STEPHEN COLLINS,
A chara, - Breandan O'Connor (February 5th) describes the Law Society's response to the Pope's recent pronouncement that divorce is "evil" as a "novel moral principle". His use of irony notwithstanding, the point he makes is specious. The director general's statement is, of course, one of professional, not moral, principle.
Blaming the fact of divorce on lawyers is a tired and vacuous exercise. The laws of Ireland derive from and belong to its people - not its lawyers - and so too do the causes of marital breakdown. In this society alcoholism, mental illness and violence are among the main culprits.
Unfortunately, accurate statistics on marital breakdown and its causes are not readily available. However, the incidence of it in the Dublin area is thought to be as high as one in three. Even if the figure is much lower - say one in 10 - the forces causing marriages to break down would best be described as chronic social problems rather than individual tragedies. From this point of view some of the causes of divorce, rather than its morality, should be of public concern.
On a more basic level, we should begin to question the cultural, religious and even moral pressure put on people to marry and stay married. Men and women are changing and so too are the relationships between them. Why, then, should the same old pressures be exerted on them? A bad marriage is surely just as evil as a divorce. - Is mise,
STEPHEN COLLINS,
Sir John Rodgerson's Quay,
Dublin 2.