Irish government: Voters keep motherhood, traditional family in constitution

 

Votes are counted in Dublin, Ireland, on March 9, 2024, after voters in the country went to the polls March 8 to decide on a pair of referendums proposing wording changes to the Irish constitution aimed at reflecting secular values. / Credit: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

CNA Newsroom, Mar 9, 2024 / 10:32 am (CNA).

Voters in Ireland appear to have voted to preserve the country’s constitutional recognition of the central role of the traditional family founded on marriage as well as the societal value of women within the home, rejecting a pair of referendums held March 8, pro-referendum government leaders conceded Saturday.

“It does look like a no vote in both the family and care referendums,” Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan told RTE News on Saturday. “The first thing to say is that we respect that. It’s the voice of the people and in our constitution, it’s the people who are sovereign.”

“It’s they who decide what goes into our constitution,” Ryan said. Official results were not released yet.

The “Family Amendment” would have removed a clause about the importance of marriage and family to society from Ireland’s 1937 constitution and legally redefined “family” as either “founded on marriage or on other durable relationships.”

The proposed “Care Amendment,” meanwhile, would have removed a clause noting that the “state recognizes that by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.”

Ireland’s leading political parties and other influential groups strongly backed the well-funded referendum initiative, while some conservative groups and the country’s Catholic bishops urged a “No” vote on both measures.

“This decision by the Irish electorate sends a powerful message about the importance of preserving foundational values in the face of sweeping societal changes,” Family Solidarity, an Irish conservative advocacy group that opposed the constitutional language changes, said in a statement Saturday.

“This victory is not just a rejection of a specific referendum proposal; it is a declaration by the people of Ireland that the core unit of society — the family based on marriage — must remain protected and cherished. It underscores a collective desire to maintain the integrity of societal values that have long been the bedrock of our nation.”

Critics of the amendments argued that the bill — the vote for which took place on International Women’s Day — ironically erased terms like “women” and “mother” from the constitution while also causing confusion about the meaning behind a “durable relationship.”

The “Care Amendment” also would have removed an article of the Irish Constitution that said “the state shall, therefore, endeavor to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of their duties in the home.”

These clauses would have been replaced by an article noting that the state will “strive to support” the care that “members of a family” give to one another “without which the common good cannot be achieved.”

“The people of Ireland have spoken and given this government and the parties in opposition a walloping,” Sharon Keogan, an Independent Irish senator, posted on X (formerly Twitter.)

“Women do not want to be reduced to non-gender language,” she said. “I, for one, did not view the erasure of the words ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ as something worthy of being progressed. Thankfully this country agreed.”

This is a developing story.


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5 Comments

  1. When all seemed lost in Ireland, we have a burst of light. Christ’s holy spirit continues to pour out upon a wayward planet.

  2. Good on the Irish people for this vote. The Irish people seem to be remembering who and what they truly are and have always been. It reminds me of the words in the song’s refrain-“Try to remember, and if you remember, then follow your dream” The Holy Spirit can touch our memory, which can get us back on track and living our journey with God and His plans for us.

  3. Thinking, here, about vocabulary and the value of cultural encounter as the better path than abrupt interreligious jousting. Confucius said that he would save his society “by restoring the meaning of words”…

    “The meaning of words”? Like “motherhood,” but also other such realities….How different might things be, for example, if anthropologist Ruth Benedict had completed “The Sword and the Chrysanthemum” (1946) a few years earlier (assisting the Occupation by deciphering the very foreign culture and vocabulary of non-Western Japan)?

    WOULD the American, war-lengthening slogan “unconditional surrender” have been reconsidered in the Potsdam Declaration? (the emperor was eventually retained, after all).
    WOULD the intercepted and decoded Japanese response “mokusatsu” have been better understood (either “not worth considering”, or simply “no response”)?
    WOULD momentum toward the “nuclear option” (on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) not have prevailed, triggering half a century of brinkmanship under a nuclear arms race? The Cold War on steroids?

    TODAY, would the science and visuals of embryology be quite so marginalized by our own cultural fixations–on individualized/sloganized “rights” (https://www.life.com/lifestyle/drama-of-life-before-birth-landmark-work-five-decades-later/)
    AND, would Vatican operatives be less successful in deliberately (!) reverting to ambiguity to impose a corrupt and facile agenda (“bigot, rigid, backwardist” vs “paradigm shift, synodality” and now “blessing and couple”)?

    AND, the ecumenical/theological NUCLEAR OPTION?
    Next year will the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea (A.D. 325) be accurately recalled as a model of standing together (!) in recollection and precision rather than being transitioned as a license for fluid and “synodal” consensus while only “walking together”?
    That is, guarding the fecund Deposit of Faith, rather than, say, mimicking Islam’s pre-parliamentary (!) Ijtihad-consensus…toward contradiction or “abrogation” (the Muslim term) as accreted and found in the Qur’an?

    Abortive “process theology” in a turban and a red hat, both?

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