Madam, - Why do Catholics persist in talking about marriage when everyone else is talking about civil partnership? The two are simply not the same thing.
This makes Cardinal Seán Brady's interdictions on the subject not only galling, because incorrect, but insulting - both to the intelligence of those he presumes to speak for and to the rest of us.
The "sacred institution" of marriage is sacred only because it involves a religious aspect. But the Civil Partnership Bill makes no pronouncements on such an aspect, involves no such aspect itself, and does not wish to change, modify, negate, dilute, dissolve or otherwise impair the status of that aspect as it currently exists.
There are some, such as Ruth Boland (November 11th), who argue against civil partnership and in favour of marriage, and marriage only, because it entails positive social goods such as a reduced likelihood of "household breakdown".
Even if we accept the unsubstantiated "facts" advanced in support of this argument it remains dubious. What is the causal mechanism which brings these outcomes to pass?
Ms Boland's position suggests that marriage is not only sacred but miraculous; if all troubled young couples today, unsure of their direction in life, uncertain of their intentions for the future, and unconvinced that the traditional family model is right for them would just get married, then all of the problems will go away! This is naive, to say the least.
But perhaps there is a grain of truth here. Perhaps the marked financial benefits that accrue from marriage would help to stabilise these households, and perhaps facilitating legally sanctioned and supported loving commitment between grown adults without the need for recourse to religious elements would encourage more young people to enter into such arrangements of continuity and stability, with all of the attendant benefits that this would bring to children born into such unions.
Perhaps civil partnership is just as likely to effectively redress these purported social ills as marriage.
Is the Church really opposed to civil partnership on social grounds, or is it advancing its uncharitable, mean-spirited and discriminatory agenda from a fear of its own increasing irrelevance? - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Ruth Boland (November 11th) seems to be under the misapprehension that she still lives in the Ireland of the 1930s, when it seemed natural to many that state law should reflect Catholic moral teaching. This assumption that Ireland was a monocultural society did enormous long-term damage, not least in reinforcing the fear of northern Protestants that a united Ireland would bring "Rome rule".
Until recently it appeared that the Catholic Church had begun to accept that the State has a wider responsibility to respect the diversity of contemporary Irish society in its laws.
However, the vigour of its current campaign to oppose the government's proposed Civil Partnership Bill suggests otherwise. Let us hope the Government holds its nerve, on this issue at least. - Yours, etc,