Thursday 28th March 2024

Home » Featured Today » Currently Reading:

Marriage In UK Is Imperiled . . . But Is The Time Ripe For Openness To Church Teachings?

May 12, 2018 Featured Today No Comments

By LOUISE KIRK

(Editor’s Note: Louise Kirk is an author and journalist in England, with specialties in Church teaching on the family and natural family planning. She covered the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2015 for The Wanderer.)

+ + +

LONDON — Powerful voices in the UK are again calling for marriage reform and the Catholic world should be concerned. The close union between civil marriage and the Christian understanding on which it is based is crumbling, and too few people are noticing.
What makes the case in the UK unusual is that one of the loudest voices for reform belongs to a passionate champion for marriage. Sir Paul Coleridge, formerly High Court judge on the Family Circuit, was so distressed by the misery he witnessed from the “tide” of family breakdown that he set up his Marriage Foundation to do something about it.
As a committed Anglican, his Christian faith inspires his work though he warns of against using Christian arguments to make arguments in the secular world.
The Marriage Foundation broadcasts scary figures. It says that that the UK has the highest levels of family breakdown in the developed world. This is costing the UK some £51 billion a year, before counting the human cost.
The problem is not so much divorce, which is waning, but cohabitation and the growing number of parents who never marry at all. The effect on children is disastrous, with the majority of unwed couples falling apart well before children reach their teens. A further concern is that unbonded relationships are concentrated among society’s poorest: 87 percent of the top strata of society are still marrying but only 15-20 percent at the bottom.
Sir Paul regards all of the above as a national calamity which is why he addresses his subject with passion. However, here the lawyer in him appears to take a lead, since he is concentrating his public battle on softening the law. He thinks that this will attract more people into marriage or at least give couples the protection of a recognized status.
He has joined forces with The Times newspaper promoting reform in five areas: easing divorce proceedings by removing fault, giving legal recognition to prenuptial agreements, ending “meal ticket for life” alimony, regularizing and increasing the legal rights of cohabitees, and setting up civil partnerships for heterosexual couples.
Various of these reforms are in practice already happening in a piecemeal fashion, but he and a growing number of other senior lawyers and politicians wish to see them regularized through legislation.
The list raises eyebrows. One can see why cohabitees’ rights are included to protect vulnerable children, though administering this will be a minefield. But will changing alimony or legalizing prenups really help the poor?
The theory is that paving the way for easier divorce will make marriage less daunting. It could be that the real purpose is to lessen the load on our law courts which are at breaking point. Lawyers wade through ever-more impenetrable tomes, make judgments on the hoof, and obey legal niceties which only serve to prolong the trauma of the people before them.
The proposal to set up civil partnerships for heterosexual couples is at once the most dangerous and the most revealing of the reforms. Civil partnerships were hastily set up in the UK for homosexual couples before same-sex “marriage” was on the cards. Sir Paul thinks that there are men and women who, for financial or ideological reasons, are unwilling to marry but would be drawn to a civil partnership. There would need to be “clear blue water” between them and marriage, to keep marriage as the desired Gold Standard.
What would that “clear blue water” be? Our civil marriage arose out of Christian marriage and encompasses the free commitment of one spouse exclusively to the other, shared possessions, openness to children, and sealed by the ring of “till death do us part.” This is its beauty and also its romanticism. It is the solidity on which new families are founded and corresponds to a deep human longing for sexual fulfillment and lasting love.
It is difficult to see how another version of this could be created by law as a half-way step. You cannot by law insist that people are faithful to each other (except by penalizing them when they break up, which the reformers no longer want). You cannot supervise how they share their goods (again except in divorce proceedings, which would be done away with by accepting prenuptials and whittling down alimony). The state can certainly not insist that couples are open to children.
There is only one way, and that is to make them easier to get in and out of, which would do away with the very stability that society so desperately needs, not just for the sake of the children but also for that of the couple. A factor singularly lacking from current debate is the problem of the unattached old and lonely, which has already become critical and would be made worse if civil partnership grew at the price of marriage, as in France.
It is here that the reformers’ entire program shows itself up for what it is: an ending of popular belief in marriage as a lasting covenant, to be replaced by contracts of variable lengths and intensity. There is no reason to suppose that the law courts would empty, and everything to suggest that the law books would become fuller still.
Whatever terms might be drawn up for a civil partnership, or, for that matter, for cohabitees, they will change again when they are found to fall short of justice, which they will because once natural boundaries are lost there are no secure grounds for law. And into this mess will come the schools, under pressure to teach that civil partnerships equate with marriage.

Hope Springs Eternal

One thing Sir Paul has done is highlight the plight of poor, broken families, and he needs an answer on what can be done for them. Here he himself provides a clue. It is a myth that many couples used to cohabit. In mapping cohabitation patterns from the 1600s to 2002, it was found that until the late 1970s they never numbered from more than five percent. What changed everything was the advent of birth control. Cohabitation began to take off in 1975 followed by family breakdown a decade later.
So if birth control caused the problem, tackling birth control must be a large part of the answer. Would it make sense? Imagine that contraception was magicked away. Cohabitation and extramarital sex would plummet. Sexual activity would be reconnected with relationship and bearing children. Men would recommit to marriage and at an earlier age. Porn and dating apps would diminish. Abortion would drop, and so would STDs and infertility. The complementary roles of man and woman would be reasserted and, crucially, more children would be born into stable families.
The list goes on. Is it practical? In the UK, the Pill is unusual in being fully state funded regardless of the woman’s age or income. Cutting back on state subsidy and promoting Fertility Awareness Methods in place of contraception, especially at school, would have a big impact. With Pill scares gathering pace, and women already beginning turning away from artificial contraception, an optimist might see a change of mood on which to build.
Curiously, a boon has been the fertility industry complaining that girls are being unrealistic in postponing pregnancy and should have their families earlier.
Making so huge a change would of course be impossible without God’s grace. This is where the Church needs to take a lead, and there is sadly little sign of that yet happening. We are paying for years in which the Church’s teaching has been neglected.
However, hope springs eternal and who knows what new surprise our God may have in store?

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Abortion Advocates No Longer Consider It “A Necessary Evil,” They Celebrate Killing Babies

Last week, Kamala Harris became the first vice president in U.S. history to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. Though the Democratic party’s support for abortion is nothing new, Harris’ Planned Parenthood appearance does illustrate how that support has become a flagrant celebration of abortion as a public and personal good, essential to both “freedom” and to “healthcare.” At the appearance, Harris proclaimed,  It is only right and fair that people have access…Continue Reading

Wisconsin Supreme Court says Catholic charity group cannot claim religious tax exemption

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a major Catholic charity group’s activities were not “primarily” religious under state law, stripping the group of a key tax break and ordering it to pay into the state unemployment system. Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) last year argued that the state had improperly removed its designation as a religious organization.  The charity filed a lawsuit after the state said it did not qualify to be considered as an organization…Continue Reading

Walgreens and CVS Will Start Selling Abortion Pills That Kill Babies

The two largest pharmacies in America will start selling abortion pills this month that end the lives of unborn children by starting them to death. Walgreens and CVS will both sell the abortion pills despite the fact that they kill a developing human being and have killed at least dozens of women and injured tens of thousands more. They plan to initially roll out abortion drug sales in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, California…Continue Reading

Cardinal Burke announces novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’

VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — Raymond Cardinal Burke has announced the start of a global, nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, calling on Catholics to beseech Mary’s intercession on the Church and the world in the face of the “crises of our age.” In a new endeavour published online over the weekend, Cardinal Burke announced a novena beginning in March, and culminating on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

Texas attorney general targets Catholic nonprofit, alleges it facilitates illegal immigration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 21, 2024 / 21:15 pm Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down a Catholic nonprofit organization in El Paso based on allegations that the group may be facilitating illegal immigration, harboring immigrants who entered the country illegally, and engaging in human smuggling.  Paxton filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Annunciation House, which has operated in the state for nearly 50 years. The lawsuit asks the District Court of El Paso…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)