Marriage, to the secular mind, is an invention of the state which can be amended. So if a majority think laws should not discriminate, for instance on the basis of sexual orientation, than the case for opening marriage up to same-sex couples is unanswerable. This is the dilemma that the Catholic Church has faced all over the Western world as the idea of gay marriage has taken root in country after country. Ireland is the latest of many examples. As elsewhere, the Irish Catholic Church appears not to have grasped what the problem is. It lies in the disconnect of the secular mindset from a religious mental framework where marriage is a given, even God-given, pattern of living, whose fundamentals cannot be altered. The heart of the problem is that this is almost impossible to communicate wit