Gay marriage vote ‘a defeat for humanity’ says Parolin

The Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said on Tuesday that the result of last Friday’s Irish referendum on gay marriage was a “defeat for humanity”.

A total of 1.2 million people voted in favour of amending the constitution to allow same-sex couples to marry, with 734,300 against the proposal, making Ireland the first country  to introduce gay marriage by popular vote. The “yes” vote prevailed by 62 to 38 per cent, with a 60.5 per cent turnout and total valid poll of 1,935,907. While the “yes” vote in Dublin was particularly pronounced, just one constituency, Roscommon-South Leitrim, rejected the amendment with a “no” vote of 51.4 per cent.

“I was deeply saddened,” Cardinal Parolin said. “The Church must take account of this reality, but in the sense that it must strengthen its commitment to evangelisation. I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity.”

The decisive vote has precipitated a bout of profound soul-searching by the Irish Church. Dr John Murray, a moral theologian of the Mater Dei Institute of Education and chairman of the Iona Institute, which campaigned for a “no” vote, criticised priests, bishops, and theologians who “with some notable exceptions ... simply haven’t been teaching the teaching at all”. He told BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme that the vote could not have been carried without the support of Catholics. His concern was echoed by Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin who said, “Large numbers obviously believed that they could vote ‘yes’ without undermining marriage.”

The Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, told reporters after Mass at the city’s St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on Sunday that the Church “has to find a new language which will be understood and heard by people”. Speaking to RTE, he said: “We have to see how is it that the Church’s teaching on marriage and family is not being received even within its own flock. The Church needs a reality check right across the board [and to ask] have we drifted away completely from young people?” The bishops are due to discuss at their June meeting whether to withdraw Catholic priests from their role as civil solemnisers.
Alois Gluck, the president of Germany’s several-million-strong ZdK group of lay Catholics,  warned against  making same-sex marriage the same as marriage between a man and a woman. “There is an undeniable, particularly notable difference with a view to children as the future of our society,” he said.