Colm Fitzpatrick
Colm Fitzpatrick examines the value of marriage today
Irish society has been transformed considerably in the last half-century or so: people are more likely to marry older; youth are more career-driven; and the likelihood of being able to afford and own a house is decreasing. All of these factors raise questions as to whether young people can still take the Sacrament of Marriage seriously today.
Recently, Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin said that Church teaching about marriage can often be perceived as out of date and out of touch with young people, but that marriage is still an achievable goal. He argued that social, political and economic factors actively discourage young adults from marrying and that we should be creating new frameworks where marriage is seen as more accessible and inviting.
“Why is it that so many young people will choose not to get married? Maybe because they can’t get a hold of a mortgage, or because the benefit system suits them better to live as single people rather than as a couple with their children. Why is it that legislation on issues like addictions, gambling, or a whole lot of areas where family life can be destroyed – why are these not priorities in social policy-making?” the archbishop said.
He also pointed out that a society “surrounded by a contraceptive, anti-birth mentality” is dissuading young adults from marrying, and that younger generations “resist becoming tied down by relationships, commitments or attachments”.
Indeed, according to the Households and Family Data from Census 2016, the number of cohabitating couples raising children has risen by over 15,000 since the 2011 census. The number of divorced people in Ireland has increased from 87,770 in 2011 to 103,895 in 2016, an increase of 16,125 persons. In light of these statistics, is it the case that young Irish people perceive marriage and the values it espouses, such as commitment, to be irrelevant?
Importance
For Fr Alan O’Sullivan O.P., Trinity College chaplain and author of Self-Giving, Self-Mastery: St John Paul II on Men, Women and Conjugal Chastity, says this is not the case. Young people still value the importance of marriage, but it depends on how marriage is presented to them.
“I think it has to be presented in a beautiful and positive way and something that is enriching personally for them,” Fr Alan says. He adds that even though the Church doesn’t recognise civil marriage as valid, it still understands that it’s a public commitment to each other and so distinct from cohabitation to some to degree.
Echoing this view, Fr Seán MacGiollarnáth OCarm, parish priest of Dublin’s Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Whitefriar Street, famous as the home of the bones of St Valentine, says that young people, even if they’re marrying for socially conventional reasons, still value the sacrament.
“Yes. They do. If they’re married in Church, the sacrament is there. If they participate in the sacrament, they are open to the blessings of the sacrament. Any sacrament is dependent to some degree on our own receptivity,” he explains, adding that our receptivity and our willingness to cooperate with the Lord’s will determines to some degree the fruitfulness of the sacrament.
“I think that people do take marriage seriously, I do. I agree that there are pressures and social structures and so on that might not make marriage as easy for people as we might like.”
He points out that people in Ireland might delay marriage for housing reasons and because the dating culture of Ireland has changed drastically in modern times.
“What might be something that might delay marriage, I think in Ireland, is the housing crisis. It’s a serious issue. More and more families are finding it difficult to find a home in which to live. And up until the first Celtic Tiger, I think most people had a reasonable expectation that someday they would have their own family home.
“That isn’t the case any longer. I know people in their late 30’s and 40’s who have been working for 15 years or more, and who aren’t yet in a position to buy a house. That wouldn’t have been the case before,” Fr Seán says.
Alongside this logistic and economic problem, Fr Seán explains that there can be a “fear of commitment” among young people because they are worried or anxious about establishing their careers, which often leads to an unwillingness to commit to a partner at an early age. Consequently, this career-driven outlook means that people take a certain “trajectory” and they may not realise this trajectory until they suddenly want to get married because of their age.
However, this does not mean that young people no longer see the value of commitment, but that other factors influence how they perceive it. For Fr Alan, society can reduce the notion of commitment to a purely emotional level and so relationships become more unstable given that “emotions are very changeable”.
“[Commitment] hasn’t been eradicated. I still think the nature, the kind of love that people are looking for of whatever [religious] viewpoint, they’re still looking for commitment very deeply. A true commitment of the other person. But sometimes that gets confused with emotions,” Fr Alan says.
Vulnerability
Similarly, Fr Seán suggests it’s not that people no longer see the value of commitment but that younger generations are afraid of the “world of vulnerability” they are exposed to with dating. Dating is not dependent on effort found in sport or academic work for example but has a much more personal element interwoven into it.
“There are a lot more personal factors involved, so you’re vulnerable and rejection can happen. So, for that reason, people may be afraid to enter into that world,” he says.
This fear of commitment has also been compounded by the increasing use of contraception which has had an effect on how people perceive sexuality and what they think sexuality is for, according to Fr Seán.
Both priests believe that there are ways in which we can improve young people’s perception of marriage, but this requires good role models and educating people when they are young about the sacrament.
Fr Alan points out that young people today often look to celebrities as role models, in sport, music or literature, and their behaviour can have a profound influence on how young generations perceive marriage and sexuality. For him, we need to have “good” role models who instil positive values, and also encourage families to teach their children about the importance of marriage and commitment.
“The primary and first educators are the parents and that education is very often non-verbal. It’s their own revealing of what marriage is and their own love for each other and their family. There can be formal catechesis then by lay catechists, by teachers of religion in Catholic schools, by the priests, by theologians – so there’s different secondary inputs. But it primarily begins in the home,” he says.
Fr Seán also believes that communities should promote the values of marriage, but that individuals also have responsibility to develop their own formation.
“It’s the responsibility of parents, it’s the responsibility of the church community who prepares the couple for marriage, the pastors concerned with their formation. The people have a responsibility themselves for their own formation. People themselves are the agents to some degree of their own formation,” says Fr Seán.
“The more a particular family lives in the sacrament of marriage, the more it will spill over for the benefit of any children they may have.”
