A website has been created in Ireland to inform, accompany and assist engaged couples in their preparation for marriage (www.gettingmarried.ie). The project was officially inaugurated in Dublin in recent days by Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe and president of Accord (www.accord.ie), an agency of the Catholic Church of Ireland founded in 1965 to respond to the pastoral needs of marriage and the family, thanks to its network of 800 volunteers, distributed in 57 centres. Since 2000 Accord has helped over 32,000 couples to prepare for marriage; many of them expressed the wish to have an agency to which they could refer for information and assistance in the period between their engagement and marriage. Hence the new website. “Marriage is not a goal but a journey said Bishop Walsh in presenting the new website -, and the decision to get married is undoubtedly the most important that couples may make in the whole course of their life. It cannot be taken lightly, without proper reflection and preparation. By deciding to get married within the Catholic Church couples pledge to live their married life in a certain way”. In spite of the high number of separations and divorces, Walsh has remarked that “church weddings have increased by 5% in Ireland over the last five years” and stressed the “uniqueness of the sacrament of matrimony in relation to the other six: the only one conferred by the couple, from one spouse to the other, and testified by the priest and by the community”. The new website provides information on the provisions of the State and the Church on marriage, on the necessary documents and the ways to obtain them, and proposes a “countdown” to the wedding day. The section on the questions most frequently asked is interesting.
