Does marriage mean exactly what we want it to mean?

A question that hung around the edges of the recent debate on same-sex marriage was this: when it comes to marriage and the family, what do Irish people, especially the young, want? Of course, they would like a lot of different things, including winning the Lotto, but what essentially do they want?
The first thing they want, I suspect, is a close and intimate relationship with a high level of communication at its core. It’s only when that foundation is secure, and as the years pass by, that they begin to attach other elements to it: children, economic partnership, civil legal status, church legal status.
Not so long ago society determined the essentials and set out a definitive sequence: courtship, engagement, church (and civil) wedding, honeymoon, accommodation, children. It was, even a few decades ago unconscionable, not to follow the norms the Church (and society) had laid down: the practice of couples living together was frowned upon, having children ‘outside of wedlock’ was a no-no, and so on.
Now an acceptance of the variety of couple relationships in Irish society allows individuals to ‘mix and match’ both priorities and sequence. Couples live together, have children, buy a house, go on honeymoon, decide to get married (or not) in whatever sequence they decide and, in the modern world, an acceptance of variety, the existence of the contraceptive pill, and so forth allow for that freedom to shape their own ‘marriage’.
The reason, I suspect, why people found it difficult to understand the concept of the re-definition in law of marriage in the recent referendum debate was that the re-definition was already in existence in practice in Ireland in the variety of relationships already accepted by society. Regardless of legal definitions or constitutional protection the revolution in personal relationships has already happened in Ireland.
And, I suspect too, the reason why the concept of every child having a father and a mother didn’t get much purchase (apart from the emotional tug of the idea) was that in people’s experiences children in Ireland were already in a great variety of parenting situations.
Parenthood in Ireland is now a moveable feast. Once most parents in Ireland, it could be taken for granted, were genetic parents but that’s no longer the case. As Bishop Kevin Doran discovered, parenthood in Ireland is now a broad concept: single parents, adoptive parents, married step-parents, unmarried step-parents, gay parents, lesbian parents, grandparent parenting and are all now above criticism because more parenting (no matter what the circumstances) is always regarded as better than less or no parenting.
For example, children now can have multiple parents: natural parents or if a relationship breaks down, possible step-fathers or step-mothers or mother’s boyfriends or partners or father’s girlfriends or partners. And, with the legislation for same-sex marriage now pending, parents can include mother’s wife or father’s husband. And, with surrogacy still unregulated in Ireland, the list of parents can also include a sperm donor, an egg donor, the woman whose womb was rented for nine months, the couple who will raise the child.
Not too long ago family in Ireland was based on a very clear template: a relationship between a man and a woman that was legal, permanent, exclusive and reproductive. The woman was the home-maker; the father, the provider.
All of those categories have been challenged in recent years and marriage and family have become less clear or definitive social constructs as a variety of relationships, garnished by personal choice and circumstance, present themselves as, de facto, ‘marriages’ and ‘families’. While no one would question the existence of children, a case might well be made for saying that marriage, like words for Humpty Dumpty speaking to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, really only means what we want it to mean.
Part of the problem is that by calling something by a respectable word we give it an elevated status without actually describing it accurately in terms of what its traditional meaning was.
The Catholic Church, it could be argued, has a similar problem. It makes a distinction between two kinds of marriage: ‘sacramental’ and ‘natural’.
A ‘sacramental’ marriage describes one between two baptised Christians: say, between two Catholics or a Catholic and a Protestant (of whatever denomination) or, say, between two members of the Church of Ireland. For example, if a marriage between two Church of Ireland parties breaks down, and one of them wishes then to marry a Catholic the inaccurate presumption is that the Catholic Church has no problem recognising the second union because the first was between two Church of Ireland parties and therefore not a ‘Catholic’ marriage. That’s not the case.
A ‘natural’ marriage is what is described as ‘contractual but not sacramental’. Examples of natural marriage are those between a Christian and an unbaptised person or between, say, two Muslims or two Buddhists. All of those marriages are recognised by the Catholic Church as ‘natural’.
Teasing out this distinction between sacramental and natural marriages, in terms of a possible way forward for the Church in view of the expected discussion on divorced Catholics who have remarried and the recent referendum, Clifford Longley writes in The Tablet: ‘One way forward for the (Catholic) Church would be to accept in theory what is the case in practice, that not all marriages which Catholics may enter into need necessarily be regarded as sacramental. Those whose marriages are recognised by the state but which do not conform to canon law would be seen as non-sacramental ‘natural’ marriages. That is how society regards them. And experience tells us that the presence or otherwise of the sacramental character of matrimony often makes little discernible difference’.
That distinction between sacramental and natural marriages may be an important one to remember when the October Synod reassembles in Rome. In short, marriage doesn’t have to be sacramental to be accepted by the Catholic Church.
Note: My new book, Tracing the Stem, traces the history of bishops in Killala diocese from earliest times. It’s available widely at €40 or can be ordered post free by emailing: bhoban@eircom.net