Brandon Scott
The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference has said the upcoming referenda relating to the definition of family is “likely to lead to a weakening of the incentive for young people to marry” and has urged people to oppose the two proposed amendments to the Constitution in the March 8 referenda.
In their statement, the bishops said the family amendment to Article 41 would diminish the unique importance of the relationship between marriage and family and was likely to lead to a weakening of the incentive for young people to marry.
Marriage, they noted, entailed a public and legal commitment, but the term “durable relationship” was shrouded in legal uncertainty and open to wide interpretation.
“It does not make sense that such an ambiguous reality would be considered ‘antecedent and superior to all positive law’ and acquire the same ‘inalienable and imprescriptible’ rights as those ascribed to the ‘family founded on marriage’,” the bishops said in a statement.
The care amendment to Article 41.2, they warned, would have the effect of abolishing all reference to motherhood in the Constitution and leave unacknowledged the particular and “incalculable societal contribution” that mothers in the home have made and continue to make in Ireland.
“The role of mothers should continue to be cherished in our Constitution,” they said. “What benefit would it be to Irish society to delete the terms ‘woman’ and ‘mother’”, they ask.
The bishops underlined that the present constitutional provision “emphatically does not state” that “a woman’s place is in the home”. Neither does it excuse men of their duties to the home and family.
Rather, in contemporary society there now existed a welcome co-responsibility between women and men for every aspect of domestic life, including the provision of care in the home, they said.
The State, they said, had to date failed to financially acknowledge the role of women in the home and there was no indication there would be provision for the adequate financial remuneration of carers.