Calls for church to recognise same-sex unions

THE SACRAMENT of marriage should not apply to same-sex couples but they should be allowed to have civil partnerships that are recognised by the church, a recently retired Church of Ireland bishop and a senior Catholic theologist both told a conference on same-sex marriage yesterday.

Most Rev Michael Mayes, recently retired Anglican Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe, said while he had no problem with the recognition by society and the church of intimate, stable, same-sex relationships, he still had a difficulty with the use of the word marriage.

While many elements of marriage could be applied to same-sex couples, an essential ingredient of marriage was a framework in which procreation took place and in many ways this was the most important reason for marriage, he argued.

Most Rev Mayes, however, recognised there had been a shift in emphasis in the revised Book of Common Prayer from marriage as procreation to marriage as the couples relationship. This shift may open the way for the Anglican church’s acceptance and blessing of same-sex relationships, he added.

Same-sex relationships and civil registration should be given a blessing and pastoral support, Fr Enda McDonagh, former professor of moral theology at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, said. However, the new prospect of same-sex Christian marriage was a further challenge, he said.

While same-sex relationships had grace, everything with grace did not have to be a sacrament, Fr McDonagh said, adding that there was a tendency to equate recognition of difference with the practice of discrimination. Many Catholic bishops had a more tolerant view of same-sex relationships and were moving towards an affirmative view, he said.

However, many in the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy were waiting to see what steps would be taken by the Anglican community in relation to the issue of same-sex marriage, Fr McDonagh told the conference, organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin.

It should be possible for same-sex couples to marry in a way that can be supported by civil society as a social institution and by the church as a sacrament, Margaret Farley, professor of Moral Theology at Yale Divinity School and a member of the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, told the conference.

However, as long as the Roman Catholic Church justified marriage for procreation or as a corrective to a disordered sexual desire, and as long as it assumed the couple should be of different sexes, there was little room for the validity of same-sex relationships, she said.