and to cement their relationship in a bond and then go on from there to create families. So, it seems to me that it is important that marriage is valued, not as some kind of religious phenomenon necessarily or even as reflecting God’s will for people, but more so as a necessary and important foundation of society. Most people are brought up in families, the majority of them forged through marriage, and therefore if we want to create a healthy population and future, it is important that we give people the best start and the best environment in which to flourish. There is little doubt that marriage and the family structure it creates is a good way of ensuring flourishing children who then go on to create families themselves. So, marriage as an institution should be valued, respected and protected.
I would like to see the Government spending time underpinning marriage with good social and family policies that encourage marriage, and help to support marriage and families. Housing. Welfare. Work. Tax policies. Education. Prospects. Etc. etc. If marriage is a good thing, then it is worthy of our support.
I accept that some marriages do not work out and are better ended in some circumstances. However, there is a balance to be made between providing the help and support for people to work through their difficulties and to come out the other end with a marriage that still works, and providing the means and mechanisms for the ending of marriages that cannot be made to work. For the latter there does need to be a mechanism, and the Government has the responsibility of creating that pathway. I would like to see that mechanism given time for marriages to be helped to work, so a balanced period should be created for there to be intervention, conciliation etc. Just allowing people to rush in to ending a marriage at the first hint of trouble doesn’t seem a particularly responsible way of ensuring that our country supports marriage, or helping people to have a chance to make a marriage work. Perhaps a time structure is not the best way forward. How about a requirement that people have to engage in conciliation and counseling before they are allowed to trigger a divorce ?
But, back to the Bishops. They are saying more or less the same as I am saying, in different language, using different references, such as God’s plan for us, God’s will, etc. I simply come at it from a human and societal point of view recognizing that marriage relationships and the families they create are important to us and our society and our future, and should be protected and supported for that reason. The Bishops should leave the business of supporting marriage to others, given that they are toxic these days and do much disservice to any argument that they put their support to. So, leave it to us, Lord Bishops, and let us lead the argument. Please !
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Remember, Bp Pat, two years ago you advised readers to – Watch her! – and, as you envisaged, here’s Denise trying to further her chances for Dublin.
http://wisecatholic.blogspot.com/2017/06/nulty-praises-maynooth-4.html
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Calm down Nulty is an outsider the front runner is the Bishop in Rome in the Curia, then Leahy and Cullian.
So that seems to be the three but there is also outsider Bishop of Raphoe.
The new Auxillary for Armagh is 21st July and not heard when New bishop of Cork is taking over as yet.
Roach for Southwark.
Northampton and East Anglia awaiting new appointments
Bishop burns Mineva Wales is 75 next Monday so maybe amalgamate the dioceses there.
However the Papal Nuncio in England and Wales plus Scotland hits 75 as well in August.
The Catholic Church merry go round..
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7.08: Why an update on seminarians urgently? Note the time your print!! Are you needing to fantasize again…..for your sexual pleasure? Go sleep for the day, you idiot.
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The photo of Deacon gorgeous still thrills me. He is beautiful. I met him once and I must say that I was instantly attracted to his looks and confidence. He is perfect for me. Hope he gets ordained soon so I can see him more regularly.
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He is,!but if you are a Priest you must give up ham shanking immediately or you will go to hell.
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Derwin was the model seminarian for Mullaney.
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12.13: Your point being…. .?
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Mullaney hates hetors. 🐇
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Just to clarify the Stephen Wilson rabbit room is no longer actice. No more pyjama parties or secret midnight musical knocks at his door. Aversion therapy has transformed Wilson from desiring male intimacy to celibacy now. No more gay sex or daddy hunt. God bless you Stephen you are cured
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Thauld bishops are more interested in the laws than the person Who’d a thought that nothing changed since the Gospels were written We still got the scribes Pharisees and people who need healing We are just as bad if we talk the talk and still do nothing ourselves to promote the healing ministry of Jesus hands on like but hi
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No one gets married expecting it to end in divorce. Divorce is financial suicide for the man. This should have been addressed in the referendum.
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I recall what one of my young nephews said after his mum and dad separated, and eventually divorced: at least there are no more arguments.
He, along with his younger siblings (twins), are now thriving, and re indeed happy. But this kind of outcome does not suit the narrative of the ‘no divorce!’ brigade; it’s an ‘inconvenient truth’ for them.
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You’re a liar “Magna Carta”. Your “nephew” never said any such thing. You saw or heard that comment somewhere and you’re throwing it in here as part of your fantasy internet alternative “existence”. You’re utterly pathetic you poor sod.
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As I said in my post at 3.30, ‘this outcome will not suit the narrative of the “‘ no divorce’ ” brigade; it’s an inconvenient truth for them.’
No surprise to me that I was right.
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3.30: Magna and his nephew – unimaginable. Poor Nephew – God help him…..
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Most of them are celibate (cough) pooftahs, Bp Pat, so it should have nothing to do with them.
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Well whatever about the sorry state of the Irish Bishops they are certainly correct in this case because there was no one more anti-divorce than Jesus himself judging by his very clear unambigous words in the gospel.
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Yes, but in what context was Jesus talking about divorce? You really didn’t think through your comment before posting it, did you?
Mosaic Law sometimes had utterly trivial, and pro-patriarchy, grounds for allowing divorce, and Isuspect that Jesus was alluding to these when he addressed divorce and not to more serious issues, like a drunk spouse coming home night after night and beating the crap out of his defenceless wife and kids.
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