THE Northern Ireland Mixed Marriages Association (NIMMA) has welcomed comments by the Catholic bishop of Killaloe apologising for the pain caused by the Ne Temere decree and his praise for current mixed marriages.
Dr Willie Walsh spoke of "the joyfulness of today's interchurch marriages" in a talk which is published in the May issue of the Furrow magazine. A spokesman for NIMMA said that the bishop's comments could "only be of benefit" to those living or contemplating a mixed marriage. They hoped that what Dr Walsh said would also go some way "towards relieving the hurt a strict and unsympathetic application of Ne Temere" had caused in the past.
Dr Walsh himself has said that it would be incorrect to pretend "there were absolutely no difficulties with mixed marriages at present. He pointed out that the Catholic partner still required his/ her bishop's permission, and was also asked to bring up the children of the marriage as Catholics, within the unity of the partnership.
But he interpreted this as no more than placing an obligation on anyone of the faithful, as regards their own faith. He saw it as "in some way an exhortation" to a person to be faithful to the faith in which they Were raised.
Speaking on RTE's This Week programme yesterday, he also said that though there were shades of opinion within the Hierarchy on the issue, by and large he thought the other bishops would echo his views. The change in the Ne Temere requirements, he believed, "was surely in some way an admission that they (the bishops) were less than happy with the way things had been before".
He said a lot of interchurch marriages had taken place in the area where he grew up (near Roscrea, Co Tipperary) and recalled that, for the Church of Ireland partner, such a marriage usually meant they were "almost lost to the family".
This had caused "a lot of hurt" and was why he felt the need to apologise. It had also reinforced divisions in the community at the time, he said.
