THE introduction of divorce has dealt "a most serious blow" to Irish family life, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, has said.
In his sermon for the Feast of the Holy Family, delivered in Dublin yesterday, Dr Connell said that "the drift of recent legislation" had increased the pressures on parents and the family to become the guardians of their children's moral outlook.
The introduction of divorce also meant that the church, especially the laity, now had to safeguard its future against "far heavier odds".
"What is happening today is no mere adjustment of this or that particular law but the advancement of a moral vision of the common good of society at variance with our tradition," said Dr Connell.
"The subtle but sure influence of law is communicating this vision to our people and clouding our perception of what we should recognise as wholesome and good.
He said that as the State withdrew from supporting the church's moral tradition, the reason for the church's involvement in education became more pressing than ever.
Dr Connell noted the great debt owed to parents but said that they had come under increasing pressure from a number of directions, including the influence of media support, for a "materialistic and permissive view of life" and hostility expressed towards Catholic standards.
Parents have not been helped by the drift of recent legislation," said Dr Connell. "The more permissive the law becomes the greater is the burden on the family to retain its moral vision intact and the greater is the difficulty faced by parents in the moral education of their children.
"More and more as it loses the support of the law, the family has to become the guardian of the moral outlook that parents want for their children."
He criticised the report of the Constitution Review Group for its ambiguity on the question of continuing constitutional support for marriage as the basis of the family.
"To acknowledge that the family is based on marriage is to accept that the family has rights and prerogatives which the law of the State may not infringe," he said. "If that fundamental constitutional acknowledgment were to be deleted, the family would be stripped of its inherent rights and absolved from all responsibilities other than those which the State might choose to impose.
"This would deprive the family of its independence and subject it to unlimited interference as a mere creature of the State. Mere words of support for family values cannot replace the constitutional acknowledgment of the family based on marriage.
He said that compassionate consideration for people in "irregular unions" should not extend to the point where the family based on marriage would suffer serious injury.
The family based on marriage was entitled, "in strictest justice", to preferential treatment under taxation law because it contributed to the social good, he said.