Number of Catholic weddings falls to 75-year low
● Scotland’s registrars carried out half of last year’s ceremonies
The number of Catholic marriages in Scotland fell to their lowest level since 1941 last year.
The National Registrar for Scotland’s Annual Review of Demographictrendsrevealed that 1,346 marriages were conducted by clergy from the Roman Catholic Church. This isdownfromahighofjustover 7,000 in 1970, and is the lowest number for 75 years.
Half of all marriages carried out in Scotland in 2016 were civil ceremonies, those carried out by a registrar, a trend that has also resulted in declines of marriages carried out by religious celebrants, with the number of religious marriages falling by 44 per cent since 1975.
Monsignor Peter Magee, the head of the Scottish Catholic Interdiocesan Tribunal, suggested that one day in the calendar year be dedicated to the promotion of marriage as a way of arresting the slide.
He told the Scottish Catholic Observer: “It would be a day to issue a message on marriage to the nation in the exercise of our right of free speech and in our sense of duty to present the Christian vision courageously and positively to our sceptical and secularist culture.”
He also mooted a Catholic Marriage Association, which he said would “demythologise the lies which are thrown at us concerning love, sex, relationships, happiness and fulfilment and which proceed solely from the self centred needs of the hedonism which
0 More Scots than ever chose to have their marriage conducted by the Humanist Society of Scotland has infected and corrupted our culture and our laws”.
Previously, the church has blamed the fall in Catholic marriages on “aggressive secularisation”.
While the overall number of marriages in Scotland was 1.6 per cent lower in 2016 than it was in the previous year, the rate has been given a boost over the past two years since the introduction of samesex marriages, which the Church vociferously opposed.
There were 998 same-sex marriages in Scotland in the last year, a fall from 2015 when many couples with civil partnerships opted to change to a marriage.
More Scots than ever are choosing to have a marriage conducted by the Humanist Society of Scotland, who carried out over 3,000 marriage ceremonies in the last year.
Gordon Macrae, chief executive of Humanist Society Scotland, said: “One of the reasons there are more Humanist marriages is that we also conduct weddings for same-sex couples.”
A spokesperson for the Catholic Church said: “The fall in the number of catholic couples opting to marry in church mirrors falls in church based weddings elsewhere.”