The Catholic Church's treatment of relationships outside marriage has been "less than ideal" in the past, according to the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr William Walsh.
The bishop issued a public apology over the weekend for the church's attitude towards unmarried mothers, unmarried fathers and cohabiting couples and said it was time to acknowledge that society is made up of a variety of relationships.
Addressing several thousand pilgrims at the first annual conference of Accord (Catholic Marriage Care Services) at Our Lady's Basilica in Knock, Co Mayo, Bishop Walsh said: "Marriage has always been promoted by the church as being made up of two people, loving each other and children born of that love. We see that loving relationship as mirroring the life of the Trinity and it is thus recognised by the church as one of its sacraments.
"The church must continue to press this image of family as two parents loving each other and as a result of that love bearing children. That is the ideal and will continue to be the ideal.
"The reality of life, however, is that families come in all shapes and sizes. There is the family of two parents united in love; there is the one parent family - one parent because of death or departure.
"Because of this variety of strains of family, there is a temptation to focus on the ideal of the family that comes nearest to the ideal of the church, to wail against difference, to lament the ever increasing percentage of births outside marriage.
"I do believe that the manner in which we have treated some people in the past has been less than Christian - and for this I ask for your forgiveness.
"Christ did not condemn those who failed to meet the ideals of the church, but only those who pretended to live by those ideals and condemned others who appeared to have failed to do so.
"We must not condemn. We must not question the nature of that love that may not meet with our ideals. We must celebrate family, and all that is possible in family; the love between married spouses and between parents and children; the love of the unmarried mother and unmarried father and their children and the struggle that being an unmarried mother and father can be in our society."