Marriage failure: priest’s view challenged

I WAS amused by Fr Aidan McGing’s letter on the recipe for a happy marriage (July 23). He can’t be challenged on his facts — separations rose in the US during the 1960s and ‘70s, which was also the time when the contraceptive pill was introduced.

What is debatable, however, is his cause-and-effect argument, as if there is a direct correlation between the two facts. His point is that contraception and premarital cohabitation are largely to blame for the breakdown of the ‘traditional’ family unit, yet this is a very selective argument.

Perhaps it could be suggested, if one were to bias an argument in such a way as to support a particular dogma, that the family breakdown came in the era of civil liberties for women and minorities. By the cause-and-effect correlation Fr McGing employs, couldn’t a ‘traditional’ man argue that the family would be better off if women had just stayed in the kitchen? Society has undergone huge changes.