The Gazette 1979

GAZETTE

JULY-AUGUST 1979

Public and Private Morality It is impossible to delineate with absolute precision the specific fields of public and private morality. Here reasonable men may differ from time to time and culture to culture. Nevertheless, the immediate issue we are dealing with here is clearly legislation on public morality, affecting the common good and this has to be borne in mind in considering changes in such legislation. Where law has already intervened in the field of public morality, as in the present case, there are sound reasons for resisting the lowering of legal moral standards. A presumption favours retention of an existing law, and the burden of proof falls on those who advocate change, not on those who wish to preserve the status quo. It is also true that a great many people are incapable of making a distinction between morality and the law and what law can or should do about morality, and, since they tend to take their moral standards from the law, a change in legal attitude can imvolve a really fundamental change in their moral attitudes. The law must, of course, in the long run, reflect the beliefs of the citizens, because it ultimately depends on their consent. The Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference in a statement in June 1976 emphasised that the impact on society should be the key consideration in making or changing laws with a public morality content. But this social dimension of the matter is usually ignored. The question, instead, is debated in the false context as to whether the State should impose Catholic moral teaching on all, irrespective of their beliefs. The most important question to be answered in considering the proposed change in our marriage laws is the social aspect. The institution of marriage and the family with its associated morality are welfare of children — their maintenance, education, happiness and security; welfare of the partners — support in adversity, security in old age Welfare of the community — certainty of parenthood, harmony in sexual relationships concern that the old and weak are not exploited. Divorce is of its very nature a matter of public morality and is really central to the marriage institution. Impact of Divorce We must, therefore, consider scientifically and objectively the impact of divorce on the stability of family life; on the well-being of the children involved; their physical well-being, their emotional well-being, etc. We must consider the demands on State finances to cater for such children; the issue of authority in society and even the relevance of the evident spread of violence in our society. The social consequences of state divorce are already well charted. Experience teaches us that where state divorce has been introduced it tends to get more and more out of hand and comes to undermine radically the whole meaning of marriage as a community institution. The stability, of marriage and family life is weakened inexorably and progressively. It is a fact of experience that divorce legislation becomes even more lax in subsequent acts of legal reform, and that the possibility of divorce and the threat of divorce leads to insecurity in fundamental for community well-being. The values at stake here are the:—

marriage and too little effort at reconciliation. What begins as a remedy for human failure introduces further and further insecurity and lack of confidence so that the whole institution of marriage is placed in jeopardy. There is no reason to think that a system of civil divorce introduced into Ireland would operate differently from divorce anywhere else, or that it would prove immune to an inexorable; widening of divorce grounds. In practice, as our world experiences it, divorce does not operate responsibly. It tends to erode the values of family stability and security for child and partner, and introduces greater evils than those which it sets out to cure. One can sympathise sincerely with the motives of those who endeavour to introduce divorce legislation. We are all aware, unfortunately, of broken marriages. We tend to hear more and more frequently of irretrievably broken marriages. By far the great majority of marriages do work more or less successfully, and, of course, all marriages, if they are to be reasonably successful, call for a degree of discipline and effort. It is, nevertheless, a fact that the incidence of marital breakdown is on the increase, and it is a problem for the law to know how best to deal with it. No one can pretend to provide the perfect solution. A valid criticism of divorce is that it does not solve the problem of irretrievably broken marriages. While it gives relief, of a kind, to existing ones, there is strong evidence that it tends to create by its very existence even more and more broken marriages as time goes on. Divorce is now proposed as a solution, but to what problem? It appears to be a problem which has not been comprehensively researched or analysed in the first place. It is very probable that, if the causes of marital upsets and breakdowns were analysed on a comprehensive basis, it would be found that very many of the factors leading to broken marriages could be eliminated by reasonable and evolutionary modifications of existing law, and by appropriate administrative action, thus reducing the volume of marriages which could be factually classified as irretrievably broken down. Alternatives There are other avenues also which could be explored with a view to relieving many of the real stresses, difficulties and hardships which undoubtedly, in our modern environment, exist in marriages. For example, some of the really hard cases could be met by widening the grounds on- which marriages under civil law can be declared null. Many of our matrimonial laws do in fact offer prospects of a solution to a number of the agonising problems of broken marriages e.g. the provision of a system of properly secured settlements, as well as properly secured maintenance for separated wives with their children, an adequate extension of matrimonial relief to cases of desertion and re-definition of matrimonial 'cruelty' on a broad basis for the purpose of divorce a mensa et thoro. There is, too, a need for careful and thorough pre- marriage preparation and instruction. It is simply not possible, by means of any legal or social institution, to prevent all forms of marital disharmony and breakdown. It is possible, however, by the type of preparation which ought to precede the adoption of any serious vocation in life to avoid a number of difficulties which might otherwise prove disastrous. Everyone acknowledges, too,

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