Broken marriages: the floodgates are a long way from bursting yet

DAVID QUINN is a valuable and important social commentator, perhaps the leading Catholic commentator in Ireland. While I would find myself in disagreement with him, and with his perspective, more often than not, I have always had a lot of respect for the honesty and passion with which he presents his case.

And his case is a simple enough one. As the director of the Iona Institute, he believes in “making the evidence-based case for marriage, and in making the evidence-based case for religious practice”.

The pity is that the evidence doesn’t always support the case he wants to make. And the greater pity is that when the evidence isn’t there, or isn’t there in a strong enough way, he can sometimes use evidence that simply doesn’t back up his argument enough.