This year the Family Life Centre in Boyle celebrates twenty years of service in the Diocese of Elphin. I know that many adults together with teenagers and children have experienced great compassion and support at and from the Boyle Centre.

A Changing Society

Back in the 1980’s marriage and family life was beginning to experience the pressures of industrialisation and urbanisation which began in Ireland in the 1960’s. Up to that Irish society and the Irish economy was for the most part, based on agriculture. Because of this communities had been very traditional, homogenous and secure. Marriage and family always experienced difficulties because of tensions due to personalities or at times to addictions etc. However, married couples endeavoured to resolve their conflicts and problems if only for the sake of the children.

Married couples and the nuclear family began to leave the extended family and follow the jobs provided by industry. Young mothers found themselves in housing estates with young children not knowing their neighbours while the husband worked away from them all day every day. This was a huge change from the life of the extended farming family.

The Vision of Bishop Dominic Conway

The Bishop of Elphin in the 1980’s, Dominic Conway always recognised the significance of marriage and family both for the church and the state. He knew that a couple who celebrates the sacrament of marriage before the altar would experience the presence and power of Jesus not only on the day of their marriage but on everyday of their married lives. He knew that because of the Sacrament of Marriage a couple would find their way to God through their love for each other. And he knew that it was in the small but intimate community of the family that children would experience for the first time

· A sense of being loved
· A sense of being wanted for their own selves
· A sense of their own self-worth
· A sense of their own self esteem

He knew that all of these were essential in children’s lives if they were to become mature, balanced and loving citizens of both church and state.

Marriage and Family Need Support

The more Bishop Conway saw marriage and family life yield to the pressure of modern life, the more he saw families drift from prayer, from the Eucharist and from the sacraments generally the more convinced he became that the church should do something significant to support marriage and family life.

The universal church had also sensed such a need. In 1980 the world-wide synod of Bishops took as their topic for reflection Marriage and Family life in our modern world. In 1981 Pope John Paul II published an exhortation entitled The Christian Family in the Modern World, which was to initiate a period of profound reflection on the Christian family that “as much and perhaps more than any other institution, has been beset by many profound and rapid changes that have affected society and culture.” (Familiaris consortio 1)

Soon after this Bishop Conway decided to send Father Padraig Green to study at the Catholic University of Fordham, New York. Despite the costs involved he and the Diocese were determined to support marriage and family regardless of cost.

Boyle Family Life Centre Founded

Father Green came back from Fordham in 1986. I remember him asking myself to suggest to Bishop Conway that Boyle would be the right place for the family Life Centre. It was founded there in 1987 and the rest is history. Only the men women and children who have experienced the compassion and care and healing support of the centre will know its true value as a caring institution.

A Vision Honoured and Continued

Today, the Boyle Family Life Centre continues its founding vision to be an agency of the Catholic Church in the Elphin Diocese, established by Bishop Conway to support marriage and family life in accordance with the spirit and ethos of the Catholic Church. To quote from Pope John Paul II

Knowing that marriage and the family constitute one of the most precious human values, the Church wishes to speak and offer her help to those who are already aware of the value of marriage and the family and seek to live it faithfully, to those who are uncertain and anxious and searching for the truth, and to those who are unjustly impeded from living freely their family lives. Supporting the first, illuminating the second and assisting the others, the church offers her services to every person who wonders about the destiny of marriage and the family. (Familiaris consortio 1)

It is wonderful to see Boyle Family Life Centre partaking in this important work and going from strength to strength in supporting Christian families and in the true Catholic spirit reaching out in service to people and children of every class, creed and colour.

As Bishop Conway’s successor I have and will continue to honour his founding vision and to support and promote Boyle Family Life Centre in every way possible.

Thanks, Congratulations and Blessings

I wish to congratulate the current Management Board and the Family Centre’s director Father Brian Conlon, the staff and volunteers of the Boyle Family Life Centre. I pray God’s blessing on the Centre, on all who work there and their families and on all who turn to it for help and inspiration and who will do so well into the future.

Most Rev. Christopher Jones D.D.
Bishop of Elphin