Mary KennyRise in Humanist weddings is a challenge for the Christian Churches to up their game
Humanist weddings have greatly increased in Ireland over the past year – 750 couples have married this year in a humanist (agnostic or atheist) ceremony. Brian Whitehead, the energetic director of the Humanist Association of Ireland, says the organisation can’t keep up with the demand.
One reaction to this should be positive: it’s good that couples are getting married at all. Better a marriage ceremony which endorses commitment than drifting into a vague cohabitation, which is worse for children, is statistically more likely to break down, statistically more likely to risk domestic abuse, and statistically more likely to leave women poorer. Not to mention the sacramental element – which humanists discard anyway.
Another positive reaction could be that this is a challenge for the Christian Churches to up their game. Make sacramental weddings more attractive: better music: more aesthetic surroundings: more competitive budgets. Why not? The Catholic Church has always encouraged aesthetic beauty – look at the Sistine Chapel.
Maybe even advertise. Maybe even use negative advertising: try the slogan “Humanist wedding? It can only ever be second-best” – against a backdrop of the full-throttle beauty of a church wedding. Again, why not? Advertising works, and the big supermarkets often draw attention to the shortcomings of their competitors!
In the past, Catholic organisations have looked at a competitor’s strategies and learned from them. The Pioneer Association, which brought temperance to so many and rescued so many from the scourge of alcoholism, saw how effective were the Methodist campaigns against drink. It moved to compete, and to some degree, to imitate (although Fr Mathew’s temperance campaigns back in the 1840s were also a precursor).
The Church should regard the rise of humanist weddings as both a challenge and a source of competition, and call to mind the old American adage: “Don’t get mad – get even. And don’t just get even – get better.”
Religious education has a role
Those who are arguing for the abolition of religious education in Irish schools under the oft-cited rule 68 like to point out that Turkey is over 99% Muslim and yet it has a secular education system.
But beware of those who easily cite the education systems of other societies without factoring in the full cultural context. Finland, for example, is often upheld as a model for educational excellence.
Certainly standards there are high, but Finnish education is tightly controlled by the state with little flexibility or parental choice. Teachers have to train intensely for 10 years. This might not necessarily suit other societies.
Turkish education is indeed secular, but Turkish society is increasingly, emphatically Islamic: the secularistion of education has not halted the ever-increasing wearing of the niqab among Turkish women. Turkish secularisation has not prevented the flight ñ because of hostility ñ by the Greek Christian minorities from the country.
I believe that a religious education can help a person towards more understanding, more tolerance and more empathy with others. Thatís surely one of the aims of the best kind of religious formation.
Transplants correct an error of nature
Born last weekend in Sweden, Vincent became the world’s first baby born after a womb transplant to his 36-year-old mother. Vincent’s mother had been herself born without a uterus and received a transplant from a 61-year-old woman. The whole operation was performed by Professor Mats Brännström of the University of Gothenburg.
Doctors and scientists love new and amazing advances – they are often quite bored by routine doctoring, as any woman who has had a perfectly normal pregnancy will attest (medics visibly brighten up if the words “possible complication” arise). So the medical world is terrifically excited by this breakthrough and hugely admiring of Prof. Brännström.
The British medical world is thrilled to announce that two women in Britain are due to give birth via womb transplants by the end of this year. (About 5,000 females in Britain have been born without a womb, and many long for a baby.)
Although some commentators may feel that this is a ‘Brave-New-World’ step – echoing Aldous Huxley’s prediction that procreation would be entirely manipulated through the laboratory – I suggest we should see the womb transplant as, at least in intention, pro-life. It is remedying an error of nature, and helping to view pregnancy as something to be valued and treasured. It is a scientific slap in the face to those who contemptuously regard the unborn as “an undifferentiated collection of cells”.
And there could be another development in this area within a few years: foetal donation. So that when a woman says she wants a termination, she may be asked – “would you like to donate the pregnancy via transplant?” Brave New Worldish, yes, but what an extraordinary possibility. Someone with a gift for writing science fiction should pen a novel on this theme.