The poor state of marriage across the EU

 

Ireland had one of the lowest marriage rates in Europe in 2020, according to new data from Eurostat. This was the year Covid emerged, so marriage rates dropped everywhere, but Ireland was particularly bad, and the rate was already low.

Figures from Eurostat show that Ireland had a marriage rate of 1.9 per 1,000 people in 2020. It was 4.1 in the previous year. Only Italy (1.6) and Portugal (1.8) had a lower rate but they have an older population. Again, these particularly dismal rates are because of Covid, but the trends have been down in any case.

About 1.4 million marriages took place in the EU in 2020, which is equivalent to 3.2 marriages per 1,000 population. As we can see, Ireland’s 1.9 per thousand was very low even in the context of the pandemic, but then we also had particularly long lockdowns.

The highest marriage rates in the EU in 2020 were reported in Hungary (6.9), Latvia (5.6) and Lithuania (5.5). Hungary was the only country in Europe that celebrated more marriages during the pandemic than before. Except for Latvia, Hungary was also the only country with marriage rates higher than ten years before.

Marriage rates have constantly declined in the last decades in Europe, from 7.8 in 1970 to 5.2 in 2000, and then a further drop to 4.3 in 2019, just before Covid.

In Ireland, the marriage rate is often slightly below the already low EU average. (7.0 in 1970, 5.0 in 2000).

In the early 2010s, Irish rates were slightly above the EU average, and after that, more or less in line with it.

According to the Eurostat data, in 2020 about 800,000 divorces took place in EU countries, the equivalent of 1.6 divorces every 1,000 people. The lowest rates were registered in Malta (0.5) and Slovenia (0.8) while the highest figures were in Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark (all at 2.7).

The divorce rate for Ireland has always been lower than the EU average. The 2020 figures for Ireland were not available at the time of the Eurostat data publication but we know that there was an increase in the number of applications that year.

We often hear that marriage in Ireland is in good health, compared internationally, but the latest Eurostat figures prove that this is definitively not the case.

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L'indugio prudente stagiona gli intendi e matura i segreti.  

Catholic healthcare better than the secular alternative

 

In the debate about the National Maternity Hospital, Catholic health care, and the role of the nuns in particular, are being constantly demonised. We are led to believe that secular healthcare is far better, something that does not hold up to scrutiny.

Among those attacking Catholic healthcare and the religious sisters has been Sinn Fein leader, Mary Lou McDonald who said recently: “Government after Government in the history of this State colluded with religious dogma to deny us, as women, what we were entitled to by way of healthcare“.

Deputy Brid Smith wants religious iconography removed from the two St Vincent’s hospitals at Elm Park, where the new NMH will be located and a “move away from the historical legacy of the religious order’s involvement”, as though the legacy is entirely bad.

Yes, there is a dark side to that legacy, but also a strong positive side that is now constantly overlooked.

Religious sisters were the founders of modern nursing, for instance.

Generations of women religious who dedicated themselves to healthcare, education and caring for the poor have provided an extraordinary contribution to society, a contribution that has no equal. Their dedication was made more effective precisely by the fact that they had taken vows which meant they would not have a family of their own, or pursue material comfort. Their vow of obedience meant total dedication to the cause of their congregation.

In Ireland, we have some shining examples of female leadership in the likes of Mary Aikenhead, Catherine McAuley or Mary Martin, respectively the founders of the Religious Sisters of Charity, the Mercy Sisters and the Medical Missionaries of Mary. Their legacy worldwide is acknowledged but not in their homeland, where religious sisters are often openly despised, a socially acceptable form of misogyny.

It is not an exaggeration the claim that the Catholic Church is the largest single health care provider in the world. Public health systems are often built on religious foundations.

According to the most recent statistics (2021), the Catholic Church runs 5,245 hospitals, mostly in Africa and America, 14,863 healthcare clinics, 532 leprosaria, 15,429 nursing home for the elderly, chronically ill and disabled.

Catholic medical ethics are often presented as somehow regressive, an impediment to proper care, but it is much more in line with the idea of medicine expressed in the Hippocratic Oath than the “secular alternative”. Doctors in the Hippocratic traditions do not kill terminally ill patients or carry out abortions.

The relocated National Maternity Hospital will offer procedures such as elective abortions, elective sterilisation, and so called “gender affirming care”, which means removing wombs from healthy women who self-identify as men. But none of those procedures are proper medicine as they do not prevent or cure a disease.

In the US, a New York Times opinion piece recently accused Catholic hospitals of endangering the lives of expectant women because they follow ethical directives prohibiting abortion, except where there is a clear danger to life.

A response by Sister Mary Haddad, president of the Catholic Health Association of America, rebutted these accusations pointing out that Catholic hospitals in the US “deliver about 500,000 babies annually and are accredited and held to the exact same standards as non-Catholic hospitals.”

We often hear of hard cases in Catholic hospitals, but we never hear of the hard cases caused by the “secular alternative” model of medicine, for instance, babies born alive after an abortion and let die.

Are they not patients who need care? A care that is denied only because they are not welcome.

Moreover, how many healthy babies are aborted because of wrong or uncertain diagnosis of foetal abnormality? Mistakes are constantly being made in the “secular alternative model”, without considering matter of principles such as not killing.

This is leaving aside the fact that secular hospitals are willing to abort the healthy babies of healthy women and increasingly to perform assisted suicide. Catholic healthcare, Hippocratic healthcare, is far superior to this.

Marriage in Ireland continues its decline

 

New figures from the Central Statistics Office throw light on the changing nature of marriage in Ireland. The number of marriages went up in 2021, however, it hasn’t reached the pre-Covid levels. Many Catholic weddings were postponed last year but they are the most popular ceremony again.

In all, there were 16,717 opposite-sex marriages last year; 81.5 percent more than the year before but 15 percent less than in 2019. There were 500 same-sex marriages. The marriage rate per 1,000 population was just 3.4 in 2021. A clear drop when compared to 2019 (4.1), but a definitively higher figure than in 2020 (1.9) when many couples suspended or delayed their plans because of the pandemic.

Marriage rates have constantly declined in the last few decades, but the Covid pandemic has had a tremendous impact on numbers. Compared the two years before Covid (2018-19), opposite-sex marriage declined 35.2 percent in 2020 and 2021 combined. Same-sex marriages declined even more (37.5%) in the same period. After the 2015 referendum that redefined civil marriage, there was an initial surge of same-sex weddings, but numbers are now going down.

The average age at which couples marry keeps going up. In 2021, it stood at 37.4 for men and 35.4 for women. It was 34.6 and 32.5 in 2011.

Religious ceremonies continue to decline although they are still the most popular ones overall, accounting for 57 percent of all weddings in 2021. Thirty-nine percent were in a Catholic church, the most popular ceremony. The second most common celebration was civil marriage (35%). But ten years ago Catholic ceremonies accounted for 66 percent of the total.

Last year, when churches were closed and the number of people allowed to attend weddings was limited, for the first time in Irish history civil ceremonies became more popular than Catholic weddings. Atheist Ireland said that those figures showed that Ireland was no longer a Catholic country, but Catholic ceremonies were postponed for very practical reasons. The newly released figures confirm that 2020 was really exceptional, and now we are moving back to the normal trends.

The general decline of Catholic ceremonies is partly due to secularisation and partly due to more options being available to those who want to tie the knot, especially hotel weddings. Those who want to marry in a hotel and have a religious ceremony often opt for a ‘Spiritualist’ marriage. Last year 7.9 percent of opposite-sex couples and 12 percent of same-sex couples do so. A significant proportion (43%) also chose non-religious celebrations.

The data released by the Central Statistics Office this year are less detailed compared to the past. For example, this time we are not told about the previous marital status of the brides and grooms, and how many were marrying for the first time. It is a pity that some interesting figures regarding the state of marriage in Ireland were missing.

The most recent data about divorces and separation from the Court Service Annual Report refer to 2020 and show us that there was a 29 percent increase in the number of applications for divorce (5,266) that year, compared to 2019 (4,073), while judicial separations decreased by 48 percent (from 1,229 to 636). These are the effects of the change in family law legislation following the divorce referendum in 2019 that reduced from four to two years the amount of time required to be separated before been allowed to apply for divorce.

Besides the Covid pandemic, 2020 was an exceptional year because of the recent changes in family law and it is of little use to compare divorce and separation figures for 2020 with the previous years.

In any case, the overall figures show that marriage in Ireland is in anything but rude health.

At a Crossroads | Jordan B. Peterson | 2022 Commencement Address