c. 1997 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ Louisiana’s Roman Catholic bishops have decided to withhold their support from the state’s widely touted covenant marriage law, dealing the conservative effort to strengthen civil matrimony and discourage divorce a possibly fatal blow.

The state’s nine bishops, who voiced support for the law as it was working its way through the legislature in June, praised the”commendable concern”for families embodied in “covenant marriage,” a new, voluntary marriage contract unique to Louisiana making divorce more difficult.

The law requires pre-marital counseling for a civil wedding license and further counseling before a divorce can be granted and more rigorous, time-consuming and expensive procedures for dissolving a covenant marriage than in the state’s basic no-fault dissolution.

But after studying the bill’s fine print, the bishops found themselves in opposition to a small but all-important detail: It requires counselors preparing couples for covenant marriage to explain its higher standards for divorce, a subject matter the bishops said their employees will not explore in Catholic marriage preparation programs.

To do so “would confuse or obscure the integrity” of church teaching on the permanence of marriage, they said in a statement on Wednesday (Oct. 29).

Although the bishops’ position is nominally neutral _ they said they neither supported nor opposed the new law _ as a practical matter it places covenant marriage at a distinct disadvantage. Catholic couples seeking a covenant marriage would first go through their faith’s mandatory pre-marital counseling. Then they would have to seek out another counselor to attest they had been briefed on the required information about divorce their Catholic counselor could not provide.

In the short term, the decision deals a severe blow to the widespread adoption of covenant marriage.

Jewish and United Methodist leaders already have signaled little support for the new civil contract, even while stressing the sanctity of marriage in their own spiritual traditions.

Southern Baptist pastors are generally disposed toward covenant marriage, but have been slow to encourage it for their congregants largely because they are still unfamiliar with it, said the Rev. Michael Claunch of Slidell, head of the Louisiana Baptist Convention.

But Episcopal Bishop-elect Charles Jenkins of Baton Rouge is a critic of the new law, unlike Episcopal Bishop James Brown, whom he will soon succeed.

According to Jenkins, the new law brings couples in covenant marriage back to a cynical, fault-based divorce system.”It goes back to the bad old days regarding divorce and dissolution of a household,” Jenkins said.”We’ve been there; it doesn’t work. Those old ideas compromised the moral character of couples, they compromised the integrity of judges, courts and attorneys.”

Without effective support from any major religious denomination _ now including the Catholic Church _ the new marriage contract is being widely ignored by engaged Louisiana couples.

In the month after the law took effect Aug. 15, Louisiana officials statewide issued only 26 of the optional covenant marriage licenses out of about 3,000, the Associated Press reported.

To date, New Orleans officials have issued only three, said William Barlow, of the state Department of Records and Statistics.

Conservatives sponsored the new form of marriage as a voluntary antidote to no-fault divorce, in which either party can declare a marriage over after a six-month wait.

State Rep. Tony Perkins, the Baton Rouge Republican who sponsored the law, said he was not yet concerned about the low number of couples choosing covenant marriage.

“I might be in six months or a year if they continue at that pace,” he said. “Right now the religious community still hasn’t reached the point where they understand this completely.

Wednesday’s statement on covenant marriage was drafted by Bishop Alfred Hughes of Baton Rouge and signed by other bishops in the state.

Had they wished, the bishops might have required priests in Louisiana to offer church weddings only to Catholic couples choosing to live under the state’s covenant marriage contract and there was some indications _ until the announcement _ they might do so.

Kirby Ducote, executive director of the Louisiana Catholic Conference, said the bishops came upon the objectionable requirement about divorce counseling that reversed their support only after the law was closely analyzed following its passage.”I think it probably just slipped by until then,” Ducote said.

MJP END NOLAN