British Royals celebrate 70 years of marriage

Late marriage and divorce rates make such achievements rarer.

Ann Farmer | Nov 21 2017 | comment

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip on their wedding day.

As the Queen and Prince Philip celebrate their platinum wedding anniversary, Rosa Silverman in The Telegraph asks whether a modern marriage can last 70 years.

As she points out, the Royal couple married in their twenties, while in 2014 the average age for men was 33 years, and for women, 31. Unless more people live to over a hundred, platinum anniversaries will be rare.

As she also notes, in the 1960s the Pill for unmarried women meant that marriage was delayed, and then seen as irrelevant for many. Birth control campaigners maintained that ‘trying out’ partners would mean happier marriages, but the result of whole generations of people being ‘tried out’ and discarded was a breakdown in trust between the sexes and an increase in divorce. Divorced couples can hardly notch up 70 years of marriage.

Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation “remains optimistic about the potential for long-lasting marriages,” insisting that ‘“[p]eople still want reliable love”’; true, everyone seeks commitment - but few are willing to commit.

In holding two people together through the inevitable ups and downs of life, with their intense but passing emotions, marriage – not divorce -- is the answer to failing marriages.

Ann Farmer writes from the UK.

November 22, 2017

For Australians, last week brought the curious juxtaposition of the country’s capitulation to the same-sex marriage crusade, and the public re-appearance of a long-lost and then long-obscured picture of Christ as Salvator Mundi, by (very probably) Leonardo da Vinci.

Reflecting on this coincidence in an article today, Michael Cook says that same-sex marriage seems to be about salvation through sex, but that kind of salvation cannot answer the deepest questions of human existence. Only the old salvation has those answers, he suggests, with examples that are well worth pondering.

That is also, ultimately, the message of German cultural critic Gabriele Kuby, interviewed in Melbourne by Family Edge contributor Veronika McLindon. The Catholic convert and writer argues that the courage to resist the tide of gender ideology will come from strong, loving families, who draw strength from their Christian faith.

That seems pretty clear to me. Much as one would wish that all thinking people, religious or not, could see the irrationality and futility of same-sexuality, it becomes clearer by the day that only religious people – and by no means all of them! – actually can.