Sir, – For the record and in response to the letters of Rev Eoin de Bhaldraithe (December 23rd) and Dr Ken Dunn (January 6th), I recognise and understand the injustice of Ne Temere and am also aware that mixed marriages were exempted from Tridentine law (which may well have been to avoid a conflict with civil law). I am also familiar with the McCann case which, as the validity of that marriage was called into question, underpins my argument that Ne Temere was about the validity of all marriages involving Catholics.
That said, I believe that as the same case became heavily politicised it warrants much more robust scholarly research and analysis before any grand claims concerning it can be made. A degree of caution is also required when considering Dr Dunn's claim that "Ne Temere was applied enthusiastically by both clergy and politicians in Ireland and retrospectively [...] and marriages of long standing were broken up". For my doctoral research I examined a significant number of lesser-known inter-faith relationship/mixed marriage disputes, many of which came before the Irish courts. I found that Ne Temere was generally not applied retrospectively and that most disputes centred on the issue of the religious upbringing of the children of the marriage rather than on the requirement that a couple should marry before a Catholic priest and two witnesses (Ne Temere). Further, I am not aware of any politicians who applied Ne Temere (the Catholic Church and state were never that close!), though I am aware that many unionist politicians exploited it for political gain particularly in the run-up to the third Home Rule Bill.
Dr Dunn also states that "the upbringing of children was not completely explicit in Ne Temere". In fact, he should forego the woolly language and acknowledge my fundamental point that there was "no reference in the decree in any shape or form to the religious upbringing of children".
For anyone interested, my research and analysis of the said inter-faith relationship/mixed marriage disputes will be published in an article entitled "Church and State and Unhappy Marriages" in the scholarly journal New Hibernia Review in 2014. – Yours, etc,
Dr DAVID JAMESON,
York Road,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – The extraordinary claims of Dr Ken Dunn, chairman of the Northern Ireland Mixed Marriage Association, demand explanation and clarification. His claim that the Ne Temere decree "was applied enthusiastically by clergy and politicians in Ireland . . . and marriages of long standing were broken up" is very strange. While there should be no surprise that [Roman Catholic] clergy would apply Ne Temere, there is no comment in favour of Ne Temere in the Dáil record from its creation in 1919 to the present day. Which politicians is he referring to? The only example he gives is from Belfast in 1910 and as far as I remember the British were in charge then. Has he no other example?
His claim that "the net result of [Ne Temere] was the reduction of the Protestant population in the Irish Free State/Republic by 80 per cent" is simply untrue. As far back as 1973, RE Kennedy showed that the main causes of Protestant decline in Ireland were colonial retreat after independence, economic emigration, war deaths, natural decrease, and of course Ne Temere. – Yours, etc,
BARRY KEANE,
Glendalough Park,
Cork.