Irish To Vote On Measure Allowing Divorce Amendment Has Ignited Debate And Church Opposition

The government of Prime Minister John Bruton has approved a constitutional amendment that, if approved in a referendum scheduled for the end of November, would permit divorce in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Ireland for the first time.

The Cabinet’s approval of the amendment on Wednesday effectively began the government’s campaign to allow divorce and the remarriage of divorced people, now explicitly prohibited by the Constitution.

The approval also ignited what is expected to be an emotional national debate on divorce, which the Roman Catholic hierarchy vehemently opposes and which the voters rejected 2 to 1 in a 1986 referendum.

Parliament is to debate the new amendment on Sept. 27, and approval is expected, as the parties of the government coalition and the chief opposition party agree that it should be put to the voters on Nov. 24.

The amendment specifies that a divorce may be granted if a couple have lived apart for four of the five years preceding the application. Legally, the government says, living apart does not have to mean that the spouses actually live in different places. Some legal experts say this could lead to a tangle of litigation.

While Bruton and his Cabinet ministers are advocating approval, and planning a $750,000 advertising campaign, they are careful not to predict the outcome. Polls indicate that more than 65 percent of voters favor removing the ban on divorce.

In 1986, about the same percentage of voters in early polls said the same thing. But 20 percent of them apparently changed their minds by voting day, and they defeated a measure to repeal the ban. Several antidivorce organizations and the church, which has not commented on the specifics of the amendment, are also planning vigorous campaigns.

Bruton said he hoped the voters would “decide that it is fair and just to allow people whose marriages have failed completely to have the opportunity, if they wish, to marry again.”

He added, “Many of these people have formed other unions and have children.”

Minister for Equality and Law Reform Mervyn Taylor has noted that one in six Irish marriages are ending in separation and that there are now 75,000 irretrievably broken marriages, compared with 35,000 when the last referendum was held.

To opponents of divorce, who assert that removal of the ban would lead to an un-Christian “divorce culture” that would encourage separations, Taylor has said, “Italy has divorce, and the rate of breakdowns there is lower than in Ireland, which does not have divorce.”

He has noted also that in 1986, many people voted against divorce because they feared that the allocation of property would be confused, if not unjust, in divorce cases. This time, the government has formulated careful procedures on property rights, which are also expected to be approved by the Parliament.

Bishop Thomas Flynn, the church spokesman on the issue, said: “We will be teaching what is the teaching of the church on marriage - that it is indissoluble - and pointing out that there is no simple solution to broken marriages. On the social side, what will be necessary will be to look at the damage which divorce will do and the suffering which is now caused by broken marriages.”

But the church is expected to acknowledge, as it did in the 1986 campaign, that Catholics may vote their consciences on the issue - that a prodivorce vote is not a sin.